FPG 2022 Impact Report

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We make an impact through our areas of work by using the information gleaned from our research to enhance policy and improve practice; we are committed to sharing the information we generate with the public and to supporting professionals’ understanding and use of evidence-based practices. Help us make an impact by supporting one of these funds:

• The Barbara Davis Goldman Award Fund

• Equity Research Action Coalition

FPG Child Development Institute Distinguished Speaker Series

FPG Child Development Institute Inclusion Fund

The James J. Gallagher Dissertation Award Fund

• The Joanne Erwich Roberts Memorial Fund

• The Marvin H. McKinney Scholars Program

• National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice

Learn more at: https://fpg.unc.edu/about-fpg/support-us

areas of work Autism & Developmental Disabilities Child Health and Development Child Welfare Early Care and Education & Pre-K Education Early Intervention & Special Education Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion K–12 Education Prevention Science
FPG

Letter from the Director

Dear supporters, donors, and friends,

In previous impact reports, I’ve spoken about our ability to be innovative and agile, building upon the Institute’s legacy as one of the nation’s foremost multidisciplinary centers devoted to the study of child development. And how, as outlined in our strategic plan, we’ve worked with intention around our top three priorities—partnership, emphasis, and culture. As I reflect on the past year and look ahead to the next, I am incredibly grateful for—and proud of—the sustained dedication and ingenuity of everyone here as we continue to build on FPG’s legacy with these priorities guiding our way forward.

In this year’s report you’ll see milestones, accolades, and awards. You’ll learn about how we are responding to the needs of practitioners, parents, and families around the globe through a variety of digital products. And you’ll find many examples of how we are working along the research-practice-policy continuum to promote positive developmental and educational outcomes for children of all backgrounds and all abilities. Among the milestones are the golden anniversary of technical assistance at FPG and the fact that more than 250,000 people now rely on AFIRM resources for evidenced-based practices that help learners with autism.

Teams around the Institute produced video series, new podcasts, video demonstrations, and even a new app. It was important to everyone creating these resources to use new media to meet practitioners, parents, and children where they are. For example, the My STEM Adventure app seeks to help young children learn about science, technology, engineering, and math by exploring the world around them together with the adults in their lives.

Ongoing work within FPG’s FLP-ECHO project seeks to understand the effects of early environmental influences on child development— including the impact of exposure to lead and cotinine, a biomarker for nicotine, on children’s cognitive development, executive functioning, school success, and academic readiness. And new research conducted by an FPG scientist working with colleagues at UNC, Brown, Ben-Gurion, and Boston universities supports the need to ensure quality sleep for children from the first months of life, which can support healthy brain development, socialemotional growth, and even academic success.

Our interdisciplinary research, evaluation, implementation, technical assistance, and outreach are all aimed at a shared goal— advancing knowledge to transform children’s lives. All children’s lives. To do this effectively, we continue to incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion intentionally and thoughtfully throughout our work.

Seeing every child and meeting every child’s needs guides the work we do—today and tomorrow.

My warmest regards,

Aysenil Belger, PhD

Director, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute Professor, Department of Psychiatry

Timely toolkit for autistic individuals impacted by war

It goes without saying that the war in Ukraine is devastating to the people of the country, including children and youth with autism and their families. Recognizing this, a psychologist with close ties to Ukraine along with an autistic self-advocate, who is also a parent of an autistic child in that country, reached out to Ann Sam, PhD, an advanced research scientist at FPG. The request was to create resources for families and professionals dealing with the effects of war and displacement, which have understandably resulted in challenges for autistic children.

Sam collaborated with colleagues from the School of Education and the Department of Allied Health Sciences at UNC to address this need. This team of researchers, staff, and students developed a new “Timely Toolkit,” a compilation of simple-touse social narratives, visual supports, and coping strategies—accessible online to families and professionals—to provide support during times of uncertainty, conflict, and upheaval. The resources for war and displacement comprise the second major Timely Toolkit, the first having been created to provide COVID resources to support autistic individuals and families.

FPG Faculty Fellow Jessica Steinbrenner, PhD, notes that people in Ukraine—and any place where there is war and displacement—are living in uncertainty and fear, with their day-today lives markedly changed and their routines different and potentially unpredictable. “Many autistic children and adults struggle with change and benefit from routine,” she says. “The resources we developed are an effort to provide some supports, guided by evidence-based practices, to address the fact that change is inevitable and routine may not be possible in the same ways it once was.”

The developed resources are not specific to Ukraine, with the hope that they can be of service throughout the world. Yet the team wanted the resources and materials to be relevant to individuals experiencing war and displacement.

“After the resources were developed and before posting, they were reviewed by the team in Ukraine,” says Sam. “We want to make sure the needs of families and autistic children are centered and the resources can hopefully be helpful to those impacted.”

AFIRM reaches 250k+ users around the world!

The Autism Focused Intervention Resources and Modules (AFIRM) project has reached another incredible milestone—

more than 250,000 people now rely on AFIRM for evidence-based practices that can help learners with autism. 2 Advancing knowledge to transform children’s lives

Preparing students for success

A grant awarded to the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) at FPG will help ensure students are receiving high-quality mathematics education in middle school—crucial years that can impact students’ chances at successful high school graduation and postsecondary career success.

Although more middle schools are adopting high-quality math curriculum, research shows the systems that support instruction are often lacking or misaligned, especially for underrepresented and marginalized students. NIRN will help address this issue as a Learning Partner for the Effective Implementation Cohort, or EIC, thanks to funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Overall, the foundation will invest approximately $47 million into the cohort of curriculum and professional learning providers and their partnering Local Education Agencies. NIRN has received an almost $6.2 million award.

The EIC is an investment within the Gates Foundation’s K–12 Math Delivery body of work, specifically focusing on middle years mathematics. The work is centered on increasing district, school, and teacher capacity to implement a high-quality math curriculum with integrity to improve outcomes for priority student populations, which the foundation defines as students who are Black, Latina/Latino, English language learners, and/or those experiencing poverty.

The goal of the EIC is to generate nationally scalable insights to help districts better manage and monitor curriculum implementation through the development of practical tools to guide their work. A key part of this is also understanding how to determine when districts are ready to implement a curriculum, and what they need to do to get ready if they aren’t yet.

Within the scope of this project, Caryn Ward, PhD, and her Co-PIs, Ximena Franco-Jenkins, PhD, and Collin McColskey-Leary, PhD, are working toward two primary goals:

• To produce actionable outcomes for priority student populations

• To produce practical evidence and tools for the field to use in their work of pursuing equitable outcomes for children

Ward also noted the benefits for her team in doing this work. “This project provides an opportunity to do exactly the work NIRN hopes to be growing in its portfolio,” said Ward. “It’s a hybrid project where we’re not only supporting implementation best practices, but we’re also collecting and analyzing data to answer the question, ‘How much does implementation affect student learning, for who, and in what context.’”

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu

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Recognizing the underrepresentation in research studies of young children and families living in rural poverty, a group of scholars—including some at FPG—created the Family Life Project (FLP). This multidisciplinary longitudinal study used an epidemiologic sampling frame to recruit a representative sample of every baby born in one of six poor rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

During the recruitment period from fall 2003 to fall 2004, researchers engaged infants and their families at the time of the child’s birth. For the first phase of the study, team members followed the 1,292 children enrolled in the study from birth to 36 months of age. Subsequent phases followed enrolled children and families through the pre-K and school transition, the early school years, and into adolescence and young adulthood; the child participants have all turned 18 across the last 12 months.

A key element of this study was an oversampling of Black and poor participants who have traditionally been underrepresented in the literature. It provided important insights into the

development of young children growing up in rural poverty, family processes related to poverty, and the factors—including positive parenting— that mediate between risks and developmental domains in young children.

In 2016, FLP joined the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program to become the FLP-ECHO project. ECHO is an NIH-supported research program designed to enhance the health of children for generations to come. The goal of the ECHO Program—which includes 72 cohorts throughout the country—is to understand the effects of a broad range of early environmental influences on child health and development.

FLP was included in and funded by ECHO as an existing cohort with longitudinal data alongside new cohorts that enrolled pregnant women. It was a natural partner for ECHO since the project focused from the beginning on investigating associations between early-life stress and neurodevelopment in a wide range of areas including self-regulation, child language development, school achievement, risk for

FLP-ECHO: seeking to enhance the health of children for generations to come
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“Although there’s a lot of risk and adversity that happens in these families, there is also a lot of strong support from churches, neighborhoods, and family members who live close by. That social support became a theme of resiliency for many of these families.” – Margaret Swingler

psychopathology, and physical and mental health. Having tens of thousands of children and families in the FLP-ECHO data set enables researchers to examine big questions that cannot be answered in smaller studies. The FPG team is exploring a wide range of issues including the impact of exposure to lead and cotinine, a biomarker for nicotine, on children’s cognitive development, executive functioning, school success, and academic readiness. There is also a focus on examining both the home environment and early exposures as potential predictors for children’s obesity, and the impact of COVID-19 on families, among other pressing issues. And Nissa ToweGoodman, PhD—an investigator with FLPECHO who has been involved since FLP began in 2003—is leading a project looking at how the availability of nature in early development influences behavior problems and social emotional development.

While the current FLP-ECHO funding ends in 2023, the FPG team is hopeful that the project will receive further funding. With the children in the original FLP cohort turning 18 and transitioning to adulthood, FPG researchers are interested in following them and their future children. ToweGoodman says that given that the researchers know so much about their participants, the idea of an intergenerational study is exciting.

“Our sample population is unique since they were recruited at birth and are part of a historically under-studied population that makes up a large part of the US,” says FPG’s Margaret Swingler, PhD, who is the current UNC PI of the FLPECHO project. “We have done a really nice job of collecting data and using the data for informing research but also for informing policy and educating the public about children growing up in these rural and low resource areas.”

Minch and Aldridge receive NC TraCS Award

The Implementation Capacity for Triple P (ICTP) Projects at FPG provide implementation support to 10 regions in North Carolina scaling the Triple P— Positive Parenting Program—system of interventions. Each region is anchored by a Lead Implementing Agency (LIA) passionate about improving partnerships with families and learning from them about ways to improve awareness, access, and participation in Triple P. The Stakeholder Engagement Award from NC TraCS enabled FPG’s Devon Minch, PhD, Will Aldridge, PhD and colleagues on the ICTP project

team to partner with community Triple P implementation leaders and partners in one region to co-create an approach to learn about needs and preferences for parent support services directly from local families. The collaboration produced an approach that reached more than 100 families. The LIA is using the results to inform regional Triple P implementation efforts and is planning to expand the approach to learn from more families in their region. The ICTP project team learned important lessons about co-creation for this initiative and hope to replicate the process with other LIAs in the near future.

ECTA releases new briefing paper

The Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center released “Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health and early intervention (Part C): policies and practices for supporting the social and emotional development and mental health of infants and toddlers in the context of parent-child relationships.” This briefing paper explores infant and early childhood mental health policies and practices that state early intervention (Part C) programs may consider implementing to meet the social-emotional and mental health needs of infants and toddlers in the context of relationships with their parents and other caregivers. The full publication can be found online: https://go.unc.edu/ECTAbrief

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Parenting styles, sleep quality, and aggressive behavior in early childhood

The ways in which infants at six months of age are parented influences their sleep quality at 18 months which, in turn, is associated with aggressive behavior in early childhood. This finding was reported in, “Parenting and Maternal Reported Child Sleep Problems in Infancy Predict School-Age Aggression and Inattention,” an article published in February 2022 in Sleep Health. FPG Advanced Research Scientist Cathi Propper, PhD, conducted this research with colleagues at UNC, Brown University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Boston University.

