Ethnocultural Diversity and the Home-to-School Link

Christine M. McWayne, PhD is Professor and former Director of Early Childhood Education in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University, known for her early childhood research on the topics of school readiness, positive parenting and family-school connections within socioculturally diverse, urban communities. She has been the Principal Investigator on research grants from federal agencies (NIH, U.S. DHHS, and NSF) as well as private foundations (Brady Education Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation) through which she has developed measures of family engagement and parenting using emic, mixed-methods approaches and preschool curriculum that fosters family-school partnerships for dual language learners. She has disseminated her work broadly and regularly is invited to serve in leadership roles across the human development and education fields, including serving as Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of School Psychology, and AERA's Educational Researcher. McWayne received her PhD in School, Community, and Clinical-Child Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.Fabienne Doucet, PhD is Associate Professor of Early Childhood and Urban Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development (on leave) and Program Officer at the William T. Grant Foundation. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, Institute for Human Development and Social Change, and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Born in Spain, raised in Haiti, and migrating to the U.S. at the age of ten, Doucet embodies a hybrid identity that is mirrored in her interdisciplinary approach to examining how immigrant and U.S.-born children of color and their families navigate education in the United States. A critical ethnographer, Doucet specifically studies how taken-for-granted beliefs, practices, and values in the U.S. educational system position linguistically, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse children and families at a disadvantage, and seeks active solutions for meeting their educational needs. Doucet has a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from UNC-Greensboro and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation.Susan M. Sheridan, PhD is George Holmes University Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, known for her research on family-school partnerships and family engagement.  She has received numerous grants from NIH and the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Educational Sciences investigating the efficacy of interventions in early childhood and elementary settings that focus on parent engagement, relationally-based family-school partnerships, and social-emotional learning and intervention. She has authored or co-authored close to 200 refereed journal articles, books, book chapters and research briefs on these and related topics. She has received several research and leadership awards across her professional career, including the University of Nebraska's Outstanding Research and Creativity Award (ORCA) and the Senior Scientist Award from Division 16 (School Psychology) of the American Psychological Association. Sheridan served as Editor and Associate Editor of several journals including School Psychology Review and School Psychology Quarterly, and has served in many positions in the fields of school and educational psychology.