Doctoral candidate and Early Ed Leadership Institute research assistant Yujin Lee.

UMass Boston newsroom reporter Gray Milkowski interviewed Yujin Lee, a doctoral candidate and research assistant at the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation about her innovative and ground breaking research on culturally and linguistically diversity among children in Head Start:

“To paint a more well-rounded picture of CLD children from low-income families, Lee devised a system that grouped a nationally representative sample of 3,000 Head Start students based on five cultural characteristics, including their race, whether their mother was an immigrant, whether their father was an immigrant, whether their primary parent’s first language was non-English, and whether a language besides English was spoken at home.  …

Lee’s research also found the developmental strengths of the seemingly most at-risk … subgroup, racial minority children of immigrants from dominantly non-English speaking homes. These children exhibited higher social skills than their counterparts, despite having disadvantageous at Head Start entry.

Read the full article, “A Fresh Take on “Diversity”: Doctoral Researcher at UMass Boston is Shaking Up Early Education” at UMass Boston’s newsroom.