The study is one of the first to examine the predictors and outcomes of sleep problems in early childhood. The researchers examined caregiving predictors of sleep problems and their behavioral and cognitive outcomes in early childhood. To accomplish this, they launched a longitudinal study of children, their mothers, and teachers.

The data showed that maternal reported sleep problems decreased in children from 18 months to seven years of age, and that harsh-intrusive parenting at six months predicted sleep problems at 18 months, which in turn predicted aggressive behaviors in kindergarten and second grade. While these findings will strengthen the work of researchers and practitioners, they’re most important for children and their caregivers.

“Sleep is important not just so that children and their parents aren’t cranky after bad nights of sleep,” says Propper. “There are long-term effects of children not getting enough sleep; it’s during sleep that infants’ and toddlers’ brains are really developing. Findings such as these should provide everyone—whether it’s healthcare providers, teachers, or parents—a better understanding of the long-term impact of young children not getting enough sleep.”

Although there has been a theoretical understanding of the importance of sleep to good health, there are few studies demonstrating this association. Studies such as this will inform intervention and prevention efforts to help families learn how to ensure quality sleep for their children from the first months of life to support healthy brain development, social-emotional growth, and academic success.

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 7

Celebrating 50 years of excellence in TA

Beginning with the groundbreaking work that Pascal ‘Pat’ Trohanis started in 1971, FPG has a long and rich history of providing technical assistance (TA) to support systems and services for young children with disabilities and their families.

To commemorate the golden anniversary of FPG’s celebrated TA program, TA leaders and other notables in the field of early childhood education gathered for three sessions entitled Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence in Technical Assistance. A keynote presentation and panel discussion were part of each session: Reflecting on the Wisdom of the Past; Informing our Work in the Present; and Inspiring the Field for the Future. “We are very proud that our keynote speakers are all individuals who have both lived experience as a person with a disability and professional experience working to make a difference in the field of supporting children with disabilities and their families,” said Christina Kasprzak, MA, director of the Trohanis TA Projects at FPG and co-director of FPG’s Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center.

Judith Heumann, keynote speaker for the inaugural session, knows firsthand the critical importance

of access and inclusivity for young children with disabilities. A lifelong civil rights advocate for people with disabilities and international leader in the disability community, Heumann emphasized the important role that parents, and parent organizations play in ensuring that children with disabilities are integrated into society and that legislation to benefit these children is developed and implemented. “Whether or not you have a child with a disability, it’s the parents’ responsibility to help instill within their child a future,” she said. “Parents are implanting visions of whether or not they see a child with a disability as one who is going to be able to take their rightful place in society.” She also noted the critical importance, both for the child and the family, of early intervention, regardless of the significance of the child’s disability.

Kasprzak sees TA as a critical tool to ensure that professionals and families are getting the information, support, and services that they need. “We have not only promoted family engagement through TA,” says Kasprzak, “but we also have parents as key partners.”

Thinking back to 1971 when TA began, there was no IDEA, no Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), nor Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. According to Kasprzak, when TA began, the focus was on supporting model demonstration projects and helping project staff design, implement, and evaluate models for serving children with disabilities and their families. For more than a decade, TA supported efforts to replicate effective

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models in other locations and through in-service training. “Our TA changed over time based on federal priorities and the needs and status of the field,” says Kasprzak. In the 1980s, TA began helping develop state systems—including creating statewide IFSP, building interagency partnerships, establishing state interagency coordinating councils—and ensuring that children and families had access to services.

When Kasprzak joined FPG in 1997, the field was beyond the early stage of setting up systems and was now focusing on monitoring and quality improvement. FPG’s TA paralleled that, says Kasprzak, helping states put systems in place to monitor and assure accountability and start to make linkages between state infrastructure, local delivery of services and outcomes for children and families.

“Now,” notes Kasprzak, “we’re really focused on state systems capacity building in areas like sustainable finance systems, effective accountability systems, personnel development, and using tools like our systems framework.” Looking at early childhood issues through an equity lens is also of critical importance to TA.

“Regardless of the specific activities that have changed from year to year or project to project, our TA has always had a focus on, ‘How can we

help ensure that children with disabilities have all the opportunities that other children have, and that they are successful in their homes, communities, and schools,’” says Kasprzak. “While we have evolved over the years to meet these everchanging needs and priorities, we have remained fixed on that goal of equitable opportunities and outcomes for young children with disabilities and their families.”

For the full story, including a deep dive into the other two sessions, visit the 2022 Impact Report website: go.unc.edu/2022-Impact

“We are very proud that our keynote speakers are all individuals who have both lived experience as a person with a disability and professional experience working to make a difference in the field of supporting children with disabilities and their families.”
Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 9
– Christina Kasprzak

Autism research, resources, and innovation

Supporting individuals with autism, as well as their caregivers and service providers, by increasing awareness and use of evidence-based interventions and resources designed to improve outcomes, is central to the work of several investigators, faculty fellows, and staff at FPG. In addition to the timely toolkit—mentioned earlier in this report—created for autistic individuals impacted by war, here we highlight a few other examples of our autism-focused work from the past year.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers led by FPG Faculty Fellow Kara Hume, PhD, found that a new comprehensive intervention for high school students with autism was more successful in helping them reach educational goals than services typically provided for autistic students.

