Early Learning Network Introduction

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Families and Schools Author

12/20/2018 Added

4 Plays

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The Early Learning Network seeks to advance the understanding of policies and practices that narrow the achievement gap and maintain early learning success as children transition from preschool to elementary school and beyond. earlylearningnetwork.unl.edu

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[00:00:01.133](gentle music)
[00:00:44.900]The primary objective of the early learning
[00:00:46.880]network is to advance the field's knowledge
[00:00:49.270]and understanding of early learning,
[00:00:51.950]development and achievement for children in preschool
[00:00:54.670]and the early elementary grades.
[00:00:56.500]And we are endeavoring to do that by supporting
[00:00:59.160]a group of researchers who are going to conduct
[00:01:02.170]a set of studies to identify malleable factors that
[00:01:04.920]are associated with children's early learning
[00:01:07.460]and school achievement.
[00:01:08.660]So when we talk about malleable factors we're talking about
[00:01:11.350]things in the environment that either the policy
[00:01:14.290]and systems level, the classroom level,
[00:01:16.660]or the student or child level that are changeable.
[00:01:19.540]We can intervene to improve the outcomes for children.
[00:01:22.912]Five research teams across the country are collectively
[00:01:27.180]identifying practices and policies that make a difference
[00:01:30.710]for early children's learning.
[00:01:32.100]These five areas of the country are Nebraska,
[00:01:35.030]Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Boston.
[00:01:38.860]There's also a sixth team in California who's responsible
[00:01:43.320]for creating an assessment tool that we can use to go
[00:01:47.180]into classrooms and hone in on the specific practices
[00:01:50.690]that make a difference for children's learning.
[00:01:53.152]Each research team will conduct a descriptive study
[00:01:56.800]of system level policies and practices that are
[00:01:59.410]associated with early learning.
[00:02:01.020]They will also conduct a classroom observation study
[00:02:03.680]to look at teacher practices and other malleable classroom
[00:02:07.430]level factors and they will also conduct a longitudinal
[00:02:10.860]study to follow children over time to really look at
[00:02:13.560]what are the factors supporting their early learning
[00:02:16.020]and achievement as they transition from preschool
[00:02:18.400]to elementary school.
[00:02:19.670]These are complicated questions no single person's
[00:02:23.200]gonna know all the answers.
[00:02:24.950]And you need to be able to do this kind of work
[00:02:27.930]in a collaborative environment.
[00:02:30.370]I think this has a real potential to help pull together
[00:02:33.552]a comprehensive and detailed view of kids' experiences
[00:02:38.180]in these early grades.
[00:02:39.291]By combining our data sets together we're able to
[00:02:42.550]answer more complex questions because we have much
[00:02:44.710]more variable classrooms.
[00:02:46.750]If I pull classrooms only in the state of Ohio
[00:02:49.030]then all of my classrooms will have that
[00:02:51.540]same common denominator but we have very different
[00:02:54.091]classroom structures, classroom ecologies,
[00:02:56.331]classroom policies that are happening in Nebraska
[00:03:00.900]compared to in Boston compared to in Ohio
[00:03:03.470]so I think that putting all of that together is really
[00:03:06.110]where we can leverage the most out of this project.
[00:03:09.254]One of the goals of the Early Learning Network is to
[00:03:13.531]make the data that each of the study teams are collecting
[00:03:16.934]publicly available so that researchers can look at it in
[00:03:20.450]a variety of different ways,
[00:03:22.450]look at kind of correlations or associations.
[00:03:26.740]The culmination of data that we will be having across
[00:03:30.570]all the studies is like no other data set that
[00:03:33.590]will be available.
[00:03:34.710]The Early Learning Network will provide another generation
[00:03:40.490]of big data sets that can inform these decisions that
[00:03:46.520]too often have been made based on relatively small,
[00:03:50.220]unrepresentative studies.
[00:03:51.820]We will have enough data to really look at very
[00:03:54.571]important policy and practice questions.
[00:03:58.032]It's the synergy that happens when you put really good
[00:04:04.580]researchers together, you get more than the sum of the parts
[00:04:08.432]and that's the value of the network.
[00:04:11.010]One researcher, one center, isn't going to be as innovative
[00:04:16.967]as a network.
[00:04:19.030]So the ability that we will have as researches to not only
[00:04:23.130]collectively work towards some of the same goals
[00:04:26.390]around education and opportunity for children,
[00:04:29.990]but also impacting practice and policy at a local,
[00:04:34.100]regional, and national level is unparalleled.
[00:04:36.331](gentle music)

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Early Learning Network Introduction

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