Program Announcement: Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education CFDA 84.324A

Program Officer:
Dr. Joan McLaughlin
Joan.McLaughlin@ed.gov
(202) 219-1309

Purpose

Through its research program on Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education (Early Intervention), the Institute intends to support research that contributes to the improvement of developmental outcomes and school readiness of infants, toddlers, and young children (from birth through preschool) with disabilities or at risk for disabilities by: (1) exploring malleable factors¹ (e.g., children's skills, instructional practices, curricula) that are associated with better developmental and school readiness outcomes for children with disabilities or children at risk for disabilities, as well as mediators or moderators of the relations between these factors and child outcomes, for the purpose of identifying potential targets of intervention; (2) developing innovative curricula, instructional approaches, programs, or professional development training to improve developmental outcomes and school readiness for children with disabilities or children at risk for disabilities; (3) evaluating the efficacy of fully developed interventions, programs, curricula, and professional development programs to improve developmental outcomes and school readiness for children with disabilities or children at risk for disabilities; (4) evaluating the effectiveness of interventions, programs, curricula, or professional development programs that are implemented at scale and designed to improve developmental outcomes and school readiness; and (5) developing and validating assessment tools that can be used by practitioners to assess infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities, assess the performance of early intervention and early childhood special education practitioners, or assess systemic practices or policies. Developmental outcomes that may be addressed through this program are cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, adaptive, and physical outcomes.

The long-term outcome of this program will be an array of tools and strategies (e.g., assessment tools, curricula, programs, services, interventions) that have been documented to be effective for improving developmental outcomes or school readiness of infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities.

Background

Almost one million infants, toddlers, and young children (birth through five years old) receive early intervention or early childhood special education services under IDEA (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Relatively little rigorous research, however, has been conducted to evaluate the impact of early interventions or early childhood special education services for improving child outcomes (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000).

The Institute intends for its Early Intervention research program to support research on the development and evaluation of interventions, programs, and curricula that are intended to improve developmental outcomes (cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, adaptive, and physical outcomes) and school readiness for infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities. Through this program, the Institute supports research to develop and validate assessments of school readiness and developmental outcomes for the purposes of screening, diagnosis, progress monitoring, or evaluating outcomes for infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities. Finally, the Institute supports research that examines the relations between malleable factors and school readiness or developmental outcomes for infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities for the purpose of identifying potential targets of intervention. The types of projects that are appropriate for this program are illustrated by, but not limited to, the examples provided below.

The Institute encourages researchers to develop innovative interventions, modify existing interventions, or rigorously evaluate fully developed interventions. Interventions appropriate for research under this program are interventions for infants, toddlers, or young children with high- or low-incidence disabilities, or at risk for disabilities, that are delivered to the child by early intervention specialists, teachers, or related service providers. For example, an applicant might propose to develop a home-based intervention designed to be delivered by speech language pathologists and intended to improve the articulation, expressive vocabulary, and word retrieval skills of toddlers with Down Syndrome or Prader-Willi Syndrome. As another example, applicants might propose to develop interventions designed to be delivered by physical or occupational therapists and intended to improve the gross motor skills (e.g., rolling, sitting, and crawling) and fine motor skills (e.g., reaching and grasping) of infants with disabilities. Interventions may also include training provided to parents to enable them to deliver interventions to their child.

Also appropriate under this topic are applications to develop or evaluate professional development programs intended to improve services to infants, toddlers, or young children with high- or low-incidence disabilities, or at risk for disabilities, and thereby improve developmental outcomes or school readiness. Professional development programs may be for early intervention specialists, teachers, or related service providers. For example, an applicant might propose to evaluate a professional development training program for occupational therapists to improve self-care behaviors of toddlers with visual impairments.

Under the Early Intervention topic, researchers may propose to develop or evaluate systemic interventions intended to directly or indirectly improve developmental outcomes or school readiness of infants, toddlers, or young children with high- or low-incidence disabilities or at risk for disabilities. Examples of systemic interventions include (a) programs to improve the development and implementation of Individualized Family Service Plans or preschoolers' Individualized Education Programs; (b) programs or procedures intended to better coordinate service delivery systems; (c) Response to Intervention approaches; and (d) interventions intended to improve collaboration among families, service providers, and educators and promote smooth transitions as children move from Early Intervention services to preschool settings.

The Institute encourages researchers to explore malleable factors (e.g., instructional practices, young children's behaviors or skills) that are associated with better developmental and school readiness outcomes for infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities, as well as mediators and moderators of the relations between these factors and child outcomes for the purpose of identifying potential targets of intervention. This is translational research intended to inform development of innovative programs, practices, or products to improve outcomes for infants and young children with disabilities. For example, one approach to the identification of malleable factors is for researchers to conduct detailed, quantifiable observational measures of instruction intended to improve school readiness outcomes (e.g., types of instruction, frequency, duration, under what circumstances), and then use the instructional data in conjunction with child characteristics to predict subsequent school readiness outcomes. The goal here is to identify what type or combination of instructional activities is associated with better outcomes and for which children. Researchers who can successfully identify strong correlates of school readiness outcomes could use this information as the basis for developing an intervention. Another approach is to conduct multivariate analyses of existing databases in order to identify practices that are associated with the most positive developmental or school readiness outcomes and to examine factors and conditions that may mediate or moderate the relations between the school readiness outcomes and such practices.

Finally, the Institute is interested in proposals to develop and validate new instruments, or to validate existing instruments, that can be used by practitioners to identify or monitor infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for a disability. For example, researchers may propose to develop and validate outcome measures that can be used not only for measuring infants', toddlers', and young children's development and school readiness, but also for determining program areas that need improvement and for providing data for Federal accountability purposes. Also appropriate for the Early Intervention research program are applications to develop measures to assess practitioner performance or systemic practices and then validate such measures against child outcomes.

References

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Office of Special Education Programs, 27th Annual (2005) Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, vol. 1, Washington, D.C., 2007.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2000) From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development. Jack P. Shonkoff and Deborah A. Phillips, eds. Board on Children, Youth, and Families, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.