The three-year efficacy study of the Center on Secondary Education for Students with Autism model—the largest study ever conducted of a comprehensive intervention for high school students with autism—involved 60 high schools in three states (North Carolina, Wisconsin and California), examining the outcomes of the 547 students with autism initially enrolled in the study and their families. Researchers used a cluster randomized control trial format to compare the outcomes of two sets of students with autism— those at 30 high schools using the CSESA model and those at 30 high schools using services typically provided for autistic students.

The CSESA model was developed by a team of researchers at seven universities, informed by autistic youth, their families, school personnel, and community partners, and was led by Hume and Sam Odom, PhD, former director and now a senior research scientist at

FPG. Supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, the team previously spent two years developing the model and training teams of high school educators to use it.

“The CSESA model has been getting some attention from researchers and practitioners in the field of autism, and now this is the first study that demonstrates that the model can help schools provide better supports for these students,” said Hume.

Autism intervention researchers often do not report the race and ethnicity of study participants. When data is reported, there is a lack of representation across historically minoritized racial and ethnic groups. These are key findings from a study led by FPG Faculty Fellow Jessica Steinbrenner, PhD

Underrepresenting participants from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups contributes to systemic inequities in autism diagnoses and outcomes. With the knowledge that racial inequity has existed in autism research and continues to be a problem, Steinbrenner and her colleagues sought to understand how disproportionate inclusion of historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups and data reporting might exacerbate longstanding inequities in the field.

An interdisciplinary team across multiple departments at UNC-Chapel Hill in partnership with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) and their families, and community organizations providing transition services for adolescents and adults will establish a community collaborative aimed at optimizing opportunities for employment for adults with ID/DD.

FPG Faculty Fellow Brianne Tomaszewski, PhD, will serve as the principal investigator for the 5-year project that will establish and maintain the North Carolina Community Employment Collaborative. The collaborative will work to identify current strengths and barriers of existing transition services, expand and strengthen transition services, and facilitate improved transition from school to postsecondary education and employment. The project is funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Community Living.

The lack of inclusion of diverse children is problematic since researchers do not know how interventions are meeting the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse populations, given that interventions have been assumed to be effective for all even though they have been developed and validated primarily with and for white children.

Steinbrenner intentionally included a diverse group of colleagues with whom to collaborate, noting that they contributed significantly in the framing of the research and the conclusions drawn from the data. The results from this study have implications for autism researchers and journals that publish autism research.

The researchers offered recommendations in three areas: journal submission requirements and author reporting practices; improving representation in autism studies; and addressing broader issues related to race and ethnicity in research.

“I think it’s an alarm bell for the research community to say we really need to step up and take a hard look at what we are doing since there are groups that are very underrepresented in the intervention research. Autism researchers must ensure that their research practices are promoting inclusion, equity, and representation,” says Steinbrenner.

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 11

Influencing the next generation of researchers

With its commitment to advancing science, FPG is dedicated to impacting and influencing the next generation of researchers through a variety of mentoring and learning opportunities.

During the spring 2022 semester, FPG Faculty Fellow Iheoma Iruka, PhD, mentored four undergraduate students enrolled in Policy 698: Senior Capstone in Public Policy. The students undertook a project to determine the impact, and effectiveness, of reparations on Black children and families. They utilized the 3Ps, Iruka’s equity policy framework, which examines policies that protect, promote, and preserve the health, wealth, and education of Black children and families to create conditions for communities of color to thrive. Their tasks included: drafting a literature review to evaluate existing studies of the efficacy of reparations as an anti-racist policy; researching, analyzing, and adding to existing data of national reparation proposals; and interviewing stakeholders in Durham and Asheville.

Their research examined the community impacts of systemic racism, components of reparations solutions, dearth of reparations initiatives, and barriers advancing reparations in Durham and Asheville. The project allowed students to think deeply about the research chain from project aims to research questions to methodology, in collaboration with a community partner. Being able to figure out how to involve their community partners throughout the whole process helped the students determine how to center the community partners’ needs and interests.

Iruka noted that one reason she returned to UNC was to engage with and mentor the next generation of researchers, especially those focused on culturally grounded and strengthsbased research. She says that this has been an

amazing opportunity that ensured the students’ introduction to research was community-centered and embedded in the needs of the community.

In May, undergraduate and graduate students embarked on two key experiential learning opportunities at FPG. The Implementation Division Summer Internship program welcomed its third cohort of interns, while the Institute welcomed it’s third cohort of Marvin H. McKinney Scholars. The Implementation Division Summer Internship program is a paid opportunity for masters’ and doctoral students designed to create a challenging and meaningful professional experience that exposes them to implementation practice and research across a variety of fields and practice settings. Each year, students join one of three workgroups within the implementation division— the Impact Center, the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN), and the Trohanis Technical Assistance Projects.

The Marvin H. McKinney Scholars Program in Research, Practice, and Policy was established to offer a hands-on learning experience in child development research to undergraduate students from North Carolina’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Reflecting FPG’s strategic plan’s values, which include promotion of diversity, inclusion, and equity, the program provides select students with a 10-week paid internship that offers the opportunity to participate in meaningful, project-based work in pursuit of their professional interests and in preparation for their careers.

And on the horizon, FPG’s Sandra Soliday Hong, PhD, and colleagues are developing a pre-K research to practice and policy training program for interdisciplinary doctoral and master’s students in education, developmental psychology, maternal and child health, and epidemiology.

