The focus of this year’s Steinhardt Policy Breakfast series is educational transitions, from early childhood through young adulthood. The three-part series recently kicked off with a talk by Bridget Hamre, associate director of the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, who noted that now is an “exciting, but scary” time for those who work on early childhood development, as the Obama administration begins funding states to scale up early childhood interventions. Hamre developed an observational tool that measures three distinct domains of teacher-child interactions in pre-K settings: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. The measure, called Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), has been validated in over 3000 classrooms and is currently used by the Office of Head Start to train its Head Start grantees nationwide.
Responding to Hamre were Steinhardt’s C. Cybele Raver, professor of applied psychology and director of NYU’s Institute of Human Development and Social Change, and Fabienne Doucet, assistant professor of education. Raver discussed her work with the Chicago School Readiness Project, a model that provides professional development and coaching to Head Start teachers, and her use of the CLASS measurement tool. Doucet discussed the importance not only of children’s school readiness, but also teacher’s school readiness. In her view, teachers can best succeed when there is information sharing between parent and teacher.
Future events in the series will focus on educational transitions during the middle school years and the post-secondary transition to college and career.
(Photo, from left to right: Dean Mary Brabeck, Fabienne Doucet, Bridget Hamre, and C. Cybele Raver)
Educational Transitions from Childhood to Adulthood:
Research and Policy Initiatives
A three-part Series
Part 1: Strengthening Children’s Chances of School Success before Kindergarten: Integrating New Evidence from Research
and Practice
Bridget Hamre, Fabienne Doucet, C. Cybele Raver
Respondents