UNC School of Education

>> Vernon-Feagans, Lynne

Over the last 30 years, Lynne Vernon-Feagans has focused her interest on children at risk – especially African-American children who live in poverty. As part of the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project – a Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute study of non-urban children in poverty and the effects of early childcare intervention – she led a study on children’s use of language as they transitioned to school. Her resulting book, Children’s Talk in Communities and Classrooms, helps educators and practitioners understand the disconnect between the children’s neighborhood language and culture and the school’s language and culture to help explain school failure for many children negotiating these circumstances.    

   

Presently, Vernon-Feagans is principal investigator of an NICHD multi-site, multi-disciplinary, birth-cohort study of children born in each of three poor, rural Pennsylvania and North Carolina counties.  With policy implications for rural families and their children, this landmark study involving 23 investigators collects in-depth measures of families, poverty and rurality, biological markers of family stress, family health, family work, family interactions and home and childcare literacy activities, as well as child cognition, language, emotionality and sociability.  Additionally, Vernon-Feagans serves as co-principal investigator of the National Research Center for Rural Education Support funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. With colleagues, she developed a randomized clinical trial of a collaborative diagnostic teaching model to help rural kindergarten and first-grade teachers reach their struggling learners.  As part of the center, she and her associates will use state-of-the-art distance education to extend their consultation model to the nation’s teachers. Her recent articles include “An Eco-cultural Perspective of Early Literacy: Avoiding the Perils of School for Non-mainstream Children,” co-authored with Darlene Head and Kirsten Kainz, also of UNC-Chapel Hill and published in the Handbook of Family Literacy; “Parental Perceived Control Over Caregiving and its Relationship to Parent-Infant Interaction,” co-authored with Jacque Guzell of Bowling Green State University and published in Child Development; “Caring for Infant Daughters and Sons in Dual-earner Households: Maternal Reports of Father Involvement in Weekday Time and Tasks,” co-authored with Elizabeth Manlove at Lock Haven University and published in Infant and Child Development; and “Otitis Media, the Quality of Childcare and the Social/Communicative Behavior of Toddlers:  A Replication and Extension,” co-authored with Manlove and published in  Early Childhood Research Quarterly.