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Centre for Family Research

 


Understanding the links between academic success and children’s socio-emotional wellbeing is an important goal, especially in this year of multiple challenges.  We therefore hope that your school will be willing to take part in a new Economic Social Research Council study that aims to track 500 children from Reception into Year 1, in order to connect the viewpoints of children, parents and teachers.
 

While family support is key to children’s success at school, little is known about how this transition affects families; how families can help children progress from Reception to Year 1; and how parent-school communication supports children’s school readiness. Primary schools face unprecedented challenges this year but given the importance of young children’s wellbeing we hope you will consider allowing us to work with between 4 and 10 pupils in each Reception class at your school. As well as the information below, please click here for a parent information sheet and here for an outline of our coronavirus mitigating protocol.

Giving Consent
If you think your school might be able to help, please complete the consent webform (click here).

(A pdf copy of the teacher participant information shown below can be found here).

What does the study involve for children?

Study activities, facilitated and filmed by trained research assistants/PhD students with experience of working with children, include:

  1. A 30-minute zoom-based set of simple games designed to test children’s developmental skills (e.g., memory, language, self-control) and gather their views about school. Tasks will be delivered in bite-size pieces, interspersed with parent-child play using games that we will send each family before the session.
     
  2. A 10-minute school-based peer-play session involving a freshly cleaned ‘Mobilo’ set.  We will send each family a copy of the video-footage as a small thank you.  These videos may be valuable for teaching (e.g., workshops for teachers), but will only be used for this purpose with explicit parental consent.
What does the study involve for teachers and incentives?

We will send you a pre-prepared email for parents that includes links to further information about the study. For your convenience, we have drafted three emails

  1. one that is aimed at Parent Reps and includes a note about adding the study link to the Parent WhatsApp group
  2. one that is aimed at families eligible for Pupil Premium who will receive a £15 voucher for taking part (other families will receive a £10 voucher)
  3. one that is for general use. 

You can of course, choose to only use this last email. We will also ask teachers and parents to complete brief (10 minute) online ratings of child skills and social relationships.  We will include a small thank you gift for all children. To recognise your expertise and knowledge of the children you teach we will send you a £14 voucher for completing questionnaires for 4 children and an additional £3 for each additional child (maximum of 10 children £32). If we can recruit 10 families from a school, the Reception teacher will receive a £50 voucher to spend on resources for the classroom. A Mobilio set will be gifted to each school (to be used initially in the peer play session).

Below is a summary of the parts of the study, to be delivered both in Reception Year and Y1.  

 Participant

 Setting

 Description

 Parent

 Online

Short survey on parent wellbeing, family relationships and child  adjustment

Child + Parent

Zoom call at  home

  1. Memory Game
  2. Puppet Stories (social understanding)
  3. Language check
  4. Child-Parent Play

Child + Friend

 School

 Peer-play Game

 
How does the study address potential ethical concerns?

The University of Cambridge Psychology Ethics Committee has reviewed this study. All children will be told that it is their choice to take part and that they can stop whenever they wish.  We will offer short breaks to children when needed. In accord with General Data Protection Regulation guidelines, all survey and task data will be kept fully anonymous. The video-footage will be stored securely using the University Secure System, and only the University System Administrator and the research team will have access to the data. Please follow this link for general information about how the University uses personal data (click here).

CPD programme

As a participating school you will have free access to a series of 12 virtual CPD events to inform and stimulate discussion covering a range of topics to support teachers, such as home-school communication, friendships in the classroom, outdoor play, development of social and cognitive skills. The talks in these events will be recorded and made available to both teachers and parents via our study website, along with an accessible summary for each talk. For details please see the following information sheet and this webpage for the event videos.