Open lecture: "Setting the stage for preschool intervention: Children’s early learning in the context of poverty and inequality"

Welcome all to this open lecture with Professor Cybele Raver, New York University.

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About the lecture

Across both the United States and European Union, children comprise the age group at highest risk of experiencing income poverty; correspondingly, their likelihood of doing well in school is placed in significant jeopardy over time. Large disparities in early academic achievement between young children at the top and bottom quintiles of the income distribution are clear as early as school entry (by age 6).

This lecture briefly reviews a set of neurodevelopmental mechanisms that may explain the links by which poverty-related hardship exerts deleterious effects on young children's socioemotional and academic school readiness.

It will focus on theory and evidence pointing to the development of children's executive function and their self-regulation as two of those key candidate mediating mechanisms. The review of that evidence will highlight issues of measurement (for predictors such as family material hardship, mediators such as children's executive function, and outcomes such as children's school readiness) and opportunities for intervention in early childhood educational settings.

This will position the audience to understand the broader context of early childhood as a key time for public investment and to know more about the accumulating body of research suggesting that early childhood education (ECE) programs may offset the detrimental long-term effects of early exposure to poverty. 

Bio

Portrait of Professor Cybele Raver
Professor Cybele Raver. Photo: New York University

C. Cybele Raver is professor of applied psychology and serves as Deputy Provost for New York University. Her program of research includes examining the mechanisms that support children's self-regulation in the contexts of poverty and social policy. Raver and her research team currently conduct CSRP, a federally-funded RCT intervention and she regularly advises local and federal government agencies and foundations on promoting school readiness among low-income children. Raver has received several prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Psychological Association and the William T. Grant Foundation as well as support from the Spencer Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.

Further research visit events

The open lectures and PhD course are organized by associate professor Josh Lawrence and professor Veslemøy Rydland and hosted by The department of Education and the research group Text Comprehension: Development, Instruction and Multiple Texts (TextDIM).

The events are held as part of a research visit sponsored by Mobility grants North America in educational research (UTNAM), the Research Council of Norway.

 

Published Apr. 26, 2019 3:33 PM - Last modified July 6, 2023 9:59 AM