The Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Early Childhood Research at Purdue University is supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. The program supports two IES Postdoctoral Fellows. Douglas R. Powell, Ph.D. is Director and Karen E. Diamond, Ph.D. is Co-Director.

The goal of the program is to prepare promising scholars to design and implement methodologically rigorous intervention research related to preschool curriculum and the quality of teaching practices. The training program builds on existing large-scale randomized field trials of curriculum-based and professional development interventions to prepare recent Ph.D. recipients to function effectively as independent investigators conducting original research.

The advanced research preparation gives attention to designing and conducting randomized field trials; outcome and program process data collection; and data analysis and reporting. Fellows base their work in one or more large-scale, federally-funded intervention studies with Professors Powell and Diamond. Five projects are available to support collaborative and independent research in early childhood education - three studies of professional development interventions and two studies of curriculum-based interventions.

Professional Development Interventions

The professional development intervention research includes two investigations of expert coaching models with Head Start teachers (Powell, PI; Diamond, Co-PI) supported by IES, and an evaluation of an early childhood professional development project supported by a U.S. Department of Education grant (Powell, PI; Diamond, Co-PI). The professional development interventions focus on early literacy and language development.

Classroom Links to Vocabulary and Phonological Sensitivity Skills

The goal of this project is to further develop and pilot test case-based hypermedia combined with individualized coaching with teachers to significantly improve pre-kindergarten teachers' use of effective instruction to promote children's vocabulary and phonological sensitivity skills. This project extends our current work on professional development in early literacy with a more intensive intervention method with teachers and concentrated focus on critical skills that contribute to early reading success. Both projects are supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences , U.S. Department of Education. In the current project, we will develop and refine the hypermedia and coaching strategies in Year 1, further refine intervention components in a trial implementation in Year 2, and collect pilot data on intervention effectiveness in Year 3. Teachers in Head Start programs collectively serving 11 Indiana counties that include urban, small city, and rural communities will participate in the implementation and pilot study of the intervention. For the pilot study, 48 teachers (classrooms) will be randomly assigned to semester, with spring semester intervention classrooms serving as control classrooms in the fall semester. Data on teaching practices and children's vocabulary and phonological sensitivity skills will be collected at three time points on control (semester prior to intervention, beginning, end of intervention) and intervention (pre- and post- intervention, follow-up) teachers and 4 year old children.

Professional Development in Early Reading

Funded as part of the IES Teacher Quality initiative, this study seeks to develop, implement, and evaluate with an experimental design the effectiveness of a comprehensive professional development program to improve the teaching of early reading in preschool classrooms for at-risk children. The project is examining the effectiveness of different types of expert coaching with teachers, coupled with web-based resources, for improving teaching. The research methods include a randomized trial in which teachers (n=84) are randomly assigned to (1) on-site coaching or (2) remote coaching conditions. Data on children's literacy and language competence and on teaching practices and classroom supports for early literacy were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Analyses of outcomes are in progress. Results of the first year of intervention implementation point to positive effects (SRCD Presentation).

Project Literacy: Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Program

This project examined effects of workshops and expert coaching in classrooms with a sample of teachers in 44 Head Start classrooms, using random assignment (within geographic region) to intervention group or wait-list comparison group conditions. Literacy and language outcome data were collected on a sample of 372 children, all of whom were new to Head Start at the onset of the intervention. Observations of teaching practices and classroom literacy environments were conducted prior to, at mid-point, and at the end of the professional development intervention. Two cohorts received the professional development intervention, which ended in spring 2004. The sample was drawn from programs serving rural and urban communities in Indiana. The intervention content focused on early reading, writing, and language skills. The project was funded in the first cohort of the U.S. Department of Education's Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Program.

Curriculum-based Interventions

The two curriculum-based intervention studies include a longitudinal investigation of effects of an emergent curriculum model known as the Project Approach (Powell, PI) as part of the IES Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER) initiative, and a multi-site investigation of the effectiveness of an intervention known as Children's School Success, designed to promote school readiness for preschool children who are at-risk, supported by a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant (Diamond, Co-PI).

PCER Project Approach Study

The Project Approach study is one of 12 projects in the PCER initiative, designed to determine whether and how different preschool curricula support school readiness. Each of the 12 projects in the PCER initiative is conducting rigorous curriculum evaluations using randomized trials in early childhood programs serving 4-year-old children. The Project Approach curriculum model focuses on teaching and learning around an in-depth investigation of a topic of keen interest to children (Helm & Katz, 2001). Children and teachers engage in research deliberately focused on finding answers to questions posed by children. The Purdue study is a collaborative effort with the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. The primary goal of the Purdue-Wisconsin study is to determine whether children involved as 4-year-olds in preschool classrooms implementing the Project Approach have greater developmental gains than children enrolled in control classrooms implementing a teacher-developed curriculum. Developmental gains are being assessed at the end of preschool, kindergarten, and first grade.

Children's School Success

The Children's School Success (CSS) Project is a collaborative effort between researchers at Purdue University, Indiana University, University of Maryland, University of Kansas, and San Francisco State University. Karen Diamond at Purdue University is Co-Investigator and Samuel Odom (Indiana University) is Principal Investigator. The aim of the CSS project is to examine immediate and long-term effects of a curriculum, called Children's School Success, designed to prepare 4-year-old children at risk for school failure to be successful in preschool and the early elementary grades (K-2). It is designed to support children's development of language, literacy and reasoning skills and social-emotional competence. The project employs a randomized cluster design in which teachers/classrooms at each site are randomly assigned to participate as a program classroom (in which the curriculum is implemented) or a control classroom. The study begins in preschool classes, with follow-up assessments occurring in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classes for most of the children. The Purdue portion of the study includes children enrolled in Head Start classrooms in Indiana.

For further information please contact Douglas Powell, Ph.D. at powelld@purdue.edu