Join the Crane Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital for a special event on childhood trauma and resilience featuring Dr. Moria Szilagyi, immediate past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She will discuss childhood trauma and resilience and the need to coordinate between systems of care through a trauma-informed lens.
child development
Who’s modeling STEM learning in children’s educational media?
Recently there has been a large increase in the number of STEM-focused educational television shows available for children, as well as a strong push for more diverse and inclusive children’s programming. The underlying assumption at play is that if children see more diverse characters on-screen engaging in STEM activities and modeling STEM interest, this will lead to broader interest and participation in STEM among racially diverse viewers. To date, there is little empirical evidence to support this assumption. Dr. Fashina Aladé will discuss a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from a content analysis of race and gender representation in children’s STEM TV as well as an interview study with parent-child dyads about what features of a STEM TV show resonate as culturally inclusive and authentic.
Race and Racial Equity in Early Childhood Development
Join us for a special March research forum focused on racial equity and early childhood development hosted by the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Dr. Clemens Noelke, research director for the diversitydatakids.org project at the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy at Brandeis University, will discuss neighborhood opportunity mapping, specifically the Child Opportunity Index, and how mapping tools can help visualize racial inequities in children’s healthy development.
Dr. Marisha Humphries, associate professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, will discuss her work that aims to use an understanding of African American children’s normative and prosocial development to create culturally and developmentally appropriate school-based behavior promotion programs.
*Live captioning will be provided. If you would like to request other accommodations, please contact Cathy Kupsky (kupsky.3@osu.edu). Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
What does recess look like for children with significant disabilities?: Zoom
If you ask an elementary school child to identify their favorite time of the school day, chances are their answer will be recess. Not only is recess a popular time, but it also creates a natural opportunity to develop social competence and build social connections. However, the experiences of students with significant disabilities at recess have not been well studied. Dr. Matthew Brock will discuss recent research using observations of social and play behavior at recess for elementary students with significant disabilities. His research team also interviewed students to understand social networks. These data were then compared to data of typically developing peers. Dr. Brock will share the findings on differences between students with and without significant disabilities as well as group variability.
Developmental brain imaging of human cognition Webinar
Join us for the November Crane Research Forum with Dr. Zeynep Saygin, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at The Ohio State University.
How does uniquely human cognition emerge in the brain? The developmental cognitive neuroscience laboratory at OSU uses noninvasive brain imaging (MRI) to study newborns, infants, and young children before and as they start school. Dr. Zeynep Saygin will discuss recent studies on how individual variability in language, executive function, and reading emerges in the brain. She will also discuss clinical and educational applications, including how early brain data can be used to make individualized predictions about how a child will develop, and ways that this research can inform preventative and intervention research and vice-versa.
Dr. Saygin’s research looks at how specific brain areas become responsible for particular cognitive functions, and how it changes with traumatic injury. Her research has shown that neuroanatomical scans alone can predict a child’s brain function and outcomes including later reading development and dyslexia. Her goal is to offer powerful new strategies to understand, diagnose, and predict treatment outcomes for neurological disorders.
*Please note that if you require any accommodations such as live captioning or interpretation to fully participate in this event, please contact Cathy Kupsky (kupsky.3@osu.edu). Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Fathers matter: The importance of father involvement on child development in early childhood Webinar
Join us for the October Crane Research Forum with Dr. Susan Yoon, Crane faculty affiliate and associate professor in the College of Social Work at The Ohio State University.
Fathers can make unique and important contributions to their children’s well-being and positive development. Through a recent project funded by the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, Dr. Susan Yoon will present findings on child and family resilience among families living in households with low income. Specifically, she will discuss distinct patterns of father involvement and their roles in promoting social, behavioral, and cognitive development in their children during early childhood.
Dr. Yoon’s work focuses on promoting resilience and well-being in children who have experienced childhood trauma, including child maltreatment. She also wants to identify what promotes or hinders the development of resiliency following child maltreatment. Dr. Yoon has been recognized for her outstanding contributions to research in the field of child maltreatment from the American Psychological Association.
*Please note that if you require any accommodations such as live captioning or interpretation to fully participate in this event, please contact Cathy Kupsky (kupsky.3@osu.edu). Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Moving from efficacy to effectiveness: Understanding the impacts and implementation of a preschool emergent literacy intervention Webinar
Join us for the September Crane Research Forum with Dr. Shayne Piasta, Crane faculty associate and professor of literacies, literatures, and language arts in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University
The Nemours BrightStart! program is a widely available emergent literacy intervention. Dr. Piasta will share findings from a recent Crane Center study in which the intervention was trialed by teachers and community aides in authentic preschool settings. These findings highlight the importance of studying interventions when implemented in real-world conditions and provide insight into supporting preschoolers identified as at-risk for later literacy difficulties.
Dr. Piasta’s expertise is in early literacy development. She wants to better understand how teachers, classrooms, and other factors impact children’s literacy gains. Her research emphasizes using rigorous methods to identify and validate educational programs and practices, including specific curricula and professional development. Among many honors, Dr. Piasta received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
*Please note that this webinar will not be recorded.
*If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to fully participate in this event, please contact Cathy Kupsky (kupsky.3@osu.edu). Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
2023 Symposium on Children- Getting Ready to Read
The first phase of reading development occurs between 0 and 5 years of age, when young children are developing their skills as emergent readers and writers. During this phase, children are developing fundamental understandings of the symbol systems used to read and write, including letters and words. Children will draw upon these understandings in the primary grades, when children are formally taught to read. The Crane Center’s 10th Symposium on Children is designed to enhance fundamental understanding of reading and writing development during early childhood for practitioners, administrators, researchers, and policymakers to support young children as they get ready to read!
This year’s Symposium on Children will feature Dr. Sonia Cabell, associate professor at Florida State University and research faculty at the Florida Center for Reading Research, and a recognized expert on early language and literacy development. Dr. Cabell will discuss the science of early childhood reading and writing development and ways to support skill development among young children as they get ready to read.
Following the keynote, attendees can choose to attend a breakout session before coming back together for brief flash talks will feature innovative early literacy work from around the state with implications for both early literacy policy and practice. We look forward to welcoming you back in-person for this very special 10th anniversary of the Symposium on Children. This event is free and open to all, but registration is required.
For information on the Schoenbaum Family Center (SFC) and Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy (CCEC): https://earlychildhood.ehe.osu.edu/
Crane Research Forums Spring 2022: Executive Functions and Academic Outcomes (Virtual)
When: Wednesday, March 2 from Noon to 1 p.m.
Where: Online via Zoom
Each semester, the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy features research on emerging or key topics affecting children. The Spring 2022 line-up seeks to further our understanding on how to improve academic outcomes for all children as well as how the pandemic is impacting families of young children. These virtual events are free and open to all, but registration is required.
Executive functions are one of the most investigated variables in both cognitive science and education given its high correlation with numerous academic outcomes. Given its moderate relationship with reading and mathematics, some efforts have ensued to train executive functions in hopes that these trainings would translate to improved skills in domain specific areas, like reading and mathematics. Hear Dr. Dana Miller-Cotto present on prior and current work demonstrating the relations between reading and executive functions as well as mathematics and executive functions in children from kindergarten to third grade. During this forum, she will also theorize why these relations may exist for all children with and without learning difficulties and provide insights on what findings from executive function trainings may tell us about these skills.
Crane Research Forums Spring 2022: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Student Learning in Ohio (Virtual)
When: Wednesday, Feb. 2 from Noon to 1 p.m.
Where: Online via Zoom
Each semester, the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy features research on emerging or key topics affecting children. The Spring 2022 line-up seeks to further our understanding on how to improve academic outcomes for all children as well as how the pandemic is impacting families of young children. These virtual events are free and open to all, but registration is required.
Drs. Vladimir Kogan and Stéphane Lavertu conducted detailed analyses of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected student learning using data from Ohio’s state tests in the spring of 2021. Hear an overview of COVID-related learning disruptions for different student subgroups, district types, and modes of learning, as well as discuss new evidence on the impacts of online and hybrid learning on student learning gains in third-grade English and language arts.