Abstract
The Abecedarian Approach was created in the early 1970s to serve as the ‘educational treatment’ in the Abecedarian Project, a rigorous randomized controlled trial for children of disadvantaged families. The elements of the Abecedarian Approach are Language Priority, Enriched Caregiving, Conversational Reading, and LearningGames®. The Approach spans from birth to school entry and can be delivered through group child care, family child care, playgroups, and home visits. Preschool research findings showed positive effects on cognition as early as 18 months of age. School research showed improvement in reading and math achievement that persisted throughout the entire period of school enrollment. Long-term benefits for this disadvantaged sample included a fourfold improvement in their rate of university graduation. Adult-age follow-up disclosed unexpected benefits in life course variables including better health, more equitable social decision making, and reduced criminal behavior. Research on this classic early childhood approach is continuing today, and the results of two of those contemporary studies are reported in this issue of International Journal of Early Childhood.
Highlights
In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was known that children from low-resource or socially disadvantaged families in the USA typically were segregated by economic circumstances in schools
Researchers, educators, and public leaders began to focus on significant social policy questions associated with this issue: How could children from low-resource families achieve greater success in school? Could a positive early childhood experience be the key to this success? This paper describes the Abecedarian: An Early Childhood Education Approach that has
To further investigate the power of enriched early childhood experiences, a research team at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina created the Abecedarian Approach to serve as the ‘educational treatment’ in the Abecedarian Project, a rigorous randomized controlled trial (Ramey et al 1976)
Summary
In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was known that children from low-resource or socially disadvantaged families in the USA typically were segregated by economic circumstances in schools. These children frequently had poorer school performance than their more advantaged peers and most often did not achieve their full potential (Coleman et al 1966). Abecedarian Approach, an important early childhood program developed in the USA in the 1970s, research on its effectiveness, and current directions. It reviews the success of this program to make a difference in the lives of children. The investigators hypothesized that providing theory-based, active, contingent experiences to children who are vulnerable or disadvantaged across the earliest years of development would significantly improve their achievement once they reached school
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