EARLY CHILDHOOD AND COMMUNITY

Families and Work Institute’s work includes a long commitment to focus on early learning and the implications of what we know about early learning for teacher and classroom quality and early childhood system design. We have also focused on the development of broad scale communications campaigns to share early learning research with a wide range of public and private sector audiences.

Read descriptions of our current projects and most recent research in early childhood and community issues:

To find additional reports on early childhood and community issues, please visit the Research & Publications section and Past Projects page of this Web site.

  • Mind in the Making Learning Modules for Early Childhood Teachers
    The Learning Modules are a 12-part facilitated learning process that bridges the gap between research and practice for teachers in center and home-based early childhood settings for children from birth through school-entry. They have been enthusiastically received by the early childhood field, and, to date, they have been field tested in seven states: Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Their design is based on the research-based premise that teaching practice improves when teachers are engaged in understanding their own and children’s learning; when they have a better grasp of the best knowledge in child development; and when they become more intentional about their own practice in promoting children’s learning by translating an understanding of research knowledge into their teaching practice. An evaluation of the Modules in Pennsylvania by the University of Pittsburgh reveals significant improvements in teachers’ interactions with children and in program quality.
  • Sparking Connections
    For the past four years, we have led Sparking Connections, a national consortium effort to study and facilitate learning about partnership strategies to support family, friend and neighbor caregivers who care for the majority of our nation’s young children while their parents work. These efforts build on many years of conducting studies of early education and care, including The Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care and The Florida Quality Improvement Study.
  • Committee for Economic Development (CED) Report
    CED released a ground-breaking paper in February 2006, The Benefits of High-Quality Early Childhood Education Programs: What Makes the Difference? by Ellen Galinsky, President of Families and Work Institute. This paper examines the factors associated with high-quality early education programs. Ms. Galinsky examined three well-known, high-quality early education programs—the High/Scope Perry Preschool project, the Carolina Abecedarian Project and Chicago’s Child-Parent Centers (CPC)—and for one of the first times, has examined what those programs did to have such lasting impact decades later, relying, in part, on interviews with the principal investigators of those programs. For more information, please visit: http://www.ced.org
  • Family Caregivers of the Elderly
    The purpose of this project is to investigate the impact of the work and the medical/caregiving environments on the family caregiver’s experiences at work, in medical settings, in their communities and at home. Current partners include IBM Corporation, JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, MIT Workplace Center, The Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College, The Charleston Area Medical Center, University of Pittsburgh Palliative Care Program, Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, The Center for Families at Purdue University, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Family Caregivers Association. This study is conducted in memory of Leora Osgood May.