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As problems increase and budgets decrease, it is important for
early childhood professionals to take a role in influencing
policies and financial investments of government. This issue of
Early Report spotlights several areas of research and points out
the need for advocates to understand and use the information.
Using research to improve practice often means translating the
research data into everyday language and suggesting appropriate
changes indicated by the findings and conclusions.
Please write and tell us if these brief reports are helpful
and suggest other topics you'd like to hear about.
Erna Fishhaut, Editor
Research! Practice!
Never the Twain Shall Meet!
by Erna Fishhaut
This year CEED comes of age, we are 21 years old. Even before
conception, when CEED was just a twinkle in Shirley Moore's eye,
there was research evidence, reported by psychologists like
Benjamin Bloom, that the first five years of life were the most
important years in the development of a child. In the '60s,
researchers such as Ira Gordon, Martin Deutsch, and Jerome Bruner
said that attention must be paid to the whole child and the
family. The evidence, however, had very little impact on
practice. Very few educators or administrators found ways to
change school systems or family practices because of the
information that was available. The research was finally
transferred into practice as part of the government's war on
poverty. The components of health and community were added to the
formula when Head Start was put into place in 1965.
As Head Start and other early education programs gained favor,
there was greater interest in the study of child development. In
addition to the effectiveness of preschool, there was curiosity
about such things as language development, peer relationships,
methods for teaching children with special needs, and adult-child
relationships. The next two decades produced more research about
children than had ever been done in a similar period of time.
Still, in those enlightened years, the research findings often
went unheeded, even by the true believers, the early childhood
educators. They didn't know how to interpret the data, asking for
specific details and rules about how to use the research in the
classroom. The need for translation, clarification and methods to
transfer research to practice became more clear. Since change
almost always requires funding, it was also necessary to help the
policy makers understand the impact of the research.
Change is slow, and we don't always use language that makes
sense to policy makers (from congress to local school boards). A
few researchers have led the way-knocking on the doors of
legislators. David Weikart knew that economic evidence would make
the difference; politicians would take notice. His data from the
Perry Preschool Project in Ypsilanti, Michigan was translated
into investment/return language, and the concept of early
education as a good investment took hold.
While Weikart and his colleagues are specific about their
findings from more than 25 years of study and the projections
based upon that evidence, many others lobbying for a multitude of
programs have generalized and used that information to make a
myriad of claims. In large, those claims were logical, and there
has been a proliferation of programs for young children based on
the premises from the Perry Preschool data. Why would I question
having funds allocated for children? I wouldn't! But the kind of
information that one could use to stimulate change and
improvement of services ought not be limited to the "tried
and true."
This issue of Early Report points out just a few examples of
research evidence that could be useful to practitioners as well
as the public, administrators, and political representatives.
Armed with such data, advocates can propose solutions to some of
the problems that face us today (such as family violence,
children raising children, inadequate schools, poor- quality
child care). We urge each of you to think about what role you can
play in finding out more about research and putting the evidence
you know about into practice.
Perhaps you are the one who knocks on the door of the
legislator or writes a letter to the local newspaper. Maybe you
determine what information teachers or human service workers need
to understand children, their growth and development, and their
problems. Moving research into practice is no simple matter, but
it can be accomplished if all of us work together, doing these
things and more.
Prevention Programs Not Reaching Many
Minnesota Children
Kids Count, a joint project of the Children's Defense
Fund/Minnesota and Congregations Concerned for Children, assesses
the condition of Minnesota's children. In the fall of 1993 they
reported that among Minnesota children who began kindergarten in
1992, only 63 percent had been fully immunized by age two,
leaving over 20,000 children vulnerable to disease.
Immunizations protect children against diseases that can
result in permanent disability or death. Measles, for example,
which is easily prevented with two doses of vaccine, can produce
complications such as bronchial pneumonia, encephalitis (which
may result in permanent brain damage or death), and chronic
middle ear infections.
Immunizations are the proverbial ounce of prevention. They
save lives and prevent unnecessary illnesses. The success of
vaccines is nothing short of phenomenal.
With the exception of ensuring safe water, no other public
health effort has been as effective in preventing illness. For
every dollar spent on measles vaccine, $14 is saved in health
care costs. Every dollar spent on pertussis (whooping cough)
vaccine saves $2.10 in health care costs.
The answer to improving immunization rates for Minnesota
children is not simply to provide more money.
