February 25, 2010: Emily Ozer

Studying the Effects of Youth-Led Participatory Research on Students and Schools: Preliminary Results and Mixed Methods Approaches

Youth-led participatory research is a form of "action research" (Lewin, 1947) that is increasingly being implemented in the youth development, education, public health and community psychology fields. In this approach, students are trained to identify major concerns in their schools and communities, conduct research to understand the nature of the problems, and take leadership in influencing policies and decisions to enhance the conditions in which they and their peers live. While promising, it has been subjected to relatively little systematic study and evaluation regarding its potential impact on young people's development and on their schools as settings that support positive youth development. In this talk, I will present preliminary process and outcome findings from a longitudinal experimental evaluation of a youth-led participatory research program conducted in several SF public high schools for the past 4 years. This project entails the integration of extensive observational and interview data on the quality of implementation of the school-based intervention with self-report and district data regarding youth outcomes. My presentation will highlight the strategies used and challenges encountered in this multi-method study, and invite feedback from participants regarding the analytic decisions involved in the quantitative and qualitative components of this research.

Feburary 11, 2010: Anne Fernald

Early experience with language really matters: Links between maternal talk, processing efficiency, and vocabulary growth among diverse children.


Research on the early development of cognition and language has focused primarily on infants from middle-class families, excluding less advantaged children. But we know that SES differences are strongly associated with the quantity and quality of early cognitive stimulation available to infants. Longitudinal research on the development of fluency in language reveals relations between processing speed in infancy and longterm outcomes for both high-SES English-learning children and low-SES Spanish-learning children. But by 18 months, we find that low-SES children are already substantially slower in processing speed as well as vocabulary growth. It turns out that differences in early experience with language contribute to variability observed in children's efficiency in real-time processing. Within low-SES families, those children whose mothers talked with them more learned vocabulary more quickly; they also made more rapid gains in processing speed. By examining variability both within and between groups of children who differ in early experience with language, we gain insight into common developmental trajectories of lexical growth in relation to greater processing efficiency, and discover environmental factors that enable some children to progress more rapidly than others.

January 28, 2010: Anne Cunningham

Teacher Study Groups: Professional Development in Early Literacy for Preschool Teachers


Given the significance of establishing strong foundations in early
literacy in preschool children, there is a need for effective sustainable
professional development to assist preschool teachers in providing early
literacy support in their classrooms. The goal of our project, a three
year Institute of Education Sciences funded study, Teacher Quality: The
Role of Teacher Study Groups as a Model of Professional Development in
Early Literacy for Preschool Teachers, is to investigate the factors that
will contribute to effective professional development for preschool
teachers in language and literacy. In this presentation, we will describe
our model of PD employing Teacher Study Groups (TSG) .
The TSG professional development model is guided by an emphasis on content focus, coherence, duration/intensity and collective participation. The TSG will provide opportunities for teachers to have interactive, reflective, and context-sensitive conversations to foster their knowledge, beliefs, and practices in ways aligned with research-based early literacy development and instruction. This presentation will frame the study in historical and current research in the field of early literacy as well as provide an in-depth look into the inner workings of the TSG.

Spring 2010 Brown Bag Series

The speaker series for the Brown Bag Meetings this Spring are as follows:

Jan. 28 Anne Cunningham
February 11 Anne Fernald
February 25 Emily Ozer
March 11 Susan Holloway
April 1 Susan Stone
April 15 Margaret Bridges
April 29 Laura Sterponi

The meetings are held at 12:30-2:00p.m. in Room 1111 Tolman Hall.

Please check back for possible changes to the schedule and more information about each of the talks.

December 3, 2009: Alison Gopnik

The statistical social learner: Using causal inference to learn about action sequences and personality traits.

Recent work shows that children can infer causal structure from statistical data. We will describe two different ways that this kind of statistical causal learning can help children learn about other people. In the first series of studies, we explore how children learn about how to segment and interpret goal-directed action sequences, and how this shapes their imitation and observational learning.

In the second series of studies we showed 4 and 6 year old children different patterns of covariation between actions and either individual people or situations. 4-year-olds inferred that the actions were caused by an enduring trait of the person or by the external situation depending on covariance. 6-year-olds were also sensitive to covariation evidence but they had developed a consistent prior bias towards person explanations.

These findings suggest that statistically based causal inference may be responsible for the development of social knowledge. In combination, these studies show that children use statistical causal learning to make important inferences about other people – inferences that shape their social experience.

Neil Gilbert, November 19

Neil Gilbert, Professor of Social Welfare and Co-Director of the Center for Child and Youth Policy will present: "A Mother's Work: Capitalism, Feminism and the Welfare State"

In 2002 nearly one in five women in their early forties were childless inthe U.S. , which was close to double the proportion of childless women in1976. In addition to having fewer children mother's were increasinglyoutsourcing household production and the daily care of their preschoolers toother people. Why had so many women chosen this course, particularly whenthere is a fair amount of evidence that shows these outcomes do not coincidewith their ideals of family life? Analyzing the choices women are making inthe modern-day struggle to combine work and family life, A Mother's Workseeks to understand the social dynamics governing these choices, to clarifywhose interests are being served in the process, and to explore alternativesocial policies that address efforts to harmonize work and family life.

November 5-Bob Levenson

Professor Bob Levenson, Department of Psychology, will present: See me, feel me, heal me: Empathy in "normal" adult development and dementia, at our next Brown Bag Meeting.