2-012 - Improving School Readiness through Preschool Curricula: Roles of Curricula Type, Coaching, Instructional Practices, and Scale-Up

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Curricula are a much-researched topic in early childhood education, yet many fundamental questions about curricula are largely unanswered: What types of curricula are most beneficial for children’s school readiness? Which of the classroom practices that curricula prescribe translate into gains in children’s skills? How can we insure that teachers implement curricula with fidelity, and can this be done at-scale? Our panel’s research helps to answer these questions. Paper 1 compares the effects on classroom- and child-level outcomes of content-specific curricula relative to global, whole-child curricula, which now constitute the “business as usual” conditions in Head Start and pre-k classrooms nationwide. Content-specific curricula boosted children’s school readiness skills in the targeted outcome domains relative to whole-child curricula. Paper 2 is an evaluation of a pilot study designed to improve classroom instructional quality in community-based preschool settings by training and supporting teachers on their use of the two formalized content-specific curricula, a model from a large, successful public pre-k program. The findings illustrate how a curricular model can be implemented at-scale with coaching and training to successfully improve the quality of care in community-based settings. Paper 3 provides new details about the mechanisms through which intensive, content-specific (language) professional development can enhance Head Start teachers’ curricular and classroom practices relative to the business as usual and, by extension, improve Head Start children’s language outcomes. In total, these papers examine several different dimensions of curricula-related research, ranging from macro-level policy interventions to micro-level teacher practices and domain-specific child skills.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Elizabeth T. Gershoff, University of Texas at Austin

Discussant

• Dale C Farran, Peabody College/Vanderbilt University

Individual Presentations

• Boosting School Readiness with Preschool Curricula and Quality - Greg J Duncan, University of California, Irvine; Presenting Author: Jade V Marcus Jenkins, Univ of California-Irvine; Anamarie Auger, University of California, Irvine; Margaret Burchinal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Thurston Domina, UC Irvine; Marianne Bitler, University of California at Irvine

• Instructional Quality and Child Outcome Changes in Community-Based Prekindergarten After a Coaching and Curriculum Intervention - Presenting Author: Monica S Yudron, Harvard University; Christina J Weiland, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Jason Sachs, Boston Public Schools

• Increasing Children Vocabulary through Teacher Professional Development: Findings from an Effective Language Intervention - Presenting Author: Emily Keller Snell, Temple University; Annemarie H Hindman, Temple University; Barbara A. Wasik, Temple University