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Even though spending time on the playground can be a great opportunity for children to develop a variety of foundational social and emotional skills, it is also a setting that is ripe for challenging behaviors such as hitting, pushing and arguing, and playing in an unsafe way. Responding to challenging behaviors can be difficult for many teachers, especially in unstructured settings. In “Outdoor Recess Matters! Preventing and Reducing Children’s Challenging Behaviors on the Playground,” researchers share strategies based on the Pyramid Model, such as ways to build positive relationships among young children on the playground and strategies for creating a supportive playground environment. Young Children, Summer 2022

FRONTIER launches with focus on neuro-prevention

With the launch of FRONTIER at FPG, founder and director Diana Fishbein, PhD, is furthering her mission of mitigating the impacts of adversity and promoting healthy development for children and adolescents. FRONTIER, which stands for “Fostering Research on NeuroPrevention via Infrastructure, Education and Relationships,” offers infrastructure for researchers to collaborate with intervention and implementation specialists to better understand and prevent conditions that lead to negative developmental trajectories.

Fishbein says that “neuro-prevention” is a new model that applies technologies and knowledge from neuroscience to shed light on why some individuals or subgroups

do not respond favorably to interventions currently available. Since FRONTIER is primarily interested in behavioral and mental health outcomes, affiliated researchers are committed to preventing young people from developing problems such as substance dependence and related disorders, violent behavior, academic failure, and mood disorders. The focus of their work is largely on children and adolescents who have experienced significant adversity, such as maltreatment, poverty, racism, inequities, violence, and/or substandard housing conditions. To this end, Fishbein and her colleagues want to identify best practices to promote a developmental trajectory that leads to health and well-being in adulthood, even in the face of adversity.

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 13

Equity, diversity, and inclusion matters at FPG

We generate knowledge, inform policies, and support practices to promote positive developmental and educational outcomes for children of all backgrounds and all abilities from the earliest years. We are committed to addressing the critical issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion and the ways educational inequality, barriers to inclusion, and systemic racism impact the lives of children. Here we share three examples of work that exemplifies this commitment.

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Identifying Gaps and Equity Challenges

The world has changed significantly in the more than 40 years since FPG researchers developed the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS), now in its third edition. To address these changes and ensure that the rating measures remain relevant and useful in a diverse world, FPG coprincipal investigators Noreen Yazejian, PhD, and Iheoma Iruka, PhD, launched a study, “ECERS-3: Identifying Gaps and Equity Challenges.”

ECERS-3 is a global early care and education quality measure for children aged three to five that examines quality from the child’s perspective, guides professional development support, and indicates where resources should be allocated. This project, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will explore the extent to which the ECERS-3 might contain biases related to definitions, examples, indicators, analyses, and data interpretations, or be less reliable and valid for particular populations. This information will form the basis of recommendations to improve the tool to make it more culturally responsive and less culturally biased, so that it better meets the needs of children and families served by early childhood education programs, with a focus on Black and Latine children served in pre-K programs.

Seeking racial equity in research

Members of FPG’s Research and Evaluation division have been working to embed racial equity in everything they do. Concentrated efforts toward group trainings and workshops have included UNC’s DEIR Certificate Program, which was created to foster a new standard of inclusion, sensitivity, and intentionality in the UNC research

community, and multiple 30-day Equity Challenges. Iheoma Iruka, PhD, Allison De Marco, PhD, and Noreen Yazejian, PhD, and several other colleagues at FPG are currently applying these learnings in their work with the Educare Learning Network, a coast-to-coast consortium of state-of-the-art, fullday, year-round schools serving children from birth to 5 years who are at risk for school failure.

As the Network’s National Evaluation Partner (NEP), FPG serves as the consortium’s research and evaluation arm. Local Evaluation Partners (LEP) work with each of the 25 Educare schools around the country as a liaison for research. A Community of Practice (CoP) has been a regular part of the Educare network since 2005, bringing together research and evaluation staff monthly to discuss issues of common interest. “While the Educare Learning Network has long considered issues of culture and marginalization, primarily due to poverty, the racial reckoning that started in the Summer of 2020 also created urgency in the Network,” says Iruka. This urgency led to the development, that year, of the NEP/LEP Community of Practice on racial equity.

As the research core for the Network, FPG is committed to ensuring that research and evaluation processes and practices are interrogated in order to advance the science and ensure racial equity. The CoP on Racial Equity uses evidence-based and evidence-informed practices to interrogate how the Network research and evaluation staff engage and partner with one another and the Educare programs, including families, staff, teachers, and administrators. The same commitment is given to examining Educare’s evaluation measures and ways of interpreting and sharing information.

(“Equity, diversity, and inclusion” continues on page 16)

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 15

(“Equity, diversity, and inclusion” continues from page 15)

The goals of the NEP/LEP CoP on racial equity are to: increase the group’s knowledge about racism and its impact on early childhood, child development, and other related fields; conduct self-interrogation and self-reflection as a CoP to understand biases and values; engage in conversations about race and racism within the CoP and with Educare network partners; and actively promote anti-bias, anti-racist, and inclusive practices in all aspects of the work.

“Through this work over the last two years, we’ve learned a lot from each other about the work going on in Educare sites across the country to interrogate their research practices, to more authentically engage families, to incorporate more inclusive language, and to support each other in the on-going work,” says De Marco.

De Marco and Iruka are in the process of drafting a manuscript about this work, which they plan to submit for publication this fall. The research paper will assess and provide analysis of the group’s progress on personal understandings of race, racism, and racial equity and the infusion of antiracist practices into their work.

Early Childhood Inclusion Institute

This year marked the 22nd annual—and second International—instance of the Early Childhood Inclusion Institute here at FPG. The event is designed for individuals working toward inclusion at all levels and in a wide variety of roles. Attendees include classroom teachers and

FPG’s Jani Kozlowski, MA, co-developed a brief for the Office of Child Care with a colleague at the National Center on Early Childhood Assurance, Increasing Access to Inclusive Environments, to guide state child care leaders in using American Rescue Plan funds to support children with disabilities.

assistants, government officials, family members, faculty, and researchers.

