Center for Developmental Science
Significant Research Programs and Activities

Carolina Consortium on Human Development (CCHD) Training Program:

CCHD seeks to train productive researchers and creative scientists in an interdisciplinary program that is unique in its focus and breadth. This program is organized and administered across traditional institutional and discipline boundaries. The interdisciplinary training faculty come from six cooperating universities and colleges (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, Duke University, Meredith College, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro). This arrangement permits the Consortium to bring together an unusually strong group of developmental scientists. Though they are drawn from different disciplines and represent different perspectives, the members of the training faculty share a commitment to the rigorous study of developmental processes. The goals are two-fold: (a) to understand the social/biological bases of human behavior across the life course and across generations, and (b) t conduct research relevant to the enhancement of competencies and the prevention of behavioral disorders among children, youth, and families. We focus upon the longitudinal and intergenerational study of persons and families in changing social contexts.

Persons at the postdoctoral level are accepted for a two-year program of intensive research training. Their program is individualized and supervised by an Advisory Committee comprised of members selected from the training faculty. The trainees will complete studies in two different laboratories during their tenure, and they will participate in advanced proseminars in developmental methodology, theory, and preventive intervention. Predoctoral trainees must be registered in a doctoral program and have completed their basic departmental course requirements prior to entering the training program. Prerequisites include a minimum number of cross-listed courses in advanced statistics and research design. All trainees will participate in the advanced proseminars, in brief research workshops, and in supervised research in the laboratory of one of the Consortium faculty and/or in ongoing projects of the Center for Developmental Science.

Connecting School and Community: A Strategy for Rural School and Community Improvement:

Researchers at the National Research Center on Rural Education Support (NRCRES) have been working with the Rural Schools and Community Trust (funded by the Kellogg Foundation) and its community-based partners in northeastern North Carolina to evaluate a proposed research program that aims to: 1) build the capacity of grassroots leaders and community-based organizations to engage in local school reform in vulnerable rural communities and 2) establish a network of rural activists who will develop and advocate for policies and practices to improve education for students throughout the state. The diverse nature of the participating communities and programs as well as the explicit focus on both community-based and individual-level changes are distinct strengths of the proposed work. The project uses a combination of process-oriented (i.e., formative) and outcome-oriented (i.e., summative) evaluation approaches. Investigators also work to develop local ownership and expertise in evaluation as well as working with community leaders to provide both input on key constructs and lead data collection efforts, and work with local agencies/communities to utilize collected data in an ongoing way to guide their efforts.

Durham Child Health and Development Study (North Carolina Child Development Research Collaborative):

The Durham Health and Development Study tracks the health, academic, and social behavioral progress of 200 children from families in Durham and the surrounding areas. The families represented are approximately half African-American and half European-American from varying educational and income levels. The study considers factors from the genetic, neural, and physiological levels to the behavioral and relational to the neighborhood and community in understanding variation in children's progress in these important areas of development. The study has received 10 years of funding from the National Science Foundation and is in the first year of the second 5 year period of funding. The study was recently featured in NSF Highlights. The children have been followed from birth to consider child, family, and neighborhood/community factors that predict their health and educational outcomes as they transition to formal schooling.

Enhancing Rural Online Learning (EROL) Project:

The EROL project was funded successfully as an affiliated project of the National Research Center on Rural Education Support (NRCRES). Because of issues of critical mass, geographical isolation, and difficulty recruiting teachers, many small rural school districts across the United States have difficulty providing advanced level courses. Distance learning has been viewed as a solution to this problem. This study examines the role that distance education can play in rural schools, especially for enrichment and advanced level courses. One primary goal centers on the preparation of school staff and students to effectively use distance learning; a second goal involves keeping this instruction and the students connected to the community. This project addresses these issues by conducting two studies. The first study is developing and evaluating the Facilitator Preparation Program (FPP), a facilitator-based intervention to support the effective use of distance learning technology as an approach to provide advanced level instruction to college-bound students. The second study is developing and evaluating a general Community and Career Exploration (CCE) laboratory that can be attached to distance learning courses to help college-bound students see the linkages between the content of the coursework, their educational and career interests, and the needs of their community. These two approaches have the potential to significantly increase the capacity for rural districts to use distance learning as a means for offering advanced level coursework (that would be difficult to teach by staff in isolated areas) to smaller pools of students in those areas who are in need of specific coursework.

