WebForum 2001: A Millennium Dialogue on Early Child Development is a partnership between Invest in Kids Foundation and Dr. Dan Keating of the University of Toronto. The goal is to work together with educational, funding and technological partners to create an ongoing multi-level international dialogue among diverse stakeholders working toward children's healthy development.

The Millennium Dialogue on Early Child Development consists of three components. For in-depth information on any of these components, kindly visit www.webforum2001.net.

• A live, face-to-face webcast event that took place on November 8 & 9, 2001. WebForum 2001 presented eight internationally renowned researchers in various early child development disciplines. The scientists included Dr. Dan Keating, Dr. Alicia Lieberman, Dr. Thomas Boyce, Dr. Megan Gunnar, Dr. Charles Nelson, Dr. Ronald Barr, Dr. Richard Tremblay and Sir Michael Rutter. Each prepared a description of the state of the art in his or her discipline with recommendations for optimal future research directions. The invited respondents to the presentations, included: Dr. Clyde Hertzman, Dr. Jenny Jenkins and Dr. Dan Offord. The full reports, as well as the video-streamed lectures and discussions have been edited and produced in an ePublication called 'Conversations on Society & Child Development.' Visit www.cscd.ca for more details.


• A multimedia early child development curriculum based on a synthesis of the experts' reports was piloted and continues to be implemented in a variety of formats as diverse as a technology-supported face-to-face graduate course at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, to online-only classes with participants across Canada. This curriculum is being prepared for international, multimedia interface and access.


• An on-going dialogue: The conference/forum was designed to be instrumental in facilitating a global and inclusive discourse on child development for researchers, practitioners and policymakers throughout the world. The subsequent launch of the interactive ePublication [see www.cscd.ca] will be central to this continuing discourse, and is available to groups, institutions, and individuals interested in acquiring state-of-the-art knowledge and participating in knowledge-building in early child development. The ePublication and ongoing courses will provide both a component and an example of the learning society, described in the current work of Dan Keating and others (located on the website for the Atkinson Society on Child Development website, www.ascd.ca). As such, conversations will not only be a resource in itself, but will also constitute a Learning Society experiment in progress.

WebForum 2001 - PARTICIPATING SCIENTISTS

Daniel Keating, Ph.D., is the Atkinson Professor of Early Child Development and education, Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, and Fellow and Director of the Program in Human Development for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR). He has written extensively on human development and education, particularly on intellectual and social development across the life span, on the developmental sources of human diversity, and on the prospects for human development in a learning society. Lecture: Society & Child Development.

In his presentation, Dr. Keating describes the findings from the book Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations (Keating & Hertzman, 1999, Guilford Press) that describes what is known about the nature and importance of early child development:

• In all societies, there is a significant association between social and economic status (SES) and health.


• Where this work has been extended to other developmental outcomes, such as literacy, mathematics achievement, behavioural and emotional problems, the same pattern emerges. This full range of outcomes from physical and mental health to competence and coping – which can be combined into an omnibus indicator termed "developmental health" -- demonstrates the presence of the SES effect.


• Societies with sharper social status differences have generally lower developmental health.


• There is evidence that this SES effect is enduring across the life course, and tends to repeat across generations of parents and children.

The pervasive, portable, and enduring patterns of this SES gradient effect point toward a working hypothesis of "biological embedding" the substantial and enduring importance of early child development to later health, competence and coping skills. In other words, the contexts and experiences of early development are registered in the biology of the individual and expressed in various ways across the life course. Keating makes the case, therefore, that investments in early child development that are systematic, sustained and based on the best available scientific understanding of the core dynamics of development are likely to have dramatic positive impacts on both economic and social advancement.

Dan Keating also initiated the experts' roundtable discussion on how to transform scientific knowledge into effective strategic action on early child development.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 4 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

Ron Barr, MDCM, at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, is a developmental pediatrician renowned for his investigations in infant crying, colic, pain, and parental soothing in infancy, and its physiological consequences. Lecture: Mother and Child: Preparing for Life

Dr. Barr discusses an approach to investigating the impact of different approaches to mothering by identifying some of the "hidden regulators" involved in various aspects of soothing behaviour. He considers a number of studies by using a maternal separation paradigm followed by the selective reintroduction of separate components of soothing. He then investigates factors identified in a comparison between the Kung San (closeness) approach to mothering and the Western (separateness) approach. Barr concludes that caregiving components have substantial effects on at least three domains of infant activity:

• Behavioural state regulation;
• Response to stressful, painful experiences; and
• Cognition.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 2 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

W. Thomas Boyce, MD, at the University of California, Berkeley, is a leading researcher on children's experiences of adversity and the linkages among social behaviour, biological reactivity to stress, and health. Lecture: Biology and Context: Social Behaviour, Reactivity to Stress, and Health.

