Future Directions in Communicating the Science of Early Childhood Development

Hirokazu Yoshikawa, PhD, is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt and a University Professor at NYU, and Co-Director of the University’s Global TIES for Children center. He is a core faculty member of the Psychology of Social Intervention and Human Development and Social Intervention programs at Steinhardt. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Metropolitan Center for Equity and the Transformation of Schools and the Institute of Human Development and Social Change at NYU.

Yoshikawa is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. He conducts research in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. His current projects also include leading the research and evaluation for the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change funded partnership of Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee to provide early childhood programming for Syrian refugee families in the Middle East; the first experimental evaluation of an unconditional cash transfer to reduce early childhood poverty in the United States, funded by NIH and a variety of foundations; the Listening Project, a Spencer Foundation funded project evaluating a middle-school-based intervention in New York City schools to train students and teachers in transformative listening; and a research-to-policy project funded by the William T. Grant Foundation to address the crisis affecting children and youth affected by undocumented status in the United States.

His recent books include Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality (with Ajay Chaudry, Taryn Morrissey, and Christina Weiland, 2017, Russell Sage) and Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children (2011, Russell Sage). He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, and on the Advisory Boards for the Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Program and the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report.