A range of sessions provided learnings in a variety of areas. Jackie Joseph, PhD, BCBA-D, executive director of the Rise School of Denver, presented the powerful keynote talk, “Combining Science and Heart: Relearning Inclusion Through Love.” Joseph invited attendees to approach inclusion from not just a logical, academic perspective, but to also recognize the emotion and heart involved when advocating for children and looking at inclusion and equity. She shared her hope that community members can recognize that disability is diversity and an identity to be celebrated.

“I’m positive that the things participants took back from this conference left them better prepared to meet all children’s needs and that this will result in an increased ability to include those children,” said Adam Holland, PhD, who co-chairs the Inclusion Institute with Catasha Williams, MEd.

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Informing policy via partnership with DCDEE

For more than 20 years, FPG has enjoyed a research-practice partnership with the Department of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. This collaboration was strengthened even further with the establishment of a formal research-policy-practice collaboration, in which FPG was asked to provide its expertise to explore existing research literature about issues related to early care and education quality to help guide policy decisions at DCDEE. FPG was also engaged to use DCDEE’s existing administrative data to answer questions of interest.

The work of the FPG team— led by Sandra Soliday Hong, PhD, fits in the translational space between applied research and policy decision making. By having the FPG team perform basic research and then generate applied research, DCDEE receives help in framing policy questions and interpreting research data in a way that’s useful for guiding decision making.

FPG began this project by identifying the sources of federal and state funding and then providing an overview of the complex funding streams that flow into North Carolina and then from the state to fund the early care and education system. This has enabled DCDEE to have a comprehensive overview of the funding regulations by which it needs to abide alongside the early childhood care and education sites it funds. The second set of activities included examining the research literature around early school literacy readiness as well as the inequities in North Carolina’s K-12 educational systems that have implications for early care and education.

While FPG’s primary role has been to provide research support for questions of interest to DCDEE leadership, Soliday Hong and her colleagues have

also supported DCDEE’s involvement in the Birth Through Third Grade Interagency Council—which coordinates with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and the General Assembly—to streamline services designed for children birth to eight years old. Soliday Hong says that because FPG acts as a neutral party between those groups, the Institute has been able to facilitate conversations so the agencies are able to continue to do the good work that was underway.

Similarly, FPG provided behind-the-scenes assistance during the supply shortage of infant formula. By temporarily helping with data analysis and writing, FPG supported DCDEE efforts that obtained funding from the federal government through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) for qualifying families.

“It is really important for our state agency and the state’s flagship university to have a strong connection and we are happy to bring that forward into a new generation of programs and state leadership,” says Soliday Hong. “Because we have this research/practice partnership established, we can respond rapidly and provide relevant timely information for our state partners. Ultimately the beneficiaries are children, families and the teachers and operators in our child care system.”

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 17

New video series supports remote learning during Pandemic

It’s been said that “necessity is the mother of invention.” In response to the pandemic, early education and early childhood special education practitioners and parents came together to support young children through remote service delivery. A new multipart video series—Preschool During the Pandemic: Early Childhood Education in Extraordinary Times—features preschool staff and families from across the country and illustrates their working together to use technology to make the virtual learning experience exciting, effective, and engaging for young children.

Currently, there are 16 videos in the series, each ranging from five to 16 minutes in length. The videos cover the perspectives of

professionals and parents on topics such as:

• inclusion in remote preschool

• equity and family support

• the challenges and joys of remote learning

• hands-on and play-based experiences

• a family’s approach to supporting a preschooler in a virtual environment

• promoting social skills, relationships, and positive social-emotional development

• the use of green screens to engage preschoolers

• authentic learning in preschool

• family engagement and coaching in a virtual setting

To learn more and watch the videos, visit the ECTA Center website: go.unc.edu/ECTAvid

New media meets practitioners where they are

The State Implementation and Scaling-Up of Evidence-Based Practices (SISEP) Center at FPG has been hard at work creating new multimedia resources for educators and implementation practitioners. The new video series “Voices from the Field,” which is hosted on SISEP’s YouTube channel, shares perspectives of active implementers. And “Implementation Science for Educators,” a podcast aimed at providing

busy educators with helpful information in quick, 5-minute episodes, can be found on multiple streaming platforms. FPG’s Impact Center has created “Implementation Science at Work,” a podcast that explores questions and strategies in implementation science including tackling community health issues, reducing health disparities, and improving community and population outcomes through building capacity.

Working to ensure STEM for all

The STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education (STEMIE) Center focuses on improving access and participation within STEM learning opportunities for young children with disabilities. FPG Senior Technical Assistance Specialists Chih-Ing Lim, PhD, and Megan Vinh, PhD, serve as co-directors of STEMIE. Over the past year, in addition to hosting the second annual STEMIEFest, STEMIE has produced a new video series, learning app, and two video demonstrations.

The new video series, titled “Why Inclusion,” is a three-part series that addresses questions about the importance and impact of providing high quality STEM education to young children with and without disabilities. The series has made an impact and has even caught international attention, leading to a version of the series with Vietnamese subtitles.

The My STEM Adventure app seeks to help young children learn about science, technology, engineering, and math by exploring the world around them together with the adults in their lives. It currently teaches two STEM concepts: ABAB pattern recognition and recognizing objects big and small in the child’s environment. Families or practitioners lead young children on adventures in their homes or neighborhoods on a hunt for items resulting in a storybook about the child’s adventure and what they learned about comparing big and small items or about ABAB patterns. As updates to the app are made, more STEM concepts will be added for children to explore.