Boyce outlines the recent weakening of the previously irreconcilable nature and nurture positions on the origins of human disorders. He makes a case for working toward a finely nuanced understanding of the bi-directional interactions between context and biology. Boyce calls this understanding a "symphonic causation," defined as "a set of lawful regularities in the character and effects of biology-context interplay which together might comprise a foundational principle for understanding the origins of human disease." He reviews some of the methodological and philosophical issues in this process, and proposes a heuristic classification system for beginning to organize our growing knowledge

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 3 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

Megan Gunnar, Ph.D., at the University of Minnesota, is a leading figure in the investigation of how social relationships regulate the physiology of stress in young children. Lecture: Early Experience and Stress Regulation in Human Development.

Dr. Gunnar reviews what we know about the physiology of stress and its potential impact on young children. The changes in brain biochemistry produced by stress allows the processing of survival-relevant information at the expense of activities needed to support rest, repair and brain growth. If stress is prolonged, the brain is compromised. Animal studies demonstrate that the offspring of stressed pregnancies and compromised early care develop into animals who are more vulnerable to stress later in life, show altered patters of brain functioning and often have impaired cognitive abilities. Evidence is accumulating that adverse conditions early in life can shape the developing brain in humans as well.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 2 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

Alicia Lieberman, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Francisco, has done extensive research on ways to support healthy early childhood development, and has been highly successful in translating her findings into a form that parents and teachers can use. Her book, The Emotional Life of the Toddler, is widely used and widely respected by both parents, and professionals. Lecture: Mental Health Intervention in Infancy and Early Childhood.

Dr. Lieberman describes an approach to mental health intervention with infants, toddlers and preschoolers who experience emotional problems. She reviews clinical and research evidence indicating that early childhood behavioural disturbances may represent the earliest manifestations of disorders that, if not addressed, can become entrenched. Lieberman focuses on the factors that need to be addressed in providing effective mental health interventions to babies and young children who are at risk due to detrimental environmental circumstances. She concludes by describing a clinically flexible approach to infant-parent or child-parent psychotherapy that enhances empathetic mutuality and developmentally appropriate responsiveness.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 4 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

Charles A. Nelson, Ph D, at the University of Minnesota, is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and director of the MacArthur Foundation/ McDonnell Foundation Research Network on early experience and brain development. Lecture: Neural Development & Life Long Plasticity.

Dr. Nelson reviews what is known about brain development and discusses how these findings apply to our understanding of early child development. He emphasizes the essential role of a child's environment on his or her neural development. Nelson argues that although experience has a powerful effect on many aspects of brain function through most of the lifespan, it does so through different mechanisms at different points in time. With greater understanding of the precise ways that the brain is influenced by experience will come a much better understanding of how to address both psychological and neurological problems.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 1 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

Sir Michael Rutter, formerly director of the MRC Child Psychiatry Unit and then of the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, now holds the post of Professor of Developmental Psychopathology there. Lecture: Biological & Experiential Influences on Psychological Development.

Dr. Rutter considers what is currently known about biological and experiential influences on psychological development. Based on empirical research findings across diverse fields as biology, medicine and psychology, he discusses the universals of development, and the evidence concerning genetic and the environmental factors. Rutter posits that the popular nature/nurture debate is a seriously misleading oversimplification because it focuses on individual differences without taking into account the universals of development.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 1 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

Richard Tremblay, PhD, at the University of Montreal, is internationally renowned for his work on the relationship between early childhood development and aggressive behaviour in later childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Lecture: Origins, Development and Prevention of Aggressive Behaviour

In his presentation, Richard Tremblay addresses four main questions:

• What is aggressive behaviour?
• When does it start?
• How does it develop?
• Can we prevent the development of chronic aggression?

Meta-analyses of international studies indicate:

• The majority of children use physical aggression less and less frequently as they grow older;
• There are no statistically significant groups of children who start to show stable high levels of physical aggression in kindergarten; and
• Children are at their peak in frequency of physical aggression in kindergarten. Tremblay makes the case for intensive interdisciplinary investigations to sort out the complex interactions between genes, brain development and environment that lead to the early regulation of physical aggression.

The audio/PowerPoint presentation and related resource materials for this lecture are featured in Edition 3 of the ePublication 'Conversations on Society & Child Development' [www.cscd.ca].

The full papers for all eight scientists are expected to be released in a book in 2003.