Deborah Lowe Vandell

Chair/Professor
Department of Education

email: dvandell@uci.edu
phone: 949.824.7840
office: Education 2056
Child Care Research Website: http://childcare.gse.uci.edu

Biography

Deborah Lowe Vandell is the Chair of the Department of Education at the University of California, Irvine. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior. Prior to these appointments, Professor Vandell was the Sears Bascom Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she held appointments in Educational Psychology, Human Development and Family Studies, and Psychology.

The author of more than 140 articles, Professor Vandell's research has focused on the effects of developmental contexts (early child care, schools, after-school programs, families, neighborhoods) on children's social, behavioral, and academic functioning. As one of the principal investigators with the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, she has conducted an intensive study of the development of 1300 children from birth through age 15 years. This work is viewed by many social scientists as one of the most comprehensive studies of the short-term and long-term effects of early child care and the family to date. For the last 20 years, Professor Vandell also has studied the effects of after-school programs, extracurricular activities and self-care with a particular focus on low-income children of color. This body of work is widely cited as evidence of the benefits after-school programs and activities.

Professor Vandell has served on advisory boards and panels for the National Academy of Science, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, W. T Grant Foundation, and the National Institute for Early Education Research. Her testimony before the U.S. Congress and other federal, state, and local governmental bodies has been used to inform policy decisions in early childhood, after-school programming, and K-12 education. Her professional service has included terms as an Associate Editor of the journal Child Development and on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Family Issues, and Contemporary Psychology.

Professor Vandell received the faculty distinguished achievement award in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin and a distinguished teaching award at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, and the American Educational Research Association.

Research Statement

"I have longstanding interests in three areas: (1) early care and education - its effects on children's social, cognitive, and behavioral development and strategies for improving the quality of early care and education, (2) after school programs and activities - their impact on children and youth and strategies for improving the quality of after-school programs, and (3) children's relationships with peers, parents, siblings, teachers, and mentors as developmental and educational contexts. My work typically involves mixed methods, including observations, interviews, and surveys and spans infancy through adolescence."

Recent Publications

Children's Social Relationships

• Vandell, D. L., Nenide, L., & Van Winkle, S. J. (2006). Peer relationships in early childhood. In K. McCartney & D. Phillips (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of early childhood development (pp. 455-470). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.


• *NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (in press). Social competence with peers in third grade: Associations with earlier peer experiences in child care. Social Development.


• Dilworth-Bart, J., Khurshid, A., & Vandell, D. L. (2007). Do maternal stress and home environment mediate the relation between early income-to-need and 54-month attentional abilities? Infant and Child Development, 16, 525-552.


• Vandell, D. L. (2000). Parents, peer groups, and other socializing influences. Developmental Psychology, 36(6), 699-710.

Early Child Care

• Belsky, J., Vandell, D. L., Burchinal, M., Clarke-Stewart, K. A., McCartney, K., Owen, M. T., & NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2007). Are there long-term effects of early child care? Child Development, 78(2), 681-701.


• Vandell, D. L. (2007). Early child care: The known and the unknown. In G. Ladd (Ed.), Appraising the human development sciences essays in honor of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (pp. 300-328). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. (Reprinted from Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 50(3), 387-414.)


• *NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2005). Early child care and children’s development in the primary grades: Follow-up results from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. American Educational Research Journal, 42(3), 537-570.


• *NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2005). Duration and developmental timing of poverty and children’s cognitive and social development from birth through third grade. Child Development, 76(4), 795-810.

After-School Programs/ Out of School Time

• Mahoney, J. L., Vandell, D. L., Simpkins, S., & Zarrett, N. (in press). Adolescent out-of-school activities. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (3rd ed). New York: Wiley.


• Pierce, K. M., Bolt, D. M., & Vandell, D. L. (in press). Features of after-school program quality: Differential associations with children’s functioning in middle childhood. American Journal of Community Psychology.


• Shernoff, D. J., & Vandell, D. L. (2007). Engagement in after-school program activities: Quality of experience from the perspective of participants. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 891-903.


• Vandell, D. L., Shumow, L., & Posner, J. (2005). After-school programs for low-income children: Differences in program quality. In J. L. Mahoney, R. W. Larson, & J. S. Eccles (Eds.), Organized activities as contexts of development: Extracurricular activities, after school and community programs (pp. 437-456). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.


• Vandell, D. L., Shernoff, D. J., Pierce, K. M., Bolt, D. M., Dadisman, K., & Brown, B. B. (2005). Activities, engagement, and emotion in after-school programs (and elsewhere). In H. B. Weiss, P. M. D. Little, & S. M. Bouffard (Eds.), New directions for youth development: No. 105. Participation in youth programs: Enrollment, attendance, and engagement (pp. 121-129). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.


• Vandell, D. L., Pierce, K. M., & Dadisman, K. (2005). Out-of-school settings as a developmental context for children and youth. In R. V. Kail (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 33, pp. 43-77). New York: Academic.

*Deborah Vandell is a member of the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network and a contributing author to the designated papers. The Network is presenting all research pertaining to its core hypotheses under the corporate banner, rather than individually named authors, in recognition of the collaborative nature of the study.

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)