The Background and Approach of BRISE

Implementing BRISE in the City of Bremen and evaluating its effects by means of a longitudinal study is an exciting venture. Such a venture promises new insights into how communities might better support child development in disadvantaged families. Realizing its potential requires engaging a large number of people performing different functions and with different areas of expertise. The primary task of the IPN · Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education is to coordinate their collaboration. In terms of research focus, the IPN specializes in domain-specific (emergent) literacy

Researcher of the Bremen subproject regularly visit participating families at home to conduct interviews and behavioural observations. Families also visit the BRISE research laboratory, which has been set up in a child-friendly way. The Bremen subproject is further centrally involved in survey planning, coordination between survey instruments and measurement occasions, data management and release of data, as well as collaboration with support programs and childcare centres. Main research focus lies in the acquisition of objective markers for cognitive and socio-emotional development, brain maturation, and stress experience, and on the relation of these markers with family and societal influences. Assessments designed in Bremen focus on subprocesses underlying learning abilities, as well as abilities that can be investigated longitudinally and in multi-cultural groups.

The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) Berlin is responsible for the interconnection of BRISE with the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), Germany’s biggest panel study. The transferability and generalizability of the results from Bremen will be investigated by comparing data from BRISE with the SOEP.

The education and family economics subproject "Cost-effectiveness analyses within BRISE" examines the efficiency of BRISE's individual early childhood education and care programs as well as of the intervention chain as a whole. Such efficiency analyses make it possible to compare the impact of programs to the resources that have gone into them. Efficiency analyses require, on the one hand, detailed annual recording of cost flows in collaboration with the responsible providers of the BRISE programs. On the other hand, benefit streams are causally attributed to the use of the programs using sound quasi-experimental impact analyses. These impact analyses will be based on both the collected BRISE survey data and administrative data. This method promises to catch up with Anglo-American intervention studies, many of which have been accompanied by similarly detailed efficiency analyses.

In cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (Subproject Developmental Psychology/NEPS), the University of Bamberg contributes to BRISE with innovative measures from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). These instruments are used in BRISE with the aim of comparing the development of BRISE children with children of the representatively drawn NEPS infant cohort. This subproject focuses in particular on the incorporation and implementation of observational and socio-emotional measures, such as the video recording of semi-standardized play situations between mother and child. In addition, this subproject investigates early domain-specific precursor skills.

In cooperation with the University of Bamberg (Subproject Developmental Psychology/NEPS), the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories contributes to BRISE with innovative measures from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). These instruments are used in BRISE with the aim of comparing the development of BRISE children with children of the representatively drawn NEPS infant cohort. This subproject focuses primarily on survey measures as well as the incorporation and implementation of tablet-based competence measures of the NEPS, such as tests of vocabulary, mathematics and science competencies. Moreover, this subproject examines early domain-general precursor skills.

The description of early childhood development on multiple dimensions is the main focus of the subproject headed by Prof. Dr. Sabina Pauen. Among other methods, the well-established documentation instrument MONDEY (Milestones of Normal Development in Early Years) is used. MONDEY is based on parental assessments of children's competencies in different areas (gross and fine motor skills, perception and thinking, language, social relationships, self-regulation, emotions). Additional assessments in the behavioral laboratory and in the EEG laboratory serve the standardized recording of early childhood competencies under controlled conditions. This multi-method approach promises to provide valid information about the development of children's abstraction skills, executive control processes (attentional control, cognitive flexibility and working memory), social-cognitive competencies, but also children's general developmental status. Corresponding data can serve as predictors as well as outcome measures.

Within the Bremen Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development (BRISE) the subproject headed by Prof. Dr. Yvonne Anders is investigating the influences of early childhood quality in preschools in combination with facility characteristics and professional competencies of educational staff on child development. Furthermore, the attitudes and beliefs of parents as well as family activities and interactions are the focus of our research interest, for which a survey instrument for reading a picture book will be developed. The central goal is to identify summative as well as compensatory effects of home and institutional qualities in combination with early interventions on child development.

The BRISE team at the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education is addressing the effects of the developmental support realized in BRISE on the school readiness of the participating children. To answer this question, competencies that are known to predict later school achievement are accessed in spring before school entry. In detail, we consider domain-specific precursors of literacy and arithmetic development, as phonological skills, letter knowledge, and early numeracy skills. On the other hand, the impact of BRISE on general competencies relevant for school readiness is addressed, as children’s language competence and different facets of self-regulation.