A Healthy Childhood in a Changing Climate | Askwith Education Forum
The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Askwith Education Forum recently brought together early childhood & health experts – including the Center’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Lindsey Burghardt, and education & public health advocate, Chelsea Clinton – for a conversation on the impacts of environmental change on early childhood development. Learn more about actions to respond to, mitigate & lessen the effects of climate change and help ensure all children can get a healthy start.
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How Early Childhood Experiences Affect Lifelong Health and Learning
How is ongoing, severe stress and adversity in early childhood connected to chronic disease in adults? And, what can we do about it? In this animated video, learn what the latest science tells us about how early experiences affect not only early learning and school readiness, but also lifelong health.
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Science X Design: Three Principles to Improve Outcomes for Children
Moving forward as a society depends on children developing to their full potential, and the science of early childhood development can help us figure out the best ways to make this happen. In this video, learn about three principles we’ve identified that community leaders, policymakers, and practitioners can use as a guiding star for designing […]
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Stress and Resilience: How Toxic Stress Affects Us, and What We Can Do About It
In this video, learn more about what toxic stress is, how it can affect you, and what you can do—both by yourself and in connection with your community—to deal with what you’re experiencing. Because even when toxic stress is caused by things you can’t control, like poverty, abuse, or racism, there are still ways both big and small to help you cope.
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The Power of Playful Learning | Askwith Education Forum
The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Askwith Education Forum brought together experts in the fields of education and play in October 2019, including the Center’s Director, Dr. Jack Shonkoff. This session focuses on creating formal educational settings (pre-K through high school) where playful learning thrives. Watch their panel discussion on how we create educational settings that bring “school” and “play” together.
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Play in Early Childhood: The Role of Play in Any Setting
In this video, learn more about how play can foster children’s resilience to hardship, and how the complex interactions involved when children play help build their brains.
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How-to: 5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return
This how-to video breaks down serve and return interactions into 5 simple steps and features adults and young children doing each step together.
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Urban Thinkscape: Transforming cityscapes into opportunities for playful learning
Urban Thinkscape transforms neighborhood spaces into opportunities for playful learning by infusing them with activities that challenge the mind while encouraging caregiver-child interactions.
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How Children and Adults Can Build Core Capabilities for Life
Every day we take on the ordinary, sometimes challenging, tasks of work, school, parenting, relationships, and just managing our busy lives. How do we navigate these tasks successfully? And what can send us off course? Science offers an explanation.
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The Case for Science-Based Innovation in Early Childhood
Center Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., describes the mission of the Center on the Developing Child and its vision for using science to innovate in the early childhood field and fundamentally change the lives of children facing adversity. As he states in the video: “In this field, where we have made progress—no question, we’ve made […]
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Intergenerational Mobility Project: Building Adult Capabilities for Family Success
This video profiles the Intergenerational Mobility Project and its use of a coaching framework to strengthen families’ ability to navigate the complexities of poverty.
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Ready4Routines: Building the Skills for Mindful Parenting
This video focuses on Ready4Routines, a project which supports parents as they work with their children to build regular family routines.
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InBrief: Early Childhood Mental Health
This video explains how improving children’s early environments can prevent initial difficulties from destabilizing later development and mental health.
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InBrief: Resilience Series
These three videos provide an overview of why resilience matters, how it develops, and how to strengthen it in children.
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InBrief: How Resilience Is Built
Watch this video to learn how responsive exchanges with adults help children build the skills they need to manage stress and cope with adversity.
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InBrief: The Science of Resilience
Watch this video to visualize the science of resilience, and see how genes and experience interact to produce positive outcomes for children.
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InBrief: What Is Resilience?
Watch this video to learn about the fundamentals of resilience, which is built through interactions between children and their environments.
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FIND: Using Science to Coach Caregivers
This video focuses on Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND), a video coaching program that aims to strengthen positive interactions between caregivers and children.
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InBrief: The Science of Neglect
This 6-minute video explains why significant neglect is so harmful in the earliest years of life and why effective interventions are likely to pay significant dividends in better long-term outcomes in learning, health, and parenting of the next generation.
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Child Development Core Story
This educational video series on the importance of the early years was created by the Project for Babies, a former initiative of the University of Minnesota Center for Early Education and Development.
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Building Adult Capabilities to Improve Child Outcomes: A Theory of Change
This 5-minute video depicts a theory of change from the Frontiers of Innovation community for achieving breakthrough outcomes for vulnerable children and families.
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InBrief: Executive Function: Skills for Life and Learning
This five-minute video explains how executive function skills develop, what can disrupt their development, and how supporting them pays off in school and life.
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Three Core Concepts in Early Development
This three-part video series depicts how advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics now give us a much better understanding of how early experiences are built into our bodies and brains, for better or for worse.
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Toxic Stress Derails Healthy Development
This 2-minute video explains how toxic stress can weaken the architecture of the developing brain, with long-term consequences for learning, behavior, and both physical and mental health.
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Serve & Return Interaction Shapes Brain Circuitry
This 2-minute video explains why “serve and return” interaction between children and significant adults in their lives is one of the most essential experiences in shaping the architecture of the developing brain.
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Experiences Build Brain Architecture
This 2-minute video explains how the basic architecture of the brain is constructed through a process that begins early in life and continues into adulthood.
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Brain Hero
This 3-minute video adapts the visual sensibility of interactive game models to a video format. Based loosely on such games as “Guitar Hero,” “SimCity,” and “The Game of Life,” the video portrays how actions taken by parents, teachers, policymakers, and others can affect life outcomes for both the child and the surrounding community.
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InBrief: The Foundations of Lifelong Health
This edition of the InBrief series explains why a vital and productive society with a prosperous and sustainable future is built on a foundation of healthy child development.
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InBrief: Early Childhood Program Effectiveness
This video from the InBrief series outlines basic concepts from four decades of program evaluation research which help explain how society can ensure that children have a solid foundation for a productive future.
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InBrief: The Impact of Early Adversity on Children’s Development
This video from the InBrief series outlines basic concepts from the research on the biology of stress which show that major adversity can weaken developing brain architecture.
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InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development
This video from the InBrief series addresses basic concepts of early childhood development, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research.