Early childhood education researchers at the University of Oklahoma are building on their extensive expertise in Head Start programs to conduct an 18-month longitudinal study, funded by a $100,000 grant from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The project, “Exploring Variations Among Head Start Dual Language Learners: What Factors Predict Different Longitudinal Developmental Patterns,” is led by Shinyoung Jeon, Ph.D., senior research and policy associate at OU-Tulsa's Early Childhood Education Institute, with co-principal investigator Elizabeth Frechette, research associate at WestEd, and in collaboration with Lieny Jeon, Ph.D., Jane Batten Bicentennial Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia.
“One of the main goals of Head Start is to increase the school readiness of children from low-income families and enhance their long-term success in life. However, conducting a longitudinal study with a large study sample is expensive and requires tremendous effort and energy to follow the study sample over time,” Jeon said.
Instead, the researchers will integrate multiple datasets including local Head Start evaluation data, public school administrative data, public school rating data and census data to create a longitudinal and multi-layered dataset.
“Data integration provides an alternative strategy and becomes a workable solution by using reliable public data that measures real-life outcomes in society,” she said.
The proposal extends and builds on several current research efforts at OU’s Early Childhood Education Institute, including a longitudinal pilot study funded by OU’s Institute for Community and Society Transformation and the George Kaiser Family Foundation that is examining the development of low-income children who attended high-quality Early Head Start and Head Start programs in Tulsa.
