UNC School of Education

>> Gallagher, Kathleen Cranley

Kathleen Cranley Gallagher studies children’s relationships and developmental competence in the context of families, peers and early education. Developmental competence refers to a holistic view of the child’s developmental abilities, including emotional, social, physical and cognitive competence. An emerging confluence of research documents the importance of children’s relationships for their developing brain and capacities. Gallagher’s research focuses on the role of children’s relationships and the mechanisms via which these relationships yield their influence on children’s competence in family, peer and school contexts. She examines how children’s characteristics contribute to interactions with adults and peers, and how these ongoing processes influence the child’s developing social-emotional, academic and psychological competence.

Gallagher’s scholarship is informed by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory in which aspects of the child, the child’s activities and contexts interact over time, to shape development. In one line of research, she examines contributions of children’s temperament and parenting to children’s adjustment, mental health, achievement and relationships with peers. She published a theoretical application of that work in Developmental Review.  Recent treatments of the importance of early relationships for children’s brain development were published in Young Children and the International Encyclopedia of Early Childhood Education.

In another line of research, Gallagher examines the role of children’s relationships in the transition to school. She is an investigator with the Early Schools Transition Collaborative of the National Research Center on Rural Educational Support, and with colleagues is developing a professional development intervention in rural North Carolina focusing on the improvement of literacy and social skills for struggling learners. Concurrently, she leads a study of teacher-child relationships, literacy and social-emotional development in the context of a 1:1 story-reading intervention. Through the Storytime project, Gallagher hopes to inform practice in early childhood settings with regard to teachers’ relationships with children and supporting early literacy and social development. She plans to continue Storytime as a targeted intervention with children at risk for difficulties in the transition to kindergarten.