Early Childhood Research Specialist

Overview

Position Narrative: The Impact and Practice team with the Institute for Child Success (ICS) is seeking an Early Childhood Research Specialist. ICS is an applied research, evaluation and policy institute committed to improving the lives of very young children, families, and those that serve them. Impact and Practice’s mission with ICS is to empower early childhood organizations in research and evaluation by providing accessible, science-based tools and guidance. The Impact and Practice team within ICS works directly with early childhood organizations and networks to provide individualized practitioner-centered services in areas of professional empowerment, early childhood program design, implementation, measurement, evaluation and scale, as well as early childhood systems field building research and evaluation.

 

The Research Specialist will lead a variety of early childhood sector quantitative and qualitative evaluations and technical assistance (i.e. professional empowerment) projects at the program and systems level, and be responsible for coordinating and completing project deliverables. This position will provide content expertise in early childhood programs by conducting research searches for programmatic measures and evaluation designs, develop new research-based services, and lead authorship of research reports. The successful candidate will have the ability to translate complex scientific concepts in measurement and evaluation to non-experts (i.e., science communication) and support early learning, early relational health services and systems using an equity-based approach. This position requires content expertise in one or more of the following areas: early learning and development, equity and inclusion, early learning measurement and assessment, pediatrics, child welfare, and/or caregiver expertise.

 

This position will also contribute to the continued development and scaling of the IMPACT Measures Tool, an online searchable database of early childhood and parenting measures to support measurement and evaluation. This will require working with the IMPACT Measures Tool scoring system (including usability, cost, technical merit, cultural sensitivity), and providing professional empowerment support to clients in the areas of measurement and evaluation, collaborating on technical memos, early childhood evaluation tools, issue briefs, webinars, and other publications. Consulting clients include nonprofit organizations as well as public institutions, state and federal governments, with measurement and related services provided in the areas of early childhood professional development, program design, implementation, measurement, and evaluation.

Preferred Qualifications:

·      PhD plus 2 years relevant job experience.

·      Experience engaging in discussions and thoughts partnership with internal staff, external collaborators, clients, and funders to help shape direction of projects and goals.

·      Applied experience in measurement and evaluation (ex., focus groups, 1:1 interviewing, rapid cycle testing, measurement and evaluation design).

·      Applied experience working with or in two or more early childhood sectors: education, home visiting, healthcare, child welfare, social work, systems building or other related fields.

·      Experience coaching early childhood professionals in evaluation, performance measurement, and continuous quality improvement.

Experience developing measurement tools for early childhood research and evaluation.
·      Experience working in or with diverse, multilingual, equity focused mission-based organizations. Proficiency in more than one language a plus.

·      Experience with acquiring, analyzing, and interpreting research data, and summarizing findings via written reports and oral presentations.

·      Experience with qualitative statistical programming (R) and qualitative software (NVivo) and data analysis.

·      Ability to work remote.

·      Ability to travel occasionally for client visits, conferences and in person team retreats (minimum 10%).

We are, and will remain, committed to anti-racist actions and activities in all of our work, including our research, training and teaching, and communications. We harness scientific tools and processes to promote equity and access within early childhood systems regardless of age, race, ethnicity or gender to create generational change and improve the lives and outcomes of young children and their families.

ICS’s strength is our talented and dedicated remote operations team. Our mission keeps us focused on outcomes for young children. We focus on empowering families with very young children and those who serve them, starting with our staff. We trust each other to exercise good judgement. We balance independent innovation, collaboration, and thought partnerships. We empower staff as we empower clients to innovate, problem solve, and harness their own potential. We are especially purposeful about team dynamics because our small staff lives and works remotely across all four time zones. We respect each other, look out for one another, and have fun working together remotely and when we come together for clients, conferences and meetings.