“Children are curious and have a sense of wonder of the world around them, so they are already scientists to start with,” says Lim. “So, what we are doing as adults is essentially harnessing their natural potential for STEM learning by noticing

their interests and thinking, and then scaffolding their learning by asking questions, using STEM vocabulary, thoughtfully choosing materials, setting up the environment, and helping them take their learning to the next level, all in a playful way.”

The two video demonstrations on engaging young children with visual impairments in storybook conversations resulted from a collaboration between STEMIE, the Kansas Deaf-Blind Project, and the Kansas State School for the Blind. This partnership was sparked by a poster board shared by STEMIE leaders at the 2019 leadership conference hosted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. Marites Altuna, MS, director of the Kansas DeafBlind Project, was intrigued by the poster and STEMIE’s commitment to making STEM accessible to young children with disabilities. Wanting to connect with STEMIE, Altuna attended STEMIEFest and began a conversation about collaborating with Lim and Vinh.

The project is unique as it marries an evidencebased practice called dialogic reading—which has shown efficacy in improving oral language skills and other literacy skills for kids with and without disabilities—with STEM concepts. Both videos are being audio described to make them even more accessible for family members and practitioners who are blind or have visual impairments. “I’m really excited about this because we are always striving to be better at ensuring that our products are more accessible,” says Lim.

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 19

Improving access to disability services

In October 2021, researchers at FPG led by Julie Austen, PhD, and Sherri Britt Williams, MPH, launched the Child Find ACCESS project in partnership with SRI International. The project, which aligns with the Institute’s commitment to equity, is designed to address challenges states face in identifying children with disabilities needing early intervention services, which have resulted in persistent racial inequities and disparities in identification rates.

Child Find—a requirement under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—ensures that states and local education agencies use an evidence-based identification, screening, referral, and tracking system so that children who need early intervention services are enrolled in the system as soon as possible, providing children the best chance of success. This project aims to help inform and build the capacity of Child Find systems to implement communitybased, culturally responsive approaches for providing equitable access and experiences for children and their families.

Project leaders are conducting research in three North Carolina counties with longstanding equity issues, to produce a model that states can use independently, or with technical assistance, to expand equity in their Child Find systems. In addition, the project seeks to increase the number of families from traditionally underserved populations that take advantage of developmental screenings and enrollment in services by centering the voices of families and their culture throughout the implementation process.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to systems intervention, which is truly multifaceted,” says Austen. “Because of that, we need to utilize a

very robust exploration process, so we want to produce one that is strong, implementation science-focused, data-centered, and communitycentric.” Cognizant of the fact that the best and most equitable results arise from this communitycentered process, Austen, Williams, and their team have processes they will utilize to co-create knowledge with community members.

“We are emphasizing the importance of building relationships and understanding cultural contexts of communities,” said Williams. “A key feature of the model will involve identifying and supporting trusted cultural brokers within the community to improve communication and partnerships with families.”

With a systems-change approach, the project will identify and provide culturally responsive support for each community. In the process, the team is emphasizing and providing support for relationship building, stakeholder engagement, sustainable systems change, and data-driven decision making.

FPG’s Trohanis TA Projects include both The Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy) and the Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center. DaSy and ECTA have created several products designed to help states identify, refer, and track children for early intervention services. This project will enable the team to determine how to best refine and use these products.

20 Advancing knowledge to transform children’s lives

Informing the early childhood field as a National Evaluation Partner

In line with the Institute’s mission, FPG researchers are supporting the Educare Learning Network—a coast-to-coast consortium of year-round schools serving children from birth to 5 years who live in marginalized communities and have had fewer opportunities for supportive educational experiences. As Educare’s National Evaluation Partner (NEP), FPG focuses on three areas: leadership and coordination within the network; protocol development, data collection, and data management; and dissemination of results from the Educare National Evaluation inside and outside the Network. FPG does this work alongside Start Early and the Buffett Early Childhood Fund—the other national partners for Educare.

The FPG team is led by FPG Senior Research Scientist Donna Bryant, PhD, Social Research Specialist Gisele Crawford, MAA, Faculty Fellow Iheoma Iruka, PhD, Advanced Research Scientist and statistician Laura Kuhn, PhD, Advanced Research Scientist Sandra Soliday Hong, PhD, and Senior Research Scientist and Principal Investigator Noreen Yazejian, PhD

Educare is a research-practice-policy collaboration; its research has been included in a variety of compilations, reports, and syntheses. This information is then used by the Network as

the foundation to advocate for more resources, supports, and system change at multiple levels. Many FPG leaders of this effort are involved in a variety of national, state, and local task forces, committees, and boards that influence practice and policy at macro and micro-levels.

This work goes beyond impacting practice and policy to having an impact on how research is conducted in early childhood. FPG co-leads a workgroup on research and evaluation alongside the executive director of one of the Educare schools. The workgroup consists of research and practice leaders across the Network and serves as part of the Network’s governance structure. This past year, they achieved a major accomplishment by drafting a research agenda for the Network, which aligns with the Network’s strategic plan and focuses on racial equity. It will provide a road map for research that acknowledges systemic inequities in early childhood and education systems and services.

As the Educare Learning Network continues to grow and change, its leaders expect that FPG’s NEP role will also evolve. To learn more about the incredible work being accomplished through this partnership, visit the FPG 2022 Impact Report webpage: go.unc.edu/2022-Impact.

