Friday, April 22, 2022
A panel discussion featuring Dale Farran of Vanderbilt University, who recently published a surprising study demonstrating adverse effects of a Tennessee state-funded Preschool Program, alongside Sarah Lawrence Early Childhood Center Director Lorayne Carbon, Art of Teaching Director Denisha Jones, Child Development Director Barbara Schecter, and Graduate Dean Kim Ferguson, to discuss what these findings say about the state of preschool education and the need for developmentally appropriate early childhood experiences for all children.
Panelists
Dale Clark Farran is an emerita professor at Peabody College at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Farran has been involved in research and intervention for high-risk children and youth for all of her professional career. She has conducted research at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the Kamehameha Schools Early Education Project in Hawaii. Dr. Farran is the editor of two books both dealing with risk and poverty, the author of more than 90 journal articles and book chapters and a regular presenter at national conferences. Her recent research emphasis is on evaluating the effectiveness of alternative preschool curricula for preparing children from low-income families to transition successfully to school and longitudinal follow up for long-term effects. Currently she is directing an evaluation of the State of Tennessee’s Prekindergarten program. Most recently she has been involved in identifying early childhood classroom practices most facilitative of children’s outcomes, including coaching tools to improve practice.
Lorayne Carbon has been the Director of the Early Childhood Center since 2003. Lorayne is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo and holds a MSEd from Bank Street College of Education. Her prior work includes teaching Head Start, preschool and kindergarten and directing childcare programs in Westchester County. Lorayne was an adjunct for many years at Westchester Community College, teaching coursework in early childhood foundations and curriculum. She currently facilitates a graduate advisement seminar in the Art of Teaching graduate program and is a faculty advisory member of the SLC Child Development Institute. Supporting children and families within a caring, kind community, coupled with the ability to nurture the progressive, play based program at the Early Childhood Center is what keeps Lorayne excited about the work she does on a daily basis.
Denisha Jones is the Director of the Art of Teaching Program at Sarah Lawrence College. After earning her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from the University of the District of Columbia. Denisha worked as a kindergarten and preschool teacher and a preschool director. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University in 2013. In 2018, she earned her Juris Doctor from the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia. Her research interests include: organizing activist research projects that challenge dominant deficit views of Black children and the Eurocentric curriculum; documenting the value of play as a tool for liberation with an emphasis on global approaches to play; and leveraging the intersection of public policy, social movement lawyering, and critical social justice education to dismantle the neoliberal assault on public education. Her first co-edited book, Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, was published in December 2020 by Haymarket Books.
Barbara Schecter is the Director of the Child Development Graduate Program at Sarah Lawrence College. Barbara is a developmental psychologist with special interest in cultural psychology, language development, and theories of development. She is the author of “Development as an Aim of Education: A Reconsideration of Dewey’s Vision” (Curriculum Inquiry, March 2011), as well as author and researcher on cultural issues in development and metaphoric thinking in children. She has conducted research on the status of imaginative play in kindergarten classrooms, and for the past ten years (prior to covid) has led a weeklong program at SLC on Facilitating Play with Young children.
Kim Ferguson is a developmental and cultural psychologist with special interests in sustainable, community based participatory action research, cultural-ecological approaches to infant and child development, children at risk (children in poverty, HIV/AIDS orphans, children in institutionalized care), health and cognitive development, development in African contexts, and the impact of physical environment on child development. She is the author of articles and book chapters on African and American infants’ language learning, categorization and face processing, the built environment and physical and mental health, and relationships between the quality of southern African orphan care contexts and child development and health.