Contents

Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, International economic integration, Economic geography

From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts : A science-based approach to building a more promising future for young children and families

Half a century of program evaluation research has demonstrated repeatedly that effective early childhood services can improve life outcomes for children facing adversity, produce important benefits for society, and generate positive returns on investments. Policymakers and practitioners often invoke this evidence base to build support for existing programs, but the average magnitude of intervention effects has not increased substantially in 50 years, while the challenges most current programs were originally designed to address have become even more complex. During this same period, scientific understanding of the early origins of lifelong health and development has been advancing rapidly. These discoveries offer a compelling opportunity to generate creative, new approaches to problems that are not being resolved by existing services. The time has now come to raise the bar and leverage the frontiers of 21st-century science to pursue a bolder vision. While proposed solutions to these social and economic challenges fuel hotly contested partisan debates, knowledge about the foundations of healthy development is politically neutral and clear—whatever the source of the adversity, experiencing too much of it early in life without adequate support from adult caregivers (both inside and outside the home) is detrimental to child well-being. Although the full consequences of family structure, labor market transformations, K-16 education reform, and the cumulative toll of stress caused by discrimination and other social disadvantages all require serious attention, a deeper analysis of these issues is beyond the scope of this report. Instead, the document presents a research and development (R&D) approach that transcends partisan disagreement because it is built on a rigorously peer-reviewed, sciencebased understanding of how the foundations of learning, behavior, and health are built or weakened over time. Advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and epigenetics offer an unprecedented opportunity to stimulate new responses to these complex social, economic, and political challenges by explaining why young children facing adversity are more likely to have disrupted developmental trajectories. Neuroscience is also producing extensive evidence suggesting that the later we wait to support families with children who are at greatest risk, the more difficult (and likely more costly) it will be to achieve positive outcomes, particularly for those who experience the biological disruptions of toxic stress during the earliest years. More specifically, at a time when the discourse around early childhood investments is dominated by debates over preschool for 4-yearolds, the biological sciences cry out for attending to a missing niche in the field—new strategies in the prenatal-to-three period for families facing adversity

La eficacia de los programas para la infancia temprana

Con la creación e implementación de programas y políticas efectivas para la infancia temprana, la sociedad puede asegurarles a los niños cimientos sólidos para un futuro productivo. Cuatro décadas de investigación en evaluaciones han identificado programas innovadores que pueden mejorar una amplia gama de resultados con impactos que se prolongan hasta la edad adulta. Las intervenciones efectivas se fundamentan en la neurociencia y en la investigación sobre el desarrollo infantil y se guían por la evidencia sobre qué funciona y para qué propósito. Si se presta especial atención a su calidad y mejoramiento continuo, estos programas pueden ser costoefectivos y producir resultados positivos para los niños

The Science of Early Childhood Development : Closing the Gap Between What We Know and What We Do

The future of any society depends on its ability to foster the health and well-being of the next generation. Stated simply, today’s children will become tomorrow’s citizens, workers, and parents. When we invest wisely in children and families, the next generation will pay that back through a lifetime of productivity and responsible citizenship. When we fail to provide children with what they need to build a strong foundation for healthy and productive lives, we put our future prosperity and security at risk. Two recent developments have stimulated growing public discussion about the right balance between individual and shared responsibility for that strong foundation. The first is the explosion of research in neurobiology that clarifies the extent to which the interaction between genetics and early experience literally shapes brain architecture. The second is the increasingly recognized need for a highly skilled workforce and healthy adult population to confront the growing challenges of global economic competition and the rising costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the aging baby boomers. In an effort to identify those aspects of development that are accepted broadly by the scientific community, the National Scientific Council, based at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, brought together several of the nation’s leading neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, pediatricians, and economists. This document presents their critical review of the existing literatures in their fields and a consensus about what we now know about development in the early childhood years. The objective of the Council is to move beyond the public’s fascination with “the latest study” and focus on the cumulative knowledge of decades of research that has been subjected to rigorous and continuous peer review. The goal of this document is to help the public and its policy makers understand the core principles of that body of work that are now sufficiently accepted across the scientific community to warrant public action. It is our hope and belief that better public understanding of the rapidly growing science of early childhood and early brain development can provide a powerful impetus for the design and implementation of policies and programs that could make a significant difference in the lives of all children. Without that understanding, investments that could generate significant returns for all of society stand the risk of being rejected or undermined. Thus, there is a compelling need for scientists to share with the public and its representatives an objective basis for choosing wisely among competing demands on limited resources. This paper is designed to provide a framework within which this complex challenge can be addressed most effectively. Its goal is to promote an understanding of the basic science of early childhood development, including its underlying neurobiology, to inform both public and private sector investment in young children and their families. To this end, the paper presents a set of core developmental concepts that have emerged from decades of rigorous research in neurobiology, developmental psychology, and the economics of human capital formation, and considers their implications for a range of issues in policy and practice

Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships

Healthy development depends on the quality and reliability of a young child’s relationships with the important people in his or her life, both within and outside the family. Even the development of a child’s brain architecture depends on the establishment of these relationships. Growth-promoting relationships are based on the child’s continuous give-and-take (“serve and return” interaction) with a human partner who provides what nothing else in the world can offer – experiences that are individualized to the child’s unique personality style; that build on his or her own interests, capabilities, and initiative; that shape the child’s self-awareness; and that stimulate the growth of his or her heart and mind. Young children experience their world as an environment of relationships, and these relationships affect virtually all aspects of their development – intellectual, social, emotional, physical, behavioral, and moral. The quality and stability of a child’s human relationships in the early years lay the foundation for a wide range of later developmental outcomes that really matter – self-confidence and sound mental health, motivation to learn, achievement in school and later in life, the ability to control aggressive impulses and resolve conflicts in nonviolent ways, knowing the difference between right and wrong, having the capacity to develop and sustain casual friendships and intimate relationships, and ultimately to be a successful parent oneself. Stated simply, relationships are the “active ingredients” of the environment’s influence on healthy human development. They incorporate the qualities that best promote competence and well-being – individualized responsiveness, mutual action-and-interaction, and an emotional connection to another human being, be it a parent, peer, grandparent, aunt, uncle, neighbor, teacher, coach, or any other person who has an important impact on the child’s early development. Relationships engage children in the human community in ways that help them define who they are, what they can become, and how and why they are important to other people

Professorial roles: a study of the professorial populations within nursing and midwifery, social work and allied health professions

The professorial populations in nursing/midwifery, social work and allied health are relatively new in academia compared to longer established professions such as medicine and dentistry. Less is known about the roles, career pathways, characteristics and career aspirations of the professoriate within these emerging professions. A survey was undertaken from sample populations in each of the three professorial groups in order to obtain qualitative and quantitative data on professorial roles and activities, career pathway information and support mechanisms for professorial positions. This paper discusses the findings of the survey which relate specifically to professorial roles and activities and whether the identified roles reflect the professorial activities proposed by the National Conference of University Professors (NCUP) Other aspects of this survey including career pathways, findings relating to gender and support mechanisms will form the basis of future papers. Result

Applying the Science of Child Development in Child Welfare System

In this paper, the authors show how the science of child development can be leveraged to strengthen one of these public systems: child welfare. The intended audience includes leaders in the public agencies responsible for child protection and related functions; in the private, non-profit agencies that provide many of the services in these systems; in the courts, which play a critical role in child welfare; in legislative committees that oversee child welfare and related services; and in the many other public systems, such as early childhood education, mental health, and juvenile justice, whose support is essential to success in child welfare. While this paper is focused on child welfare systems in the United States, the researchers believe it may be relevant to other countries with similar systems. Leaders in these areas have the unique opportunity to both drive changes in child welfare policy and practice and model the kinds of actions, from front-line workers and parents, needed to promote healthy child development. The authors hope the paper will be equally valuable to front-line practitioners and supervisors, who are the essential deliverers of effective child welfare services