Exploring the Long-term Outcomes of an Early Childhood Intervention Programme in Ireland.
Author(s):
Shirley Martin
Conference:
ECER 2009
Network:
5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

05 SES 07, Urban Education & Children and Youth at Risk

Paper Session

Time:
2009-09-29
15:30-17:00
Room:
JUR, HS 15
Chair:
Ruth Leitch

Contribution

Early childhood education has increasingly been identified as a mechanism to alleviate educational disadvantage in areas of social exclusion. In particular, state provided early childhood intervention programmes such as Head Start in the US and Early Start in Ireland have been established to tackle educational disadvantage for children experiencing poverty and socio-economic inequality. This study aims to add to the understanding of the nature and distribution of long-term benefits from early childhood intervention programmes and provides a detailed analysis of both the cognitive and non-cognitive progress of children from an early childhood intervention programme in Ireland, the Early Start project. The study is also concerned with the contribution of Early Start to developing social capital and cultural capital for families who have participated in the programme. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory has been drawn on as a theoretical framework for this study and the research sought to explore programme outcomes from a systems theory perspective and to develop a holistic picture of the programme participants’ social and educational development. According to Garbarino and Ganzel (2000) an ecological perspective on development demands a focus on both the interactions between the child and the immediate social environment, and an examination of the interplay of the broader social systems on the child’s social environment. Relevant contexts in this study include programme impact on the individual child, impacts on the child's family, school and community as well as the influence of the policy context on the individual child. There are a number of research questions which guided the data collection for this research. 1. Does participation in Early Start have an impact on academic attainment as measured by the State exam results at age 15 years? 2. What are the long-term social outcomes (such as community behaviour and attitude to school) of participation in Early Start? 3. Does participation in Early Start have an impact on the students’ self-esteem? 4. What is the impact of participation in Early Start on parental participation in and parental attitude to education? 5. How has Early Start impacted on the local community with respect to its contribution in building up social and cultural capital? This paper will examine one particular aspect of that study in relation to the outcomes of programme participation for students and relates to research questions one and two listed above.

Method

The study uses a multi-method research design involving students, parents, teachers and participants involved in education in the broader local community. This study used a multiple-group design involving one group of students who attended the Early Start programme, The Study Group, while the other group has not attended Early Start, The Comparison Group. The Study Group constitutes 20 students and their parents who attended Early Start in 1994-5 and were aged 14-15 years when the data was collected for this study in 2006. The Comparison Group constitute 15 students and parents who enrolled in formal education in 1994-5 and did not have the opportunity to enrol in Early Start. The comparison group matched the study group in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status and would initially have met the selection criteria for participation in the Early Start programme. The methods of data collection were identical for both groups.

Expected Outcomes

Parents and teachers in the study identified aspects of school readiness as the main benefit of programme participation and both were very positive about the role of Early Start in preparing children for the transition to formal school. Programme participation was identified by teachers and parents as contributing to earlier identification of speech and language difficulties. Early Start also appears to have improved the students’ academic attainment in Maths and Science at age 15 years and these finding may demonstrate the importance of early childhood intervention in supporting the acquisition of numeracy. The Study Group were rated more positively by their current teachers in their acquisition of social skills and goal setting. The Study Group students were more likely to perceive college attendance as something which was very important to their parents which might indicate that these parents have higher aspirations for their children in terms of educational attainment.

References

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Author Information

Shirley Martin
University College Cork
Applied Social Studies
Cork
97

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