The Harold E. Jones Child Study Center (CSC) is part of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1928, Berkeley child psychology professors Harold E. Jones and Nancy Bayley established the Institute of Child Welfare-an organized research unit that would study the factors that affect human development from the earliest stages of life. The guidelines for the Institute were to provide quality day-care for children while giving scholars and students easy access to a young population for observation and research. Berkeley was one of only five such sites set up around the country. It remains today the longest continuously running child study center in the United States. A world renowned research site, the CSC attracts researchers and visitors from a variety of disciplines, including Education, Sociology, Linguistics, Architecture, Psychology, and Public Health.
The current building housing the CSC was complete in 1960 and was designed by the late award winning architect and UCB Professor, Joseph Esherick in collaboration with Catherine Landreth. The single-story-ranch-style center houses research facilities, The University Preschool, which serves 50 preschool-aged children, and the Greater Good Science Center.
The unique design of the CSC preschool features an outdoor play area that is accessible virtually all day long via sliding doors and partially protected by an overhead canopy. The goal was to create a space where "the children's, rather than the researchers' or teachers', purposes would strike the dominant note," said Catherine Landreth, director of the school in its early years and quoted in historical documents about the Institute. Landreth wanted a place "in which a young child can independently take care of his physical needs and independently embark on a variety of play activities, [which] fosters a sense of adequacy." The guiding philosophy behind the preschool was that a child's environment can positively affect development.
Children's development at the CSC is nurtured by spatially defined learning centers, where small group child-generated play experiences happen in a two-level indoor playhouse, several sand-and-water stations outside, spacious and varied large motor opportunities, as well as activities in aesthetics, mathematics, science, literacy and language-all accessible both indoors and out.
The history and design of the CSC cultivates a collaboration between research and teaching in the study of children and their development. Teacher-research is promoted academically as well as in outreach. Researchers and students observe, with parental consent, from an unobtrusive gallery hidden by one-way screens that run the length of the entire school, allowing observation of both indoor and outdoor areas of the two classrooms. Additionally, the CSC has individual testing rooms, a large conference room and on-site administrative staff.
The CSC houses invaluable archival materials on early child study and assessment at the University of California, Berkeley, including the Bayley Scales Infant Development Kit, used to measure the cognitive, motor and behavioral developments of infants. Yearly archives of children's dictated narratives are also maintained.
Since 1993, the University Preschool at the Child Study Center has been run by the campus's Early Childhood Education Program, which oversees seven other childcare sites.