Early Childhood Development
Despite years of research and public discourse about child development and related issues, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the public, policy makers and the media still do not understand the crucial issues underlying this debate, nor do advocates and policy makers know the best way to incorporate the science of early childhood development in order to promote positive change for children.
Since 2001, FrameWorks has been working on this topic -- most recently in collaboration with the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, the National Forum on Early Childhood Program Evaluation, and the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. This multi-year, multi-discipline study is exploring how communications about early child development (ECD) influences public attitudes and policy preferences. Experimental research is currently underway which examines the impact of exposure to central elements of the core scientific story about ECD - as developed by the collaborators - on people’s support for programs and policies associated with the developmental perspective.
Beginning in 2009, with funding from the Norlien Foundation, FrameWorks began a cross-cultural study comparing patterns of thinking in Alberta, Canada about early child development, and child and family mental health with those documented in the U.S.
Funders | Recommendations | Research | Research with Policymakers | Related Reports | Products & Tools
Our Funders
FrameWorks' research and message development on early childhood development has been generously supported by the Benton Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Working Group on Public Dissemination and Social Policy of the MacArthur Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development, the A.L. Mailman Foundation, the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, and the Norlien Foundation.
Our Recommendations
Message Memo
Talking Early Child Development and Exploring the Consequences of Frame Choices This comprehensive strategic message memo synthesizes the research findings and makes recommendations for how to apply these findings in the context of FrameWorks' total research on early childhood development.
Message Briefs
Framing Early Child Development Message Brief
This Message Brief distills the research findings and framing
strategies explained in the Message Memo, and offers some do’s and
don’ts for communicators on the issue.
Talking to Business Leaders About Early Child Development
This Message Brief explains FrameWorks’ analyses of frame effects
specific to business leaders. The Brief explains the factors that shape
business leaders’ understanding of early child development and the
framing strategies that improve business leaders’ support for policies
that encourage healthy development.
Framing Child Poverty By Telling A Development Story This Message Brief recounts and interprets data on the ways that exposure to the core story of child development influences support for policies designed to remediate child and family poverty.
Our Research
Quantitative Research
Refining the Core Story of Early Childhood Development: The Effects of Science and Health Frames. (2009)
This report summarizes results from the latest iteration of FrameWorks' experimental research focused on extending existing communications strategies on the science of ECD and the efficacy of adding health as a dimension of those communications.
Telling the Science Story: An Exploration of Frame Effects on Public Understanding and Support For Early Child Development (2008)
This experimental study examines the impact of five key features of the core story of early childhood development on public attitudes and policy preferences.
Qualitative Research
Determinism Leavened by Will Power: The Challenge of Closing the Gaps Between the Public and Expert Explanations of Gene-Environment Interaction (2009) Looking at qualitative data gathered from interviews with scientists and members of the American general public, this report maps the gaps between how Americans think and experts talk about the determinants of individual outcomes and differences, and the importance of genes and environments in how children develop. These gaps represent specific challenges in communicating about the relationship between genes and environments.
Caught between Osmosis and Environments: Mapping the Gap between the Expert and the Public Understandings of the Role of Executive Function (2009) While developmental scientists understand the importance of proper development of executive function abilities, a notion of this concept and its constituent skills is largely absent from both the public consciousness and policy debates. This report analyzes qualitative data gathered from interviews with scientists and the general public to map the gaps between how Americans think and experts talk about the skills and abilities that comprise the concept of executive function. These gaps represent specific challenges in communicating about executive function.
Conveying a New Understanding of Interaction: Findings from Interviews and Talkback Testing (2006) This report shares the results from a series of cognitive interviews with 18 informants and Talkback Testing with 54 informants. Researchers found that without a simple and robust explanation of child development, much of this core story is 'lost in translation.' Suggestions for reframes and communications techniques are provided.
The Whole Child - Parents and Policy: A Meta-Analysis of Opinion Data Concerning School Readiness, Early Childhood and Related Issues (2002)
This report reviews and analyzes existing public opinion data on parenting and child development in order to provide a context for understanding public support and opposition to proposed child policy interventions and remedies. In addition, this report analyzes public opinion in response to four common issue frames in public discourse on early childhood: Day Care, School Readiness, Crime Prevention, and Welfare/Poverty.
Promoting School Readiness and Early Child Development: Findings from Cognitive Elicitations (2002)
This report explains findings from research that investigated whether the concept of "school readiness," a frame widely promoted by advocates and experts, can be effective at engaging public interest and action on a variety of children’s issues. In sum, the research found there to be a number of problematic associations triggered by the "school readiness" frame, and suggests alternative strategies for more effective framing.
What Kids Need and What Kids Give Back: A Review of Communications Materials Used by Early Childhood Development Advocates To Promote School Readiness and Related Issues (2002)
This paper reports on a strategic framing analysis of advocates' communications strategies. The goal of the study was to identify the patterns advocates’ framing strategies, and to compare these with what research – both from the larger FrameWorks Institute project and from major traditions in the cognitive and social sciences – suggests might work.
Hearts Souls and Minds: An Analysis of Qualitative Research Regarding Communicating School Readiness and other Child Development Policies (2002)
This paper explains findings from 12 focus groups that investigated whether several key early childhood frames in public discourse - “school readiness,” “ready to learn,” - convey the same constellation of issues and understandings to the lay public that these frames convey to experts. Further, the research investigated whether new models of framing child development may be more effective than the frames currently in play.
Simplifying Early Childhood Development: Findings from Cognitive Analysis and Phone Interviews (2003)
This paper reports on a preliminary effort to establish “simplifying models” that would bring lay members of the public closer in line with the perspectives of experts about what children need for their healthy development. In FrameWorks’ research, simplifying models are metaphorical explanations that distill expert knowledge in terms that allow lay publics to understand and engage in issues in more productive ways.
Moving the Public Beyond Familiar Understandings of Early Childhood Development (2003)
This paper explains the research that tested which of a host of candidate metaphorical models were most effective at distilling expert knowledge for lay publics. Several “simplifying models” of developmental processes are suggested here as core elements for framing early childhood issues.
Related Reports
Invisible Structures of Opportunity: How Media Depictions of Race Trivialize Issues of Diversity and Disparity (2009) This analysis was supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to examine the various ways in which race is presented to readers, directly and indirectly, in the nation’s news media. More specifically, it analyzes media coverage of race over the course of one year in four issue areas: health, education, early child development and employment. The report lays out the dominant frames that are applied to race in these areas and demonstrates how these frames constrain public solutions.
Our Products and Tools
Talking About Early Childhood Development- is a comprehensive toolkit containing responses to frequently asked questions, sample op-eds and letters to the editor, case studies and other communications resources. Please click here to request log-on information.
A New Dominant Frame: "The Imperiled Child" This eZine examines the way the news media misrepresents the lives of American children- as a portrait of children in grave danger and in need of protection.