Family Life Project:

Over the last several decades, America’s rural communities have faced many challenges, including the contraction of the agricultural sector, jobs moving offshore, coupled with the loss of union jobs and traditional industry jobs like textiles and furniture. Despite these profound changes, numerous families continue to build their lives in rural communities, with many families living in poverty. There is surprisingly scant research on the development of children in rural poor areas and almost no literature on their transition to formal schooling. The central goal of this program project is to understand the ways in which employment, the family environment, parent-child relationships, instructional quality in the classroom, out of school activities and individual differences in the children themselves interact over time to shape the unfolding development of the children as they make the transition to school. We are studying a representative sample of all children born in 6 rural poor counties within a one year period. We now have a birth cohort of 1292 infants, oversampling for African American and poverty. This sample is diverse with respect to income level (including large numbers of children whose families are very poor), ethnicity (including both non-African American and African-American families), and their rural locations (including those who live in small towns and those more isolated in the surrounding countryside). In the first phase of this program project, 8 home visits over the children’s first three years of life were accomplished, collecting such data as mother/child cortisol as well as video recorded family interactions, and mother and father/grandmother interviews. In the continuation of this important study, we are studying the children through four school visits and two home visits as they make the transition to school from ages 4 thru 2nd grade. The individual projects focus on different aspects of the children’s transition to school. Project I examines the development of executive functioning and emotion regulation as well as the precursors of ADHD. Project II focuses on language and literacy development with a particular focus on classroom instruction and out of school activities. Project III focuses on the processes in the home that support the transition to school, with a focus on how both mothers and fathers/grandmothers interact with their children and promote academic and social success. This research is designed to provide the information needed to understand the supports and challenges in rural communities for children as they enter school. This includes multilevel information about family and child health, family routines and practices, childcare quality, family work schedules and challenges and the development of child competencies in many areas. This information will provide the relevant information that policy makers need to respond to the needs of these children, families and schools.

High School Aspirations Project (HSA):

The High School Aspirations Project was funded successfully as an affiliated project of the National Research Center on Rural Education Support (NRCRES). This study generates new information about rural high school students’ aspirations and preparatory planning for postsecondary education, career training, and adult life. Compared to urban settings, the rates of school dropout and career difficulties are higher for youth from high poverty rural areas; additionally, many rural communities across the United States are undergoing tremendous economic and population change that has significantly impacted the employment opportunities and adult-life choices that are available to rural youth. Before effective high school reform programs can be developed for rural districts, there is a need to clarify tensions between the various perspectives (i.e., students, parents, educators), to identify the types of outcomes that are desired by the various groups, and to gain their viewpoints on the types of programs that would best help to prepare rural youth for post-secondary lives.

This project aims to generate information from students, parents, and teachers to identify areas of commonality as well as differences in their perspectives regarding the futures of rural youth and the availability of high school programs and activities to help prepare them for their futures. These commonalities and differences are examined across regions of the country and also by the economic characteristics of the school district, population density of the district, the distance of the district from a major metropolitan area, and the proximity to colleges and universities. This will have importance in generating information that can be directly translated into the development and evaluation of high school intervention programs.

International Institute on Developmental Science (IIDS):

The International Institute on Developmental Science involves the North Carolina Universities that are part of the Center for Devlopmental Science (an interinstitutional center that includes Duke, UNC Greensboro, NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, and NC Central) and is co-sponsored with Penn State University and with universities in Sweden, Germany, and Finland. Supported through NSF and NIH training funds as well as CDS funds, this institute provides advanced training experiences for young scientists in the initial phases of their careers and prepares students for the challenge of the global scientific world of the 21st century. This program promotes partnerships between UNC campuses (and Duke) with Penn State and several European universities in Sweden, Finland, and Germany. The program serves to increase the global awareness of the predoctoral and postdoctoral students in our Carolina Consortium on Human Development Training Program (T32 NIH training program).The Summer Institutes have been ongoing since 1998. They are held alternately in the United States and in Europe. The 2008 session of the IIDS took place in Jena, Germany in October 2008. The 2009 Summer Institute will be held in Chapel Hill. The 8th International Institute on Developmental Science was held in Chapel Hill from May 25-28th, 2005. The focus was on “Integrating Biology and Developmental Science”.

National Research Center for Rural Education Support (NRCRES):

The NRCRES develops and evaluates teacher training and consultation programs that are aimed at enhancing teacher quality in rural schools in North Carolina and throughout the nation in addition to supporting teachers and students during key school transitions (i.e. the transition to school, the transition to middle school, the transition from high school to college). The NRCRES has been designed to establish and evaluate model programs to form a comprehensive package of interventions that should significantly lessen the deleterious impact of the collective interplay between problematic student characteristics, issues in teacher quality and professional development, lack of educational resources, and factors that inhibit postsecondary attainment of rural youth. Comprehensive strategies are developed that support the improvement of student characteristics (e.g., academic, behavioral, and social risk factors associated with childhood poverty), that enhance the capacities of teachers to meet the needs of children and youth who are at-risk of school difficulties, that provide resources that are commensurate with the educational needs of students with limited opportunities and experiences, and that provide students and their parents with information to explore their academic and occupational skills and interests.

