Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Early Childhood Research
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, PhD, is director and Karen E. Diamond, PhD, 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
- Professional Development in Early Reading
- Project Literacy: 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).