Faculty Bibliography

Efforts to bolster the school readiness of Latine children from low-income and immigrant homes have focused on fostering parent engagement in children's education. In assessing parent engagement, most measures center school-based activities in alignment with middle class, European American dominant norms, missing the multiple ways that Latine families engage with their children to support their educational experiences and development. Additionally, studies of predictors of Latine parent engagement have mainly focused on parent demographic and linguistic factors, limiting our understanding of how to support parent engagement equitably. Using a measure of parent engagement sensitive to culturally contextualized behaviors of Latine families, this study describes the ways Latine parents living in historically disinvested neighborhoods in New York City engage in their children's learning at home and in school during a nationally charged anti-immigrant, anti-Latine sociopolitical climate. We also examine whether immigration enforcement threat and parent health are associated with Latine family engagement in home and school-based activities. Data come from a larger study conducted with Latine parents (n=103; 42% immigrant) of pre-K children. Descriptive results indicate that despite a charged sociopolitical context, levels of engagement in children's education and development across multiple domains were comparable with mean levels established by the developers. Findings from regression analyses demonstrated that above and beyond demographic, linguistic and financial factors, immigration enforcement threat and parent health were associated with aspects of family engagement in young children's learning among Latine families in low-income communities. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Efforts to bolster the school readiness of Latinx children from low-income homes in the United States have focused on fostering parent engagement in children"™s education. Measurement of parent engagement in early childhood however, has been critiqued for having too narrow a focus on school-based involvement and missing other aspects of Latinx parent engagement. Using a recently developed culturally sensitive assessment of Latinx parent engagement, we test for associations between dimensions of Latinx parent engagement in learning and indicators of school readiness in a diverse sample of Latinx families (n = 114). We find significant associations between multiple dimensions of Latinx parent engagement and indicators of child school readiness. In addition to promoting parent-teacher connections, efforts to support Latinx school readiness equitably are encouraged to attend to various culturally relevant aspects of Latinx parent engagement in early childhood. In particular, investing in programing that supports parents"™ well-being and capacity for home-based engagement in learning may be a promising way to support the school readiness of Latinx children living in historically disinvested neighborhoods.

A large body of research has documented racial/ethnic disparities in childhood obesity in the United States (US) but less work has sought to understand differences within racial groups. Longitudinal studies are needed to describe BMI trajectories across development, particularly for Black children from immigrant families who have been underrepresented in childhood obesity research. The current study utilizes BMI data collected longitudinally from ages 5 to 8 years and growth mixture modeling to (1) identify and visualize growth patterns among Black children from primarily Caribbean immigrant families, and (2) to compare these patterns to growth trajectories among Black children from US-born families. First, we identified four classes or trajectories of growth for Black children from immigrant families. The largest trajectory (70% of the sample) maintained non-overweight throughout the study period. A second trajectory developed overweight by age 8 (25%). Two small trajectory groups demonstrated high rates of moderate and severe obesity-i.e., specifically, a trajectory of accelerated weight gain ending in moderate/severe obesity (3%), and a trajectory of early severe obesity with BMI decreasing slightly with age (2%). We identified a very similar four class/trajectory model among Black children from US-born families, and compared the model to the one for children from immigrant families using multi-group growth mixture modeling. We found that the patterns of growth did not differ significantly between the populations, with two notable exceptions. Among Black children from immigrant families, ∼ 5% were classified into the two heavier BMI trajectories, compared to ∼ 11% of children from US-born families. Additionally, among children with an accelerated weight gain trajectory, children from immigrant families had lower BMIs on average at each time point than children from US-born families. These findings describe the multiple trajectories of weight gain among Black children from immigrant families and demonstrate that although these trajectories are largely similar to those of Black children from US-born families, the differences provide some evidence for lower obesity risk among Black children from immigrant families compared to Black children from US-born families. As this study is the first to describe BMI trajectories for Black children from immigrant families across early and middle childhood, future work is needed to replicate these results and to explore differences in heavier weight trajectories between children from immigrant and US-born families.

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.

