Biography
Dr. Lisa McCabe is a Research Associate with the Residential Child Care Project at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research. Her research focuses broadly on early childhood education and care issues for children, families, and child care providers. Currently she is part of a project ("Superstar Practitioners") that aims to identify common dimensions of practitioners’ interpersonal practices and skills that promote high quality program implementation and positive client outcomes across diverse settings, including child care.
Recent work has focused on 1) the evaluation of a unique home visiting training program ("Caring for Quality") for home-based child care providers; 2) an exploration of early education issues in rural settings, with a focus on Universal Pre-Kindergarten program implementation; and 3) an evaluation of New York State’s new Quality Rating and Improvement System, a system to rate and improve the quality of regulated early care and education programs. In addition, Dr. McCabe recently worked with Chemung County to develop a multi-disciplinary training program ("CANDO") focused on child development and mental health.
Dr. McCabe is also part of the Residential Child Care Project where she contributes to evaluations of the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention training system and the Child And Residential Experiences program. In addition to research, she conducts trainings and outreach activities on topics such as addressing children’s challenging behaviors, play-based learning, and children’s stress in group care settings.
Before coming to the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Dr. McCabe was a Research Scientist at the National Center for Children and Families, Teachers College, Columbia University where she specialized in policy oriented research focusing on early childhood education and emotional development. She has also worked as a center-based child care provider for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Dr. McCabe received both her M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. (1999) in Human Development from Cornell University.