Results from a study investigating the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of an online self-compassion intervention for transgender adolescents suggest that self-compassion interventions can be incorporated into therapy programs to support and improve mental health for transgender adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, December 2021

Learn more at fpg.unc.edu 21

Congratulations to our award winners

Hannah Spitzer’s tenacity and determination have guided her educational journey. During her sophomore year at Meredith College, Hannah— who was diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder at the age of 14—became disabled by Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and other related disorders. The medication used to treat her illnesses made it impossible for her to attend college full time. In 2011, she enrolled at UNCChapel Hill and began taking one class each semester. That path has led to a bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies.

Spitzer was recognized for the research she conducts as an integral team member of Project EXPRESS: EXamining interventions to PRomote Executive function and Social Skills, which examines two programs targeted at schoolbased staff for middle school students on the autism spectrum. After starting in June 2021 as a student research assistant under the supervision of FPG Faculty Fellow Jessica Steinbrenner, PhD , Spitzer became a lab intern at the start of the Spring 2022 semester.

In her nomination of Spitzer for the award, Steinbrenner lauded Spitzer’s passion, initiative, and boldness, saying her curiosity and ability to ask questions help Steinbrenner and colleagues look more critically at the decisions they make as a research team. “I view Hannah as a bold person, which has made her a wonderful and needed addition to our team,” wrote Steinbrenner. “Although our team at times struggles to receive challenges to the status quo, Hannah has been a great and patient teacher as a neurodiverse team member.”

Headshots of Noreen and Donna B? Barbara Davis Goldman Award Hannah Spitzer James J. Gallagher Dissertation Award Kelsey Thompson Joanne Erwich Roberts Early Career Award Hsiu-Wen Yang
22 Advancing knowledge to transform children’s lives
“I view Hannah as a bold person, which has made her a wonderful and needed addition to our team.” – Jessica Steinbrenner

Honors and accolades

Jessica Amsbary, PhD (at left), received the NC DEC Subdivision Distinguished Service Award

Allison De Marco, PhD (at right), was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for its Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program

The Early Childhood Technical Assistance (ECTA) Center was honored with the National Association of State Directors of Special Education Martha J. Fields Award of Excellence

Kylie Garber, PhD, received postdoctoral fellowship from Society for Research in Child Development

Iheoma Iruka, PhD (at left), was awarded the 2022 American Psychological Association Mid-Career Award for Outstanding Contributions to Benefit Children, Youth, and Families

Chih-Ing Lim, PhD (at right), received a Global Partnership Award to advance a partnership with the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore

FPG won a Brandon Hall Group© 2021 Silver Award for Excellence in Learning; the AFIRM for Paraprofessionals modules earned an award for Best Advance in Custom Content

Advancing juvenile justice system reforms

Through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Juvenile Justice Reform Initiative, the Impact Center at FPG’s Robin Jenkins, PhD, and Renée Boothroyd, PhD, are helping the Nebraska Administrative Offices of Courts and Probation (AOCP) create readiness for, and capacities to, effectively implement Robert F. Kennedy National Resource Center for Juvenile Justice recommendations stemming from a comprehensive statewide system review.

This review addresses administration, probation supervision, intra- and interagency work processes, and quality assurance/quality improvement elements within juvenile justice systems. The review results in a comprehensive report detailing recommended reforms developed in partnership with evidence-based practice leaders along with Nebraska’s AOCP collaborating stakeholders.

Jenkins, Boothroyd and the Impact Center are providing onsite and virtual training, technical assistance, coaching, experiential learning, and other capacity building approaches. Their goal— to help Nebraska’s AOCP director and executive leadership team learn implementation science best practices, build system readiness, and codesign leadership and change management practices to better prepare for and execute recommended reforms.

Jenkins and Boothroyd have worked with Nebraska for a year and a half. During that time, they have witnessed significant growth in executive leaders’ understanding and use of implementation scienceinformed best practices. “Policies have evolved to include an intentional focus on implementation science as a key business practice at every level,”

says Jenkins. “New teaming structures link, and leverage, leadership and implementation teams, facilitating communications, networking, intraand interagency collaborations, and the use of feedback and ongoing continuous learning.”

Jenkins is thrilled that Nebraska’s AOCP has adopted implementation science as one if its five key leadership priorities for the next few years, which will allow for the infusion of researchsupported evidence into all aspects of the courts and probation systems.

“One exciting ‘side effect’ of this work,” notes Jenkins, “is that the Nebraska’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Heavican became interested in learning how implementation science may be able to improve Nebraska’s Supreme Court operations and practices.” As a result, Boothroyd and Jenkins have been invited to present at some leadership events by the Chief Justice and Court Administrator to facilitate adult learning, self-assessment, and some system redesign toward stronger use of evidence in the way the Supreme Court operates.

Jenkins and Boothroyd would welcome the opportunity to apply this model to help other states in the pursuit of juvenile justice reform.

Renée Boothroyd
24 Advancing knowledge to transform children’s lives
Robin Jenkins
citations of our published journal articles 2,790,000+ FPG snapshot 441 grant proposals submitted to various federal and state agencies, private foundations, and other funders 215+ published books, book chapters, and other resources by our researchers, investigators, and specialists 75 published reports and policy briefs 300+ published journal articles 9,200+ Autism Focused Intervention Resources & Modules (AFIRM) resources downloaded downloads of COVID-19 toolkit for parents and practitioners serving children with autism 265,000+ media mentions | FPG’s people and projects have been included in more than 200 news articles and reports. 225+ news stories published on FPG’s website 200+ Over the past 5 years...

Frank Porter Graham

Child Development Institute

UNC-Chapel Hill Campus Box 8180 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 8180

citations of our published journal articles 9,200+ media mentions | FPG’s people and projects have been included in more than 200 news articles and reports. 200+ FPG by the numbers 2,790,000+ Autism Focused Intervention Resources & Modules (AFIRM) resources downloaded Over the past 5 years...
919 966 6623 | fpg.unc.edu

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