Breakfast consumption among youth is associated with improved diet quality, weight, cognition, and behavior. However, not all youth in the United States consume breakfast. Participation in the School Breakfast Program (SBP) is also low relative to the lunch program. Universal free breakfast (UFB) policies have been implemented to increase breakfast participation by reducing cost and stigma associated with the SBP. This study examined whether a UFB policy implemented in a school district in the Southeast US was associated with changes in breakfast participation, school attendance, and student weight. A longitudinal study of secondary data was conducted, and a mixed modeling approach was used to assess patterns of change in SBP participation. General linear models were used to assess attendance and student weight change. On average, across schools in the district, there was an increase in breakfast participation of 4.1 percentage points following the implementation of the policy. The change in breakfast participation in schools differed by the percent of students in the school who received school meals for free or at a reduced price, the percent of students of color, and the grade level of the school. Increases in SBP participation were not associated with significant changes in attendance or weight. UFB policies may be effective in increasing participation in the SBP.

Emotion knowledge (EK) is a malleable set of skills that is central to social interactions and school success during early childhood. The current study describes an anti-racist approach to adapting an EK measure that assesses knowledge of facial expressions to be ecologically valid for young children of color attending pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) programs in a large urban school district. This approach involved (1) attending to race/ethnicity in selection of visual stimuli, (2) ensuring appropriate translation and language for administration, and (3) exploring the functioning of the measure within a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse group of children. A total of 235 children (67.4% Latinx, 14.1% non-Latinx Black, 7.1% non-Latinx White, 7.8% Asian, 3.6% another racial/ethnicity) were assessed in English (74%) or Spanish (26%) during the fall of pre-K (mean age = 4.4). Both English and Spanish versions appear to have similar reliability, although accuracy levels were lower when administered in Spanish. No differences in mean accuracy scores were found across racial/ethnic groups or for boys versus girls. This study contributes to the growing literature necessary to advance anti-racist research in affective science.

Families of color living in historically disinvested neighborhoods face a multitude of health disparities which have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and the resulting strategies to mitigate its transmission. School closure, which occurred with little warning and few, if any, resources for preparation, disrupted multiple aspects of families' lives; these disruptions are anticipated to adversely impact mental health and well-being. The current study aims to advance understanding of the experiences of families of young children of color during the pandemic by utilizing a natural experiment design to test impact on child and parent mental health and sleep in the context of COVID-19 related school closure among families in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Data from this study come from an ongoing study of 281 families of color enrolled in 41 pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs in neighborhoods across New York City (NYC). In NYC, school closure occurred on March 16, 2020, during a data collection period involving phone surveys with parents; the quasi-experimental design allows for comparison of the 198 families who had completed the survey prior to March 16, and the 83 families who completed the survey after March 16, using identical protocols and procedures. Results demonstrate poorer mental health among parents surveyed after school closure as compared to before school closure. No differences were found for parent sleep, child mental health, or child sleep. Implications of this work highlight the need for structural and systemic supports for families faced with compounding stressors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closure.

Many children in immigrant households endure unique stressors shaped by national, state, and local immigration policies and enforcement activity in the United States. Qualitative studies find that during times of heightened immigration enforcement, children as young as 3 years of age show signs of behavioral distress related to national anti-immigrant sentiment and the possibility of losing a parent. Using multiple sources of data from 168 racially and ethnically diverse families of children in pre-Kindergarten, the present study examined variability in perceived levels of immigration enforcement threat by parental immigrant status and ethnicity. This study examined associations between immigration enforcement threat and child mental health, self-regulation, and executive functioning and whether parent immigrant status or child gender moderates these associations. We found substantial variability in perceived immigration threat, with immigrant parents and Latinx parents reporting significantly greater levels of immigration threat compared to nonimmigrant parents and non-Latinx parents. Immigration enforcement threat was associated with greater child separation anxiety and overanxious behaviors, and lower self-regulation among boys and girls and among children of immigrant and U.S.-born parents. In contrast to our hypothesis, immigration enforcement threat was associated with higher self-regulation according to independent assessor ratings. Educators and healthcare providers working with young children from immigrant and Latinx households should be aware of the disproportionate stress experienced by immigrant and Latinx families due to a xenophobic sociopolitical climate marked by heightened immigration enforcement threat and racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).