Early Childhood Education

The Literacy, Language, and Learning Initiative (L3) helps Rwanda’s Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) develop and implement new national standards for literacy (in English and Kinyarwanda) and numeracy, aiming to improve students’ reading and mathematics skills in grades 1 to 4, as well as their English language proficiency. In partnership with MINEDUC, L3 works with preservice and inservice facilitators to introduce proven reading and mathematics teaching strategies and with community volunteers to support struggling learners.

The Southern Sudan Interactive Radio Instruction (SSIRI) project is a program of the Southern Sudan Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST). Four SSIRI activities provide learning opportunities for children, adults, and teachers in South Sudan.

• THE LEARNING VILLAGE: IRI programs based on the Southern Sudanese Primary School Syllabus.

EDC is analyzing data from Ohio’s child care subsidy and early education databases in order to address questions about the nature and impact of child care, pre-K, and Head Start collaboration. Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), pre-K, and Head Start all serve low-income children under the age of 5, but each of these programs is guided by different goals, standards, delivery models and operational hours, resulting in unique strengths as well as differences in quality.

This project addresses a critical need to develop quality early childhood mathematics curriculum, particularly for low-income students.

The National Center on Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness will provide research-based strategies for working with children who speak languages other than English in classrooms and other learning environments. The center is run in partnership with Bank Street College of Education, and is one of four technical assistance centers recently launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Head Start.

EDC is helping Paraguay’s Ministry of Education and Culture to promote interest in math among young children and support their instructors to teach early numeracy more effectively. The Paraguay Early Childhood IRI Math Program nurtures positive attitudes toward mathematics and develops a solid foundation in basic math among children four to six years old.

This project tests the efficacy of the Foundations of Science Literacy (FSL), a professional development program that was developed for use with Head Start teachers. By focusing on the Head Start community, FSL directly addresses the achievement gap in early science education by providing a framework for teachers to learn and implement preschool science instructional practices in classrooms serving children from low-income backgrounds.

EDC is examining the efficacy of two approaches to implementing its empirically-based early literacy professional development. Over four years, EDC will implement and research two credit-bearing, content-rich, professional development programs in West Virginia. While Literacy Environment Enrichment Program (LEEP) uses a traditional face-to-face mode of delivery, Technology-Enhanced Literacy Environment Enrichment Program (T-LEEP) is delivered through interactive television, Web-based instruction, and face-to-face instruction.

EDC is collaborating with Head Start partners to design and evaluate a credit-bearing professional development program, Foundations of Science Literacy. Foundations will help teachers master science content and inquiry-based methods through a combination of mentoring and face-to-face instruction. An emphasis will be placed on developing effective strategies for English language learners and low-income children who demonstrate lower levels of science proficiency than their peers.