Abstract
ParentCorps is an enhancement to pre-Kindergarten designed to reduce racial and socioeconomic disparities in children’s educational and health outcomes. It includes multiple components to bolster parent and teacher capacity to support children’s development in the face of early childhood adversity, including poverty, racism, discrimination, and immigration-related stress. Two trials with primarily Black and Latinx children in schools in historically disinvested neighborhoods document positive impacts of ParentCorps for children’s achievement, mental health, and physical health. The theory of action specifies the following as essential processes through which ParentCorps professional development and parenting program strengthen adult capacity: building authentic relationships, honoring culture, understanding race and racism, translating the science of early childhood development, and practicing self-reflection. The third component, Friends School, directly promotes children’s social-emotional learning. Together, these three ParentCorps components support early childhood self-regulation. This chapter identifies priorities for future research to understand core pathways that account for positive outcomes and to optimize impact at scale to realize the promise of early childhood family-centered programs.
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Dawson-McClure, S. et al. (2022). Understanding ParentCorps’ Essential Elements for Building Adult Capacity to Support Young Children’s Health and Development. In: Bierman, K.L., Sheridan, S.M. (eds) Family-School Partnerships During the Early School Years. Research on Family-School Partnerships. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74617-9_4
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