Vanderbilt’s Peabody College initiated the Vanderbilt Early Childhood Research Collaborative March 27, connecting experts across Peabody and the broader Vanderbilt community to advance research around childhood development from birth to age eight. As emphasized in its mission statement, the research partnership focuses on advancing sciences that promote sufficient development and support for young children around the world. 

ECRC is organized into five core focus areas, consisting of Language and Literacy, Mathematics, Motor and Cognitive, Emotional and Social and Policy. The mission statement details how these focus areas are meant to encompass all relevant groups, including children with disabilities, multilingual learners, families, educators and communities supporting young children. 

In a message to The Hustler, Bethany Rittle-Johnson, director of ECRC and co-leader of the mathematics division, emphasized the importance of transdisciplinary research partnerships in childhood research. She said she views the collaborative as a mechanism to connect research projects that are otherwise separated from each other. 

“Many faculty and students at Vanderbilt already conduct research on early childhood development and education, but many of these efforts are siloed by department,” Rittle-Johnson said. “This collaborative is a unique opportunity to bring together researchers from across Peabody College and the broader Vanderbilt research community to spark new research ideas, connect collaborators, raise visibility and disseminate research findings.” 

Melissa Gresalfi, outgoing dean of residential colleges and affiliated faculty member of ECRC, echoed Rittle-Johnson’s sentiment of the collaboration that ECRC facilitates in childhood research in a message to The Hustler. 

“Vanderbilt is known for its support of collaboration, and this is a great example of the kinds of intentional ways researchers can come together to learn with and from each other,” Gresalfi said. “Often, we are so busy working on our own projects that we have less time to learn about others’ work; the collaborative encouraged everyone to devote the time to sharing and learning from each other’s scholarship.” 

Amy Needham, leader of the Motor and Cognitive focus area, expressed optimism for ECRC to potentially spark important research findings on a vital period of a person’s life. For her focus area, she said she hopes that her findings in motor and cognitive skills can help advance questions in different areas of childhood development. 

“Motor skills (e.g., how infants and children move their bodies) are the basis for all behavior and must be understood if we are to understand humans. Cognitive skills (e.g., how infants and children think) are necessary for learning and understanding the world,” Needham said in a message to The Hustler. “So, these two sets of skills are in many ways the foundation of what it means to be human. I am hoping we can do some ‘cross-fertilization’ and help each other learn how motor and/or cognitive skills are involved in the questions they study. I think we all have a lot to learn from each other.”