Kids Count recommends:
1. Bring immunizations to children. lt. is clear from the 91%
rate of immunization of Head Start children that rates go up when
immunizations come to children. Offer immunizations through other
programs, such as child care facilities already serving large
numbers of infants and young children.
2. Educate parents about the importance of immunizations.
3. Establish a system for tracking children's immunizations.
How Poverty Damages Children
Much has been said about how poverty damages children's
overall well-being. Recent studies have confirmed this statement
and have identified specific consequences. For example:
Poverty and intelligence
Five-year-olds who have experienced poverty have significantly
lower IQs than non-poor children, according to a study by Duncan,
Brooks-Gunn and lebanov, released by the University of Michigan.
This search held up even after adjustment for racial differences,
mother's education, family structure, and other factors.
Poverty and growth
Poverty is associated with significant developmental problems
in children. Studies have found that stunted growth affects
11-to-15 percent of poor children ages two to five, compared with
5 percent of non-poor children. The U.S. Public Health Services
warned in 990 that an estimated 3 million young children,
virtually all of them poor, had blood lead levels so high s to
place them at risk for impaired mental and physical development.
Poverty and education
Every year that children live in poverty significantly creases
their risk of falling behind in school by ages 6 to 18, according
to the U.S. Department of education. Poor children are more
likely to fall behind school, even after accounting for such
differences s race, gender, region, family composition, mother's
education, and parents' involvement in the child's schooling.
Poverty and death
Poor children are about three times as likely to die during
childhood as their non-poor peers, according to the Kansas State
Department of Health and the Maine Department of Human Services.
Based on the Maine findings, an estimated 1 0,000 to 1 1,000
children die each year in the United States from causes related
to poverty.
Such findings provide a chilling picture of the enormously
high price children pay for growing up poor and how costly child
poverty may be for the nation in terms of lost productivity and
other negative outcomes for children.
Some research suggests that income may matter even more to a
child's success than parents' education or family structure.
"Family income is a far more powerful correlate of a child's
IQ at age five than maternal education, ethnicity, and growing up
in a single-parent family," says Greg Duncan, lead author of
the University of Michigan study.
Excerpts from CDF Reports, July 1993, 14 (8), 8.
Combating child poverty is high on the agenda of the
Children's Defense Fund. Staff needs research data and personal
stories to use in their advocacy efforts. To share a story write
Arloc Sherman, CDF, 25 E St. NW, Washington, DC 20001, or call
202/662- 3537.
Research About Children
as Witnesses
Children's Suggestibility
In recent years, not only judges and attorneys, but also
researchers have raised questions about the accuracy of
children's testimony, particularly in child abuse cases. One
important aspect of the accuracy of children's reports that
figured so prominently in the McMartin case and hundreds of
others like it was the degree to which very young children are
disproportionately prone to suggestion.
To study children's suggestibility, a group of researchers,
(Saywitz, Goodman, Nicholas, & Mona, 1991) asked children
misleading questions about being touched. They studied five- and
seven-year-old girls' memories of medical examinations. Half of
those in each age group had a scoliosis exam (for curvature of
the spine), and the other children had a genital exam.
When children were interviewed later, they were asked
suggestive and nonsuggestive questions that were abuse related
(e.g., "How many times did the doctor kiss you?") or
nonabuse related (e.g., "Didn't the doctor look at your feet
first?"). Although there were differences in the responses
given by the five-year-olds and seven-year-olds, very few
children of either age gave incorrect responses; the
seven-year-old children never made a false report of abuse, and
the five-year- olds did so only four times, although they were
given 215 opportunities.
Saywitz and her colleagues conclude the children's inaccurate
reports were mainly errors of omission. The majority of children
receiving the genital examination did not disclose genital
contact unless specifically asked to do so (e.g., when asked a
direct question such as "Did the doctor touch you
here?").
A review of this study by Goodman and Clarke-Stewart (1 991)
concluded that:
"Most children are not likely to make up details of sexual
acts when nothing abusive happened to them. The researchers
suggest that children will not easily yield to a suggestion that
something sexual occurred when in fact it did not."
To summarize, recent studies are quite contradictory about the
reliability of children's reports, resulting in headlines
claiming Studies Show Children are Credible as Witnesses in one
publication, while another states Research Shows Child Witnesses
Unable to Distinguish Reality from Fantasy.
