This study aimed to determine the program satisfaction of Latina mothers who participated in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program in a large, urban area in the Southwest with the purpose of identifying the specific components of HIPPY that Latina mothers feel best supported them in their role as their child's…

With the push for evidence-informed policy and practice, schools and policy makers are now increasingly encouraged and supported to use and enagage with research evidence. This means that consumers of research will now need to be discerning in judging the quality of research evidence that will inform their decisions. This paper evaluates the…

Recent work suggests that differences in functional brain development are already identifiable in 6- to 9-month-old infants from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. Investigation of early SES-related differences in neuro-cognitive functioning requires the recruitment of large and diverse samples of infants, yet it is often difficult to…

This article suggests that many of the 16-year-olds who don't achieve a C or better in GCSE English may have had parents who didn't recognise the value of talking to them from the moment they were born. It argues that a bringing together of health visitors, Sure Start centres and primary schools could help lift many children out of the cultural…

The MOM Program is an innovative home visiting program whose aim is to empower low-income urban mothers to obtain health and early intervention services for their children. The authors discuss a recent evaluation of the MOM program which sought to examine maternal involvement in the program. The results raise important questions and call for…

Parents of young children participating in either Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part C early intervention or IDEA Part B-619 preschool special education programs were surveyed to obtain a consumer science perspective of the practitioners who were the children's primary service providers. Parents were asked to make judgments of…

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support. Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs. In this paper, the influence of learning theories, the research on children's early literacy development, and…

This study evaluated whether engagement (i.e., attendance and quality of participation) in the Parenting our Children to Excellence (PACE) program predicted positive child and parent outcomes. PACE in an 8-week preventive intervention aimed at parents of preschool children. The study investigated the relation of engagement to outcomes in an…

This study examines changes in parent support and child emergent literacy skills over time as children moved from Head Start into kindergarten. It compares the transactional parent-child influences in families randomly assigned in Head Start to receive an enriched home visiting program that emphasized parents as teachers relative to a control…

Outcome research has shown that early and intensive behavioural intervention (ABA) may improve intellectual, language and adaptive functioning in children with autism. However, research has also indicated that not all ABA provisions are equally effective. Therefore, it may be beneficial to describe the key variables that are common to programmes…

Head Start was designed as a holistic intervention to improve economically disadvantaged, preschool-aged children's cognitive and social development by providing a comprehensive set of educational, health, nutritional, and social services, as well as opportunities for parent involvement (Zigler & Valentine, 1979). Given the current interest in ECE…

Program evaluation practices in early childhood care and education have been underdeveloped compared to the larger field of educational evaluation. The inclination not to include parental views in evaluation is mainly a result of the problem of positive response bias. Researchers who study client satisfaction with educational or child care…

Many intervention programs use home visiting to target enhanced parent-child interactions; however, few studies have examined specific intervention strategies, limiting the potential utility of evaluation results to guide practice, research, or policy effectively. In this paper, we recommend that researchers and program evaluators open the "black…

This secondary analysis of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a randomized study of program participation of children and families in Early Head Start (that is, enrolled in programming prior to children's first birthdays) investigated sociodemographic (race and ethnicity, income level, and maternal education level) and program…

Suggests eight questions that can serve as a framework for determining the extent to which early intervention has accomplished the goals inherent in a family-centered approach. Conceptual issues and methodological considerations associated with documenting these outcomes are presented and recommendations regarding implementation and future…