BOCYF Projects

Culture and Early Education: Assessing and Applying the Knowledge Base

Publications: Cultural Diversity and Early Education: Report of a Workshop (1994)

In November 1993, the Board on Children and Families (now the Board on Children, Youth, and Families) convened the Workshop on Culture and Early Education: Assessing and Applying the Knowledge Base, with two primary aims: to inform educators about the research base that is available to guide decisions about how best to educate children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and in particular, to distinguish whether and how one might expect optimal early childhood education for diverse classrooms to differ from that for culturally homogeneous classrooms; and to urge more scholars, including those who conduct basic research on early learning processes, to address the vast agenda of unanswered questions regarding the early education of culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children.

Participants were selected to represent the range of perspectives that exist regarding the most critical dimensions of diversity, and to represent a range of relevant disciplines. A report, Cultural Diversity and Early Education: Report of a Workshop, was released in 1994.

Major support for this activity was provided by the Kellogg Endowment Fund of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.