Enhancing immigrant families' mental health through the promotion of structural and community-based support.

Immigrant communities in the United States are diverse and have many assets. Yet, they often experience stressors that can undermine the mental health of residents. To fully promote mental health and well-being among immigrant communities, it is important to emphasize population-level policies and practices that may serve to mitigate stress and prevent mental health disorders. In this paper, we describe the stressors and stress experienced by immigrant families, using Sunset Park, Brooklyn as an example. We discuss ways to build structures and policies in support of equitable environments that promote mental health at the population level and enable families and their children to thrive.

Problem behaviors at the classroom-level and teacher-child interaction quality in Head Start programs: Moderation by age composition.

This study explored the link between classroom-level problem behaviors and teacher-child interaction quality in 307 Head Start preschool classrooms. The moderating role of the classroom's age composition (e.g., 3- and 4-year-olds versus 4-year-olds only) also was examined. Using a dataset of 852 3-year-old children and 1114 4-year-old children, classroom-level problem behaviors were operationalized using teacher reports of children's problem behaviors. Results indicated that classroom-level problem behaviors, specifically oppositional/aggressive and internalizing behavior, were associated with lower teacher-child interaction quality (i.e., emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support). In contrast, classroom-level hyperactivity was only negatively related to classroom instructional support. Moderation results indicated that high-levels of classroom-level activity were related to lower-levels of teacher-child interaction quality, but for 4-year-old only classrooms. The results of this study have implications for practice and policy.

Re-imagining Early Childhood Education and School Readiness for Children and Families of Color in the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond.

High quality and culturally responsive early childhood education and care (ECEC) for young children before kindergarten is seen as a way to ensure that all children enter school ready to learn. ECEC is even more crucial in the context of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the disproportionate burden of trauma and stress borne by families of color in disinvested neighborhoods. Remote learning and repeated disruptions to in-person instruction as protocols shifted during waves of the pandemic placed an extra strain on families, and may have increased educational disparities in the U.S. Taken together, these challenges have implications for children's school readiness due to their impact on opportunities for learning at home and in the classroom. This paper explores how ECEC programs can be strengthened to better meet children's needs, and ways in which future research can shed light on these important issues.

Supporting immigrant caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Continuous adaptation and implementation of an early childhood digital engagement program.

Digital messaging programs have the potential to be a powerful, low-cost, technological tool to support multiple facets of caregivers' knowledge, and implementation of developmentally appropriate caregiver-child activities among diverse immigrant populations. However, involving caregivers and community stakeholders in the cultural and linguistic tailoring of interventions to optimize utilization and engagement may be critical to ensuring messaging programs' usability and acceptability. The purpose of this mixed-method study was to use the dynamic adaptation process (DAP) within an Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework to examine the implementation of a digital messaging program, developed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, aimed at providing Spanish-, English-, and Mandarin-speaking immigrant caregivers with caregiver-child activities that supported children's development and caregivers' knowledge. Building upon the EPIS framework, using DAP, we assessed the feasibility and acceptability of a messaging program via short message service or multimedia message service, WeChat, and Remind and webinar program during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study illustrated how a digital messaging program is a feasible mechanism for sharing developmentally and culturally appropriate information with immigrant caregivers. In addition, the use of the DAP and the EPIS framework allowed us to continuously track the process of cultural adaptation, identify barriers and facilitators of the outreach program, and examine how implementation unfolded across all three groups of caregivers.

Promoting EF With Preschool Interventions: Lessons Learned From 15 Years of Conducting Large-Scale Studies.

In the past two decades, a growing number of early childhood interventions that aim to improve school readiness have also targeted children's executive function (EF), building on the theory that promoting EF skills in preschool may play a key role in reducing the substantial gaps in school readiness and later achievement associated with family income. Despite the expansion of school readiness interventions across preschool, research evidence is mixed regarding what works to promote EF development and the impact of these interventions on children's EF skills, and subsequently, their academic and behavioral outcomes. This paper reviews four intervention approaches designed to support school readiness that may also improve children's EF skills by: (a) encouraging adaptive classroom behaviors, (b) improving social-emotional learning, (c) promoting play and direct training of EF skills, and (d) improving cognitive skills related to EF. We describe program effects from rigorous trials testing these approaches, including summarizing the takeaways from four large-scale intervention research studies conducted by the authors, involving over 5,000 children. We conclude by exploring open questions for the field and future directions for research and intervention program development and refinement.

Exploring Diurnal Cortisol Rhythms of Kindergarten Teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine.

Teachers' stress is a dynamic combination of the individual teacher's characteristics and characteristics of the classroom and school environment. To date, there are limited studies on teachers' stress in the context of lower-middle-income countries (LMICs), where working conditions as well as general political and economic circumstances might pose a considerable threat for teachers' well-being. This study explores whether certain combinations of individual and environmental experiences of teachers in LMICs may result in stress, assessed as patterns of diurnal cortisol rhythm. Participants were kindergarten teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine, two LMICs in Europe. Latent Profile Analysis identified three subgroups of teachers that significantly differed on teachers' education and experience. Preliminary results of Latent Growth Modeling suggested differences between profiles in baseline waking cortisol and patterns of diurnal decline. Teachers in the profile that was characterized by the longest experience working in the field but the lowest level of education showed blunted cortisol in the morning and a flatter slope; a pattern that could indicate a maladaptive cortisol response. Future directions for studying stress processes among teachers in LMICs and implications for policy and practice on how to support teacher well-being in low-resource contexts are discussed.

Commentary: New Directions in Developmentally Informed Intervention Research for Vulnerable Populations.

This special section of Child Development brings together experts in developmental science and intervention research to incorporate current evidence on resilience for vulnerable populations and give concrete suggestions for action and research. This commentary synthesizes the contributions of the articles, noting themes such as simultaneous attention to multiple risk, protective, and promotive processes; integrating new principles from clinical and therapeutic interventions; and adapting intervention approaches for new populations. It then describes additional directions for interventions to maximize resilience, including approaches that address social psychological processes, issues related to demographic and other forms of diversity, policy-related individual behaviors, and sequenced interventions across the life span. It also gives suggestions for integrating implementation science on expansion and scale with behavioral intervention science.