A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Field-Initiated Studies Grants Awarded

The National Institute on Early Childhood Development and Education within the Office of Educational Research and Improvement has funded 7 new Field-Initiated Studies grants totaling approximately $1.3 million for the first year of projects lasting up to 3 years. Selected from 107 proposals, the grantees and their projects are:

The University of Maryland at College Park, Maryland, will examine the effects of exposure to community violence on African-American Head Start children's cognitive, motor, and socioemotional development Eight Head Start teachers will implement a research-based intervention aimed at reducing the effects of violence and substituting positive behaviors in place of behavior problems that may result from exposure to violence.
Project director: Suzanne Randolph

The University of California at Berkeley will determine how to help parents and preschool teachers prepare young children for school mathematics. The project will develop a culturally and developmentally appropriate prekindergarten math curriculum and evaluate instructional approaches parents and preschool teachers can use to teach the curriculum.
Project director: Prentice Starkey.

Boston University will establish a collaborative project between an early childhood education program and an intergenerational literacy project that addresses the need to teach parents and teachers best ways to systemically collaborate with each other to support the learning of children pre-K through second grade. Most of the participants in the mtergenerational project are immigrant families.
Project director: Jeanne Paratore

The University of Connecticut Health Center will study the effectiveness of a social competence curriculum with 25 Connecticut toddlers with disabilities who attend inclusive childcare centers. The curriculum will be embedded in the children's individualized early intervention services. Twenty-five other toddlers also will be m the study, but they will receive only the traditional inclusive early intervention.
Project director: Mary Beth Brunder

Utah State University will design and implement a resiliency theory-based model of home visiting and test the effectiveness of the model in four of seven sites throughout Utah. The intervention model will be strengths-based and culturally sensitive.
Project director: Mark Innocenti

SRI International will examine the early impact of the Parents as Teachers (PAT) Program in assisting low-income parents in urban areas to enhance the devlopment of their children from birth through age 2. The proposed study is the first stage of a larger research effort to assess the short- and long-term child and family impacts of PAT.
Project director: Mary Wagner

Children's Hospital Medical Center of Akron, Ohio, will compare two alternative procedures using Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) curricula designed to meet the educational and devlopmental needs of young children with disabilities. One approach retains the elements of traditional early childhood special education and weaves these into the activities and routines associated with DAP curricula. The second modifies DAP curricula to accommodate the individual learning and developmental characteristics of children with disabilities.
Project director: Gerald Mahoney

Proposals are selected for funding after being reviewed and evaluated by scholars and practitioners from outside of the government. For more information about the FIS program, call Joe Caliguro at (202) 219-1596.

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