The Center for Research on Early Childhood Education celebrated its opening on Wednesday, becoming the latest research department to join the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
The launch served as a way to commemorate the center and bring together both the campus and the community. The Center for Research on Early Childhood Education is located on the ninth floor of the WCER building.
The center will promote opportunities for equal education for families and educators through its various research-to-practice projects.
The CRECE was approved last year in November. The program is currently working on five different research projects that focus on various topics in early education.
UW-Madison graduate students are one of the populations that CRECE hopes to build relationships with as the next generation of leaders in education. One of the projects that graduate students in the center are just completing is an analysis of newspaper coverage of kindergarten over the last 50 years.
Other projects include researching the impact that summer home visits from kindergarten teachers have on the transition into the following school year. Another is surveying what type of professional development benefits teachers the most to increase their skills in the classroom.
“We want to provide this for teachers and help them to upgrade their skills through interviews with them and observations in the classroom,” said Beth Graue, one of the leaders of the CRECE.