The NRCRES proposal built directly on over 20 years of basic research on the development and school adjustment of rural youth conducted by researchers at the CDS and bridging with ongoing work conducted in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and NC Learn. Reviewers noted that the strong conceptual framework and empirical support for focusing on school transitions provided a compelling rationale for the professional development programs proposed by the NRCRES. This capacity to bridge basic and applied issues in human development uniquely situated the CDS to serve as a key collaborator with the School of Education, the Department of Psychology, and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.

The activities of the NRCRES have focused on promoting student achievement in rural schools in several complementary research programs. The primary program of research involves the implementation and evaluation of professional development strategies aimed at enhancing teacher quality in elementary and middle school classrooms while promoting the school success of at-risk youth. A supplemental research program investigates the use of distance learning programs and career exploration activities for rural high school students. Consistent with concerns of under-achievement and low attainment in rural schools and building from research showing that developmental transitions are particularly important in the adjustment and attainment of children and youth from disadvantaged backgrounds (i.e., Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Eccles, 1999; Pianta & Cox, 1999), the content of both the primary and supplemental programs of the NRCRES will focus on key transition periods. The professional development program will focus on preparing teachers to better address the academic, behavioral, and social needs of students during the entry into school and during the transition to middle school or the onset of adolescence. The supplemental program will provide advanced coursework and career exploration activities to prepare rural high school students for the transition to adulthood.

NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development:

The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development has tracked 1200 children from the rural western part of North Carolina and from 9 other sites around the United States from birth through age 15. The study focuses on the health, educational, and social outcomes of these children, and the family, child care, and school factors over the child's first 15 years that are associated with these important developmental outcomes.

Social and Character Development in Rural Youth: Preventing Antisocial Behavior Through
Competence Enhancement and Social Dynamics Training:

As part of the national multi-site Social and Character Development Program, the Rural Competence Support Program (RCSP) was conducted in rural elementary schools in North Carolina. The RCSP involved thirteen elementary schools (six intervention and seven control schools), and one intermediate school (5th graders) in three N.C. counties. The intervention training consisted of two parts: Competence Enhancement Behavior Management and Social Dynamics, which emphasized behavior management strategies that teach and reinforce appropriate social behavior while providing constructive natural consequences; and Making Choices, in which teachers followed a manualized curriculum to deliver social skills lessons in class. The Competence Enhancement Behavior Management and Social Dynamics training emphasized how to establish classroom social contexts and interactional patterns that promote and reinforce positive social behaviors and inhibit patterns of bullying and aggression. This was followed up with school-year consultation to the teams of teachers in the participating schools. Teachers were provided with instructions in how to track emerging and changing patterns of social interactions and child-groupings in order to prevent the formation of entrenched social roles (e.g. victims and bullies). Assistance was provided also to principals as requested with the creation of school-wide management policy.

The Making Choices program is a school-wide intervention providing teachers with a manual of lessons, sequenced in every grade level to teach social problem-solving skills to children and to reduce peer rejection. The Making Choices training and follow-up includes a two hour school-wide training in curriculum delivery; providing teachers with prepared lesson plans, and supplementary materials such as books and posters and activities for classroom learning centers.

Stability and Change in Attachment and Social Functioning, Infancy to Adolescence:

The primary purpose of the proposed study is to investigate developmental pathways from infant to adolescent attachment security and to evaluate changes in attachment security in relation to social functioning and to changes in contextual factors. Additionally, central questions concern the ways in which security of attachment and working models of attachment predict the nature and quality of friendships and romantic relationships in late adolescence. The study is enrolling the existing longitudinal NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) sample. The 1,000 SECCYD participants have been followed from infancy through mid-adolescence. This study assesses this cohort at age 17.5 years and adds multiple measures of attachment security, social functioning, and contextual factors, collected via face to face interviews and web-based questionnaires. Parents, best friends, and romantic partners of the study adolescents also are participating.

Whole-School Social Dynamics Training (WSDT) program:

This project of the Social Development and Intervention Research Program (SDIRP) at the Center for Developmental Science has developed the Whole-School Social Dynamics Training (WSDT) program to promote the social integration and interpersonal adjustment of elementary students with disabilities. Based on two decades of research on social dynamics and peer relations in inclusive classrooms, we have found that teachers often have difficulty promoting classroom social contexts that are supportive of the behavioral and social needs of students with disabilities. In many classrooms, hierarchical social structures emerge in which some students and peer groups are highly prominent and influential while other students and groups are relegated to less favorable social positions. In such contexts, many students with disabilities are excluded from conventional peer groups, become socially isolated or associate with peers who have problematic characteristics, and are at increased risk for involvement in bullying and victimization. To help teachers promote classroom social contexts that enhance students’ positive social adjustment, we have developed an inservice training and consultation model that teaches teachers how to use natural social dynamic processes to support students’ adjustment in the classroom. It is currently being used in studies to prevent bullying and antisocial behavior. This project adds a component that focuses on the social relations of students with disabilities, to apply it in a school-wide format, and to evaluate the impact of this program on the adjustment of such students in a randomized control trial.