Infant, Toddler & PreK Research Projects

The LinkB5 Project (LinkB5) includes a data system that informs a key state initiative to measure the quality of teaching and learning in every publicly-funded ECE classroom in the Commonwealth. The project informs policies and practices that strengthen Early Care and Education (ECE) across Virginia. 

The University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development and School of Medicine have partnered with Boston University and Washington University on a five-year study, Social Confounders for Health Outcomes Linked to Education (SCHOOL), to examine factors that might mediate or explain why parental education is associated with children’s health and well-being outcomes. 

This initiative aims to put more effective teachers in early childhood classrooms to ensure that every child has the educational experiences they need to succeed in school and life. 

Funding Source: Stranahan Foundation

STREAMin³ is a comprehensive curriculum model for birth to five that seamlessly blends a focus on academic and social-emotional learning. For more details about the initiative, visit the STREAMin³ website.

The Advancing Effective Interactions and Instruction (AEII) initiative supports teachers in birth-to-five classrooms to provide children with high-quality preschool experiences through individualized coaching and professional development (PD).

As part of the ECMHC program, consultants will work with early childhood teachers and families to promote young children’s healthy social-emotional development, expressing emotions, forming relationships with others, and successfully engaging in the learning environment. Children may need extra support from adults in building these skills due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Early Childhood Education (ECE) Resource Hub is a collection of high-quality, professional development resources that help educators foster young children’s development (birth to five). Created by UVA-CASTL in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Education, the hub aims to provide educators with evidence-based classroom strategies and promote equitable learning opportunities for every child. Hub resources are free to use and are publicly available.

This project uses nationally representative data from three cohorts of Head Start attendees between the 2006 and 2015 school years and a sample of pre-K attendees in one of the nation’s largest school districts from 2016-2017.

MyTeachingPartner is a curriculum for at-risk four-year-olds and just-in-time support system for their teachers.

VKRP measures mathematics, self-regulation, and social skills to complement Virginia's statewide assessment of literacy skills using Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS).

Using a rigorous analysis across multiple points of data, the FP3 project will identify experiences in early learning and elementary programs that foster children’s development in pre-k, transition into kindergarten, and performance through third grade. 

Researchers at The University of Virginia's Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, in partnership with early care and education centers, are developing an online professional development (PD) and practice-based coaching program to increase teachers’ knowledge, skills, and practice in the areas of executive function and mathematics. 

The P2K project is working closely with preschool programs to measure and observe three critical contributors to school readiness:
•    Children's executive function skills (e.g., self-control, working memory, mental flexibility),
•    Children's individual engagement with teachers, peers, and learning tasks, and
•    The quality of children's experiences and interactions in the classroom.

Learning to Objectively Observe Kids (LOOK) is an early childhood mental health consultation model developed in partnership with early childhood education programs as part of funding from the U.S. Department of Education.