About
Dr. Knauer's primary research interests are in evaluating parent education programs that target vulnerable families with young children. Dr. Knauer examines programs to understand how, why, and for who parenting programs for vulnerable populations are effective, and the contextual factors that affect parenting and early childhood development in underserved groups.Dr. Knauer has experience evaluating early childhood programs in Mexico, Kenya, and Armenia that seek to improve children's cognitive development through a variety of mechanisms, such as nutrition and parent engagement. Dr. Knauer's work has highlighted how parenting programs can improve their effectiveness if they are integrated into existing social safety net infrastructure, and if they are tailored to populations they are seeking to reach, such as those with low levels of literacy. Dr. Knauer also has experience translating and adapting early childhood development assessments for use in low and middle income country contexts.Dr. Knauer has interdisciplinary research training and experience in developmental psychology, economics, epidemiology, social work, and health policy that have given her a strong background to pursue research questions that cross traditional field specific lenses.
Current Work
Dr. Knauer is currently involved in evaluations of two programs. The first is a school readiness project in Kenya. For this program, Dr. Knauer worked with colleagues to adapt a dialogic reading training program, which teaches parents skills to engage in conversations with their children while they read books together. A short follow up of the program found that it was successful at improving parent's frequency of reading and the quality of their reading interactions with their children. The program also improved children's familiarity with images from the books, and the vocabulary scores of children whose primary caregivers were illiterate. A long-term (2 year) follow up is underway to examine effects on children's school readiness and preliteracy skills.Dr. Knauer is also engaged in an evaluation of a national school feeding program in Armenia. Currently, about 20% of children in Armenia experience food insecurity. While there exists a national school lunch program, this meal is provided to prekindergarten children at the end of their school day (around 11 a.m.). A trial program is underway to provide children with a small meal in the morning, when they arrive at school, that may complement breakfast that they have received at home or provide a nutritional base if they did not have breakfast. The goal of this program is to determine if providing this morning meal improves children's ability to learn — such as their problem solving, concentration, and memory skills — as well as their school readiness (i.e. vocabulary) by the end of the school year.Finally, Dr. Knauer is beginning a series of studies to examine the effects of community programs that aim to improve the mental health of refugee children, how experiences of trauma have affected young refugee children's development, and ways that parenting programs may blend mental health and engagement to improve the wellbeing of both parents and children.
Research Area Keyword(s)
early childhood development; LMICs; parent engagement; parenting; refugees
