Science (journal): Laying the Foundation for Lifetime Learning

[PeterMP]

I know most people here don't subscribe to Science, but they've done a whole thing on the role of early childhood education, which gets discussed here sometimes. If people are really interested, I'd suggest that the find a library that carries it (I know the local library when I was in high school did).

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045.toc

Here's sort of the highlights:

"In addition to acquiring cognitive skills, the ability to pay attention, follow

directions, and function productively in groups helps a child get the most out of

school. Diamond and Lee (p. 959) review how such skills can be taught in preschool.

Dickinson (p. 964) describes how a teacher’s ability to support language

and conceptual knowledge can foster early language skills, providing a foundation

for later literacy. Clements and Sarama (p. 968) discuss effective ways to establish

early grounding in math. Without consensus on how, and when, to teach science,

cognitive psychologists and education researchers differ regarding what aspects of

the research are most important. Klahr et al. (p. 971) highlight the contributions of

cognitive psychology to this fi eld.

The value of investment in early education depends on the quality of interventions

and the conditions under which they are administered. Barnett (p. 975)

reviews longitudinal studies and meta-analyses that demonstrate how educational

interventions can produce persistent effects on cognitive, social, and schooling outcomes.

In early childhood education, as in other domains, scientifi c research seeks

to inform public policy. Gormley (p. 978) discusses situations and practices that can

help or hinder the infl uence of research on policy. In an Education Forum, Shonkoff

(p. 982) argues that the impacts of even the best preschool curricula are likely to

be limited by toxic social stress on the developing brain. He suggests research and

programs aimed at improving the ability of caregivers and educators to help the

most vulnerable children take advantage of early enrichment opportunities.

In a series of News stories, Mervis looks at three longitudinal studies fueling

the economic argument that high-quality early intervention pays off handsomely

for society as well as individuals (p. 952). He also reviews the 46-year-old

Head Start program, which provides education and other services to 1 million

low-income U.S. children and their families (p. 956), and interviews Joan

Lombardi (p. 957), who leads the Obama Administration’s efforts to coordinate

health and education programs for young children in the United States. Science

Careers profi les neuroscientists working with children to explore the bases of

dyslexia and dyscalculia, characterized by diffi culties in reading and math."

(I've added the italics to the one part because that is the part that seems most relevant and is what comes up here the most.)

Here's more on that:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/952.summary

"Three groundbreaking intervention efforts over the past half-century have shown beyond a doubt that high-quality early education pays off. The payoff—on everything from better school performance to holding a job, raising a family, staying out of jail, and contributing to, rather than being a burden on, society—can be as much as $16 saved for every dollar spent. That's an impressive return on investment at a time when local, state, and federal officials are trying to squeeze out the biggest bang for their limited bucks. But these studies can't provide policymakers with a prescription for the best, most cost-effective intervention that can help the largest number of at-risk children. The disconnect comes because such studies contain too many important variables to measure. But all of them, from the quality of the teachers to the curriculum to the intensity and duration of the intervention, affect long-term outcomes."

Though there are areas where can do better, but there is working being done in that area:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/975.abstract

(EHS = early head start; HS = head start)

"Early educational intervention has been proposed to partially offset the impacts of poverty and inadequate learning environments on child development and school success. A broad range of early educational interventions are found to produce meaningful, lasting effects on cognitive, social, and schooling outcomes. However, all interventions are not equally effective. Two major U.S. programs perform relatively poorly. Research provides some guidance regarding the features of highly effective programs, but much remains to be learned. New experimental studies of key program features would have a high payoff. "

"

Randomized trials raise questions about the effectiveness of two major public programs in the United States, HS and EHS. The poor results cannot likely be ascribed to insufficient duration. EHS provided multiple years of services. One year of some other large public programs—typically operated through the public schools—produced larger and more lasting effects in quasi-experimental studies using designs likely to produce results similar to those of randomized trials (15, 22). These other programs more closely resemble programs that produced large gains in small-scale experiments (e.g., Perry and Abecedarian) with respect to teacher characteristics and a focus on education. This is not true of all public school pre-K programs, because they vary considerably from state to state.

Both individual study comparisons and the U.S. meta-analysis suggest potentially large improvements in public early educational interventions. EHS and HS might improve their results by providing richer educational experiences. EHS could increase and improve both parenting education and direct classroom experiences. HS may need to focus more resources on the classroom to recruit and retain better teachers. Improving teaching practices may also require increased spending on supervision and coaching of teaching staff. Without budget increases, these changes would require a reduction in program resources devoted to other activities (for example, social services and adult education). There is no consensus among researchers regarding the value of teacher qualifications (31), but a systematic statewide reform that included raising teacher qualifications and pay greatly improved preschool program quality (17). Given the limitations of the literature, reforms should be guided by systematic experimentation, with design alternatives based on what has produced large gains in the past and little deference to current program doctrine."

[greenspandan]

They Might Be Giants put our a CD/DVD called "Here Comes Science".

my daughter is 3 and a half, and i wasn't sure if she'd like it, but she absolutely ADORES it! she asks for it every day. the songs (and accompanying videos) are cool, clever and catchy enough that mom and i dig it as well. the two johns of tmbg do funny little (animated) science-themed skits between some of the songs on the dvd. each song is animated in a different style. some of them are really super.

the science is really packed pretty densely in some of the songs (the elements song quickly inventories dozens of elements and compounds, for example), whereas others are just explaining some basic general science concept (there's a whole song about what "velocity" is, for example).

i figured at 3.5, my daughter is probably not retaining a whole ton of the actual facts or concepts, but she loves it to death, and maybe when in 7th grade or whatever when she does learn about some of this stuff more formally, the lyrics and music will come back to help her pick it all up faster, or grant her some affinity for the topic.

i was wrong, though. she is picking stuff up. we were watching a different dvd the other day in which the main character finds a lost anthropomorphic shooting star and helps send it home, and she said to me "daddy, a shooting star isn't really a star. it's a meteowite that makes heat and light when it falls to earth." (!)

for what it's worth, thanks to this thing, she can now also recite the order of the colors in the color spectrum and order of the planets as well. so proud!

sorry. didn't mean to get braggy. just saying this dvd/cd is awesome for any kid 3 and up. highly recommended!

[techboy]

If nothing else, it will be interesting to observe the number of people who take the thread title to be suggesting that science as a discipline lays the foundation for lifetime learning, rather than an article in the periodical Science discussing early childhood education programs like Head Start.

[mjah]

we were watching a different dvd the other day in which the main character finds a lost anthropomorphic shooting star and helps send it home

I think we watch that episode of Dora the Explorer about once per week.

I'm getting ready to start my older daughter on They Might Be Giants' kid stuff in a couple of months. She turned 3 recently so it seems like a good time for the science bits. She likes a lot of their other stuff, including extended live versions of "Istanbul" that I have sitting around etc. I'd like to think we're raising her right!

[Hubbs]

They Might Be Giants put our a CD/DVD called "Here Comes Science".

my daughter is 3 and a half, and i wasn't sure if she'd like it, but she absolutely ADORES it! she asks for it every day. the songs (and accompanying videos) are cool, clever and catchy enough that mom and i dig it as well. the two johns of tmbg do funny little (animated) science-themed skits between some of the songs on the dvd. each song is animated in a different style. some of them are really super.

the science is really packed pretty densely in some of the songs (the elements song quickly inventories dozens of elements and compounds, for example), whereas others are just explaining some basic general science concept (there's a whole song about what "velocity" is, for example).

i figured at 3.5, my daughter is probably not retaining a whole ton of the actual facts or concepts, but she loves it to death, and maybe when in 7th grade or whatever when she does learn about some of this stuff more formally, the lyrics and music will come back to help her pick it all up faster, or grant her some affinity for the topic.

i was wrong, though. she is picking stuff up. we were watching a different dvd the other day in which the main character finds a lost anthropomorphic shooting star and helps send it home, and she said to me "daddy, a shooting star isn't really a star. it's a meteowite that makes heat and light when it falls to earth." (!)

for what it's worth, thanks to this thing, she can now also recite the order of the colors in the color spectrum and order of the planets as well. so proud!

sorry. didn't mean to get braggy. just saying this dvd/cd is awesome for any kid 3 and up. highly recommended!

Wow, that's actually really cool, Dan. Sounds like you're turning her into one smart cookie. :thumbsup:

[Jumbo]

If nothing else, it will be interesting to observe the number of people who take the thread title to be suggesting that science as a discipline lays the foundation for lifetime learning, rather than an article in the periodical Science discussing early childhood education programs like Head Start.

Science (the mag and the field), "lifetime learning", studies (especially "meta-analyses"), teachers, cognitive psychologists <cough>, it's all a scam.

And Hubbs, ya iggy, did ya need to quote that whole post just to add the one-liner. Sheesh. back to class, young man.