In particular, SEED has had two principle objectives:

1. Identifying the mechanisms through which changing social inequalities impact on children’s oral language and socio-emotional development.
2. Identifying the implications that these evolving social disparities have for patterns of performance at school age and beyond – into adolescence and adulthood.

Marked disparities in early child development (e.g., oral language skills) have opened up even before compulsory schooling begins. These disparities reflect and promote social inequalities and have been shown to persist very well through childhood into adulthood. The „SEED“-project (Social InEquality and its Effects on Child Development: A Study of Birth Cohorts in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands) has explored the mechanisms underlying these developments by drawing on the data from a range of different countries. The project has addressed differences (especially social inequalities) in child development (specifically oral language skills and numerical-mathematical skills) in order 

SEED was funded within the DIAL (Dynamics of Inequality Across the Lifecourse: structures and processes) funding line of the NORFACE NETWORK (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe).

The analyses based on the following representative longitudinal studies of these partner countries:

• The Early Childhood Cohort Study from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC1); Kindergarten Cohort Study from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC2); Kindergarten Cohort Study from the research group “Educational processes, competence development and selection decisions in preschool- and school age” (BiKS-3-13) in Germany
• The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS); Growing up in Scotland (GuS); The British Cohort study 1970 (BCS70) in the UK
• The Generation R Study (GenR) in the Netherlands

Apart from the main studies from the three partner countries, more analyses has been supplemented by further cooperation with the partners from USA, Canada, and Australia.

As part of SEED, the international project partners have published a number of publications, which can be found on the SEED project page: External Link

Selected contributions with the participation of the German project team:

"Parenting Behaviours and Early Child Development in Europe" (Link to PDF)
Wei Huang, Nathalie Tamayo, Pauline Jansen, James Law, Hans-Günther Roßbach, Jutta von Maurice, Helen Wareham, Sabine Weinert | Commentary, 2021

"The association of maternal education on children’s language skills and its link to social inequality, descriptive analysis from three European cohort studies" (Link to PDF)
Helen Wareham, Wei Huang, Lisanne Labuschagne, James Law, Manja Attig, Marie-Christine Franken, Pauline Jansen, Sabine Weinert | Working Paper, 10/2021

• Project lead at LIfBi: Dr. Jutta von Maurice, Dr. Manja Attig
• Applicant:
  • Prof. Dr. James Law / Newcastle University
  • Dr. Jutta von Maurice / Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
  • Prof. Dr. Sabine Weinert / Otto-Friedrich-Universität, Bamberg
  • Dr. Marie Christine Franken / Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam
    
• Project duration: 01/2018 – 06/2021
• Funding: Norface Network, NORFACE-DIAL
• Link to this page: www.lifbi.de/SEED