2018 Lectures
The Center for Children and Families welcomed parents and professionals for its tenth annual series of lectures titled “Building Bridges from Adversity to Resilience.”
| Dina Castro, Ph.D. “Developmental Science and the Equitable Early Education of Bilingual Children” |  |  |  |
Understanding the developmental trajectories and the mutually defining features of development for our youngest bilingual children is critical for the implementation of policies and practices that are responsive to the unique characteristics and experiences of these children. Recent neuroscience and linguistic research suggest that there is a need for a shift of paradigms from vulnerability to asset approaches and from monolingualism to bilingualism as the goal of early education for children growing up in bilingual communities. In this presentation, Dr. Castro will address the state of knowledge on the cognitive, language and literacy development of young bilinguals, discuss the elements of quality in the early education of bilingual children and present findings from her research on the Nuestros Niños Program, a professional development intervention, to improve the quality of teacher practices and the school readiness of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers.
| Sandy Russ, Ph.D. “Pretend Play and Development of Creativity and Imagination” | |
Pretend play has an important role in child development. Many studies have found that pretend play is associated with creativity in children. In my studies, we have found that imagination and affect expression in pretend play samples are related to divergent thinking, creativity in stories, and teacher ratings of creativity, independent of verbal intelligence. We’ve also found that pretend play ability is associated with positive mood and coping ability. I will briefly review the Affect in Play Scale (Russ, 1993; 2014), a play administration and coding system that measures aspects of play and discuss implications for using pretend play in school and home settings.
This talk was held in collaboration with the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology.
| Andrea Warner-Czyz, Ph.D. “Supporting the Social Well-being of Pediatric Cochlear Implant Users” | | |
Children and adolescents with hearing loss who wear cochlear implants can develop speech understanding and language on par with hearing peers, but we have less information about the effect of hearing loss and cochlear implantation on social well-being in these children. This presentation will discuss peer relationships in pediatric cochlear implant users, including quantity and quality of friendships, peer victimization (bullying), and ways that families and professionals can support social quality of life in this population. This lecture has been approved for 1.0 hours of Continuing Education by the Texas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers for social workers, LPCs, and LMFTs.
| Vlad Glaveanu, Ph.D. “Culture and the Power of Creativity and Imagination” | |
This talk explores the multiple intersections between creativity, imagination and culture in order to understand human agency and social empowerment. In this talk, I will focus on early development and the emergence of cultural experience and creative imagination within episodes of pretend play; the creative experience of participating in cultural traditions, in particular craft activities; and collective action and the “art of protest” in order to argue that creativity and imagination empower us to reflect on and to ultimately renew the cultures we live in. This lecture has been approved for 1.0 hours of Continuing Education by Texas’ Early Childhood Intervention and by the Texas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers for social workers, LPCs, and LMFTs.
This talk was held in collaboration with the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology.