Dr. Jaipaul L. Roopnarine was awarded a Nehru Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Gujarat, India, during the Spring 2014 semester. His appointment in the Department of Human Development and Family Science recognizes his distinguished cross-cultural research and perspectives in Early Childhood Care and Education, fathering and family, according to department chair, Dr. Rajalakshmi Sriram.
“We have had many leading scholars visit the department that has resulted in rich exchange of cross cultural perspectives in collaborative work,” notes Sriram. “The appointment is made to eminent scholars from within and outside India for lectures and discussions.”
Roopnarine will continue his work on the links between fathers’ investment in the cognitive, social, cultural, and community life of young children and childhood well-being with an Indian sample. However, the focus will be expanded to include the impact of children on fathers’ health and well-being as well. Dr. Sriram has an interest in father-child relationships and it is hoped that researchers and doctoral students at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Gujarat, India and Syracuse University will collaborate on this project.
Dr. Roopnarine is an adjunct professor of teaching and leadership in the School of Education at Syracuse University and a research scientist at the Family Development and Children’s Research Centre at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
He served as a consultant to the Roving Caregiver Program, a home-based intervention program implemented in several Caribbean countries to improve the early caregiving environments of young children, and assisted in the revision of the national early childhood curriculum for the government of Guyana. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago and also an Indo-U.S.-Subcommission professor of psychology at the University of Delhi, India, minority scholar in residence at The Pennsylvania State University, and held visiting appointments at the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, The City University of New York, and The University of the West Indies in Jamaica. His research spans father-child relationships across cultures, Caribbean families and childhood outcomes, early childhood education in international perspective, children’s play across cultures, immigrant families and schooling in the U.S. He has authored and co-authored numerous books, chapters and journal publications, including the following recent publications:
Roopnarine, J. L., Krishnakumar, A., Narine, L., Logie, C., & Lape, M. (2013). Relationships between parenting practices and preschoolers’ social skills in African, Indo, and Mixed-ethnic families in Trinidad and Tobago: The mediating role of ethnic socialization. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. doi: 10.1177/0022022113509884.
Roopnarine, J. L., Jin, B., Krishnakumar, A. (2013). Do Guyanese Mothers’ Levels of Warmth Moderate the Association Between Harshness and Justness of Physical Punishment and Preschoolers’ Prosocial Behaviors and Anger? International Journal of Psychology, doi:10.1002/ijop. 12029.
Roopnarine, J. L., & Hossain Z. (2013) African American and African Caribbean fathers. In C. Tamis-LeMonda & N. Cabrera (Eds.). Handbook of father involvement. New York: Routledge.
Roopnarine, J. L. (2013). Fathers in Caribbean cultural communities. In D. Shwalb, B. Shwalb, & M. E. Lamb (Eds.). Fathers in cultural context. New York: Routledge.