There is no definitive conclusion about the reliability of all
children as witnesses. It is safe to conclude, though, that
children are neither as suggestible and coachable as some have
alleged, nor as resistant to suggestions about their own bodies
as others have claimed. Under certain conditions, they can be led
to incorporate false suggestions into their accounts of
situations, but they can also be amazingly resistant to false
suggestions and able to provide highly detailed and accurate
reports of events that transpired weeks or months ago.
Anatomically Correct Dolls
The use of anatomically correct dolls has been criticized by
many. Two arguments are made against their use:
1. The dolls are suggestive; they encourage the child to engage
in sexual play even if the child has not been sexually abused
(e.g., Gardner, 1989; Terr, 1988). A child may insert a finger
into a doll's genitalia, for instance, simply because of its
novelty or "affordance," much the way a child may
insert a finger into the hole in a doughnut.
2. It is impossible to make firm judgments about children's abuse
status on the basis of their doll play because there are no
normative data on nonabused children's doll play.
On the basis of a literature review in 1993, Ceci & Bruck
concluded that the findings are inconsistent and point to the
need for additional research and development of explicit
procedures to govern the use of anatomically correct dolls by
interviewers. They suggest that the dolls should only be used
with great caution.
Researchers such as Berry, Skinner and Wolfner are more
specific- "...we are left with the conclusion that there is
simply no scientific evidence available that would justify
clinical or forensic diagnosis of abuse on the basis of the
dolls."
Excerpts from Social Policy Report.- Society for Research in
Child Development, Volume VII, Number 3, Fall 1993.
Research About
Professional Development
Training for Quality: Improving Early
Childhood Programs through Systematic Training
This new book, by Ann S. Epstein (published by High/Scope
Press) provides a research base for in-service training policies.
It is one of the most in-depth research examinations to date of
the links between in- service training, early childhood program
implementation, and the ultimate impact of both on children's
development. In the book's foreword, Lilian Katz outlines the
volume's key lessons about effective in-service training:
- In-service training must be available on site with
trainers readily accessible for consultation and support.
- In-service training should be continuous and constant
rather than the one-shot, scattershot approach of much
current training, e.g., single conferences or workshops.
- Teacher training is most likely to be effective when
based on a coherent conception of teaching and learning.
- The approaches used to train adults should be congruent
with the approaches that they, in turn, are expected to
use with children.
- Effective in-service training requires time and
continuity because it addresses teachers' ideas, beliefs,
and dispositions, as well as skills and techniques.
- Ensuring an optimal environment for children depends upon
the provision of an optimal environment for adults,
including good salaries and benefits, as well as good
interpersonal relationships.
Training for quality. Monograph #9 High/Scope Educational
Research Foundation Monograph Series.
Making a Career of It:
The State of the States Report on Career Development
in Early
Care and Education
This is a landmark study. It details the policies that @e
ermine the qualifications and training available to those who
care for and teach young children not yet in school and in
school-age child care programs. The study addresses:
- licensing regulations that govern training and
qualifications;
- certification regulations;
- training opportunities for those entering the field and
those already in it;
- financing to support training;
- relationships between regulation, training opportunities,
and financing and their combined impact on career
development; and
- promising practices in career development initiatives.
The findings stress the complexity of the current
"nonsystem" of early care and education training:
- No bridges between child care licensing and early
childhood teacher certification
- No bridges between non-credit and credit training
- Almost no funding to encourage or support an individual
to move from non-credit training to a certificate or
degree program.
The authors note, "Whether a practitioner is employed in
early care and education by a public school, by Head Start, or as
part of the purchase-of-service system, there is no overall
system that supports adequate preparation and career development
of practitioners that are necessary for quality programs for
children."
Making a Career of It, Gwen Morgan, Sheri Azer, Joan B.
Costley, Andrea Genser, Irene F. Goodman, Joan Lombardi and
Bettina McGimsey, published by the Center for Career Development
in Early Care and Education at Wheelock College.
Eight Policy Recommendations for an
Early Childhood Career Development System
- Create a planning and policy-making body with early
childhood practitioner representation to develop a
comprehensive, long-term plan for career development.
- Regulate the qualifications of all early childhood
practitioners.
- Require that every state have an early childhood teacher
certificate that includes a practicum with
prekindergarten children.
- Improve access to training for working early childhood
practitioners.
