2025 Young Scholars Program (YSP)

Overview

The Foundation for Child Development is currently accepting proposals for its 2025 Young Scholars Program (YSP). YSP supports scholarship for early-career researchers. The program funds research projects that aim to clarify how, why, and for whom policies, programs, and practices support the early care and education (ECE) workforce and shape children’s early learning experiences and well-being in early childhood, defined as birth through age eight. 

As 2025 represents the culmination of the Foundation’s 10-year initiative focused on strengthening the capacity and status of the ECE workforce, the 2025 YSP application cycle is the final opportunity to select Young Scholars within these programmatic objectives.

The Foundation for Child Development believes that the quality of early care and education (ECE) programs depends on a diverse ECE workforce that is adequately compensated and supported. These dedicated individuals, including lead teachers, teacher assistants, home-based providers, coaches, master teachers, and administrators, play an integral role in fostering children's learning. Their interactions and the enriching, nurturing learning environments they create are fundamental to achieving positive outcomes for every child.

Within this frame, the Foundation launched a 10-year initiative in 2015 dedicated to supporting the workforce and identifying and promoting research, policy, and practice to:

• Advance the status and well-being of the ECE workforce;
• Support the quality of practice of the ECE workforce; and
• Strengthen ECE leadership to create more supportive environments for the workforce.

Proposals must be relevant to the Foundation’s interest in implementation research to support the capacity and status of the ECE workforce. Studies may encompass descriptive, experimental, or measurement-focused approaches. The Foundation seeks research proposals with implications for policy or practice. Additionally, research that builds from the interests and priorities of the communities, educators, or families who are engaged in the research is highly valued.

To increase the diversity of research perspectives, the Foundation encourages applications from:

• Scholars who are from underrepresented groups that have historically experienced poverty, racism, xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination. Such groups include, but are not limited to, researchers of color, first-generation college graduates, and researchers from low-income communities and/or immigrant families
• Scholars who represent a variety of disciplines and methodological approaches

Principal Investigators must have received their terminal doctoral degree (e.g., Ph.D., Ed.D., Psy.D., J.D., M.D.) within 10 years of submitting their applications to the program. In medicine, the date of the completion of the first residency is used for this calculation.

Deadline to submit a Letter of Intent: Monday, June 3, 2024.

Research Awards: Up to $225,000 for primary data collection and analysis and up to $180,000 for secondary data analysis.