Dear Colleagues,
At this beginning of 2024, the ECEI is looking ahead. We have two major items on our radar. The first is my planned retirement about a year from now and the identification and onboarding of a new ECEI Director. The second is ECEI’s annual goal setting.
The search has started for the new Director of the ECEI and George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed (GKFF) Chair. I was honored to accept this position 18 years ago and look forward to assisting with the transition to a new colleague in this role. I plan to retire at the end of December 2024. Our plan is to identify a senior faculty colleague at the advanced associate or full professor level by spring, with a July 1, 2024 start date. I plan to “work beside” the new ECEI Director and GKFF Endowed Chair from July 1 through December 31, 2024 to facilitate a smooth transition.
The position announcement was released by the university late fall 2023 and applications are being accepted and screened until a successful candidate is identified. I am not on the search committee and that decision was made intentionally so that I could engage in conversations with interested candidates. If you are interested, please contact me at dhorm@ou.edu. Vickie Lake is chairing the search committee and would be happy to talk with any interested folks as well; her email is vlake@ou.edu. Also, please share this opportunity with your colleagues who may be interested. The position description can be found here. Based on my experience, I can attest that this position has potential for growth and offers a platform to impact early childhood education at local, state, regional, national, and international levels. OU has invested in ECE programming and research and we have grown the number of ECE faculty over the years and all are ready to collaborate on academic programing and research. I have found OU to offer a supportive and collaborative workplace.
Relative to impact, the ECEI sets annual goals, especially for disseminating our work and seeking funding to continue and expand our work. The “Moving Ahead” article in this newsletter summarizes our progress in 2023 which was a fruitful year, especially for ECEI’s external grants submitted and funded. Our success with grants has resulted in a new line of research focused on indoor air quality in ECE settings.
As always, I welcome your suggestions and comments. Please email me (dhorm@ou.edu) or call (918 660-3907).
In closing, I wish you and your colleagues a healthy, happy, and productive 2024!
Sincerely, Diane
MOVING AHEAD
Each year, we set ambitious goals for our team related to the number of publications and grants submitted each year. For 2023, we adjusted those goals from previous years. We planned on submitting 12 articles in peer-reviewed journals and to apply for $350,000 new grants and contracts.
Beth Sullins, assistant director of operations, announced that we made great progress toward these goals in 2023. Our publications goal was partially met, with six published articles. Although falling short of our goal, ECEI researchers produced one technical report, two research briefs based on our publications and have several manuscripts currently in various stages of the review process which should yield publications for 2024. Our Educare Follow-Up Study, published in December of 2022, was circulated in multiple news outlets earlier this year and received a great deal of national attention that continues.
Our grant track record was remarkable this year. We submitted over $4.5 million in grants and contracts, well over our $350K goal. The grants were to a variety of funders, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes for Health, and Oklahoma Partnership for School Readiness’ Oklahoma Clearinghouse for Early Childhood Success. In addition, our success rate was impressive, with two new funding sources secured, and two more anticipated in early 2024.
“This year was both rewarding and challenging for our team," said Sullins. "We wrapped up a seven-year longitudinal study (SEED Study), launched a new partnership with OU HSC researchers to study air quality in early childhood programs, and, like many programs in early childhood, experienced significant staff turnover. We continued to manage several federal grants, including the Happy Teacher Project and three ACF secondary data analysis grants. Yet we still found time to submit several large federal grants and continue publishing our results. We’re proud of the work we’ve done in these areas.”
According to Sullins, the ECEI set new goals for 2024, which should be a year of significant transition and shifting for the ECEI as Dr. Horm retires and a new director is named. In 2024, our new goals are:
- Publish 10 articles in peer-reviewed journals with at least one first-author article per researcher.
- Submit $2,000,000 in grant proposals with at least one new funding award secured.
Our team continues to build the data management capacity of the Institute. We’ve digitized many of our assessments, significantly reducing time spent on error-checking and cleaning data, and we continue to improve our data systems throughout the Institute. This work enables our research staff to focus on data analysis and dissemination.
Sullins concludes, “As we move into our 18th year of research in early childhood, we are excited about the opportunities arising from our new line of research in air quality, expanding our work statewide, while we continue to work closely with our local partners to evaluate and strengthen Tulsa’s early childhood landscape.”
In December, the ECEI Educare Team (Diane Horm, Ye Rang Park, Melissa Acton, and Wonkyung Jang) attended the annual Educare Data Camp at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. They joined other Local Evaluation Partners who partner with each of the 25 Educare sites spread across the US to come together for two days to discuss data collection, measures, findings, data sharing strategies, our program-research partnerships, and potential new analyses and papers.
UPDATES FROM THE FIELD
Our ECEI Research Associates spend a significant amount of time observing and playing games with the young children who take part in our various research studies. Here are a few of our favorite interactions:
Preschool Language Exposure and Use: A Comparison Study of Dual-Language Learners and English Monolingual Children
Ji Young Choi, Craig Van Pay, Constance Beecher
https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2420
This study explored the language experiences of dual language learners (DLL; n = 19) and English monolinguals (EM; n = 13) in preschool classrooms where English is the primary language of instruction and many home languages are present. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis™ system as a primary tool, we quantitatively analysed an average of 34 hours of recordings collected over 5–8 days for each participating child (Mage = 52 months) in six classrooms. Results showed that, during a typical preschool day, DLLs spoke as much as EMs but received less adult talk overall and had more 5-min segments with zero adult–child conversations than their EM peers. Follow-up analyses revealed that teachers generally talked less when children initiated the conversations than when adults initiated the conversations, and this pattern was particularly evident for DLLs. Study implications and future research are discussed.
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