- Improve articulation in higher education.
- License individuals as well as facilities.
- Increase compensation for early childhood practitioners
according to their qualifications and roles.
- Allocate 5 percent of direct service funds for training.
From Making a Career of It.- The State of the States Report on
Career Development in Early Care and Education, by Gwen Morgan,
et al.
Resilience
One of the concepts that has been accepted in the last decade
is that of resilience in the development of children. The term
resilience refers to the child's capacity to recover from a
stressful event. The dictionary defines it as the tendency to
"rebound or recoil" or to "spring back." It
is not intended to imply that some children are immune to or
unaffected by stress.
In identifying the attributes that correlate with children who
are adaptable under stressful circumstances, three factors
emerge:
INDIVIDUAL FACTORS
Reflective of temperament indicators such as activity level,
reflectiveness in meeting new situations, responsiveness to
others, and cognitive skills from IQ measures.
FAMILIAL FACTORS
Despite the family's poverty status or the presence of marked
marital discord; marked by warmth, cohesion, a concern by parents
for the well-being of their children, and the presence of some
caring adult in the absence of responsive parents.
SUPPORT FACTORS
Outside of the family. This could be a person who provides
external support to the resilient child (supportive and concerned
teacher, social worker, scout leader, etc.); or it may be an
institutional structure such as a caring social agency, an
involved school system, or a church that serves to foster the
child's ties to the larger community.
Some research has said that occasionally there was a decline
in the level of competency of children over a period of time,
e.g., those who had been abused or neglected. Norman Garmezy,
professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, replies that
it may have been a function of persistent deprivation rather than
a question about the construct of resiliency. "Being
resilient or adaptive does not imply immunity to negative life
events. If relentless cumulative stress affects most adults, then
it logically follows that children are also affected by
cumulative stress."
Garmezy, Norman (1991). Resilience in Children's Adoption to
Negative Life Events and Stressed Environments. Pediatric Annals
20:9.
On The Director's Mind
by Mary McEvoy
Throughout CEED's twenty-year history, there has been an
emphasis on bringing people together and making things work.
There has en a sense of community that together, as professionals
from different disciplines, as family members, as advocates, or
as consumers, we can strengthen our approach to working with
young children and their families and the communities in which
they live. CEED has served as a channel for disseminating
research, as a forum for people to share as and goals that go
beyond disciplinary boundaries, and has focused on educating and
informing others (such as policy makers, practitioners m various
disciplines, parents, faculty and graduate dents) about current
issues in early childhood and family education.
Although "doing something" about young children and
their families is often seen as the solution to many of problems
that beset our society, the efforts are still fragmented.
Professionals in each discipline look for right answer. This
year, Dean Robert Bruininks reminded the College of Education
faculty that "our challenge is to achieve greater coherence
and ordination of effort, so that more of what we do is conducted
as an overall college community."
Individual faculty members from the six departments in College
of Education (Vocational and Technical Education, Curriculum and
Instruction, Educational Psychology, Child Development,
Kinesiology and Leisure Studies, and Educational Policy and
ministration) have worked together for a number of years to
develop individual course offerings and practicum experiences
that are family focused and emphasize an interdisciplinary
approach. Now, those us who educate professionals to work with
young children and their families are being challenged to look at
creative ways to extend and expand these collaborative efforts on
a College wide basis.
As we begin the next twenty years, CEED will place a emphasis
on coordinating early education training he College of Education,
working closely with the Dean's Office and faculty from each
department. For early education is an encompassing term which
includes a focus on child development (prenatal to e eight),
patenting and caregiving issues, early intervention, and public
policy and program development.
This year, CEED staff will work with College of Education
faculty on three main issues:
1. Improving the range of opportunities available to all
students, regardless of departmental affiliation, with an
emphasis on training leaders in the field of early education;
2. Facilitating cross-departmental research efforts for
students and faculty with interests in early education; and
3. Disseminating information about research, training, and
service efforts related to early education.
CEED will commit both financial and personnel support to this
coordination endeavor. We will work to create an early education
program at the University of Minnesota that is interdisciplinary
and family centered, yet continues to build on the strengths of
each discipline or department represented. We are firmly
committed to helping the College of Education in redesigning the
way we train tomorrow's professionals, leaders, and researchers
in early education ... and we welcome your input and involvement.
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Winter 1994, Volume 21, Issue 2