A policeman sees a man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. The man says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the man replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the man replies, “this is where the light is.”
We know a lot about how children develop. Developmental science has a rich history of studying a range of skills and competencies (e.g., problem-solving, social/relational skills, self-regulation, etc.) that children need to be successful across the lifecourse. Nevertheless, we have a “streetlight effect” problem in our field, where we persistently judge the efficacy of early childhood interventions based on a small set of measures targeting a narrow range of skills (e.g., academic knowledge, behavior problems, etc.). This myopic focus has led to a limited understanding of how our interventions shape the skills that children -- especially those from minoritized and otherwise under-represented communities -- need to be successful in the 21st century.
With funding from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, researchers from the SEED Lab are teaming up with collaborators from Northwestern's DEEP Lab to redefine early childhood development using evidence from both the existing scientific literature and from the lived experiences of non-academic child development experts (e.g., parents, teachers, clinicians, community leaders). We aim to use this evidence to produce a construct map for defining early childhood development that is more comprehensive and inclusive of the diverse range of skills that children need in the preschool period.
Check back soon for more details on this new and emerging work!