Providing a forum for current thinking related to early care and education, this book presents a wide range of views regarding research methodology, the nature of experience while teaching, teaching and program improvement, and conceptualizing play in the curriculum. The chapters are: (1) "Postmodern Research in Early Childhood Education" (Gaile S. Cannella and Chelsea Bailey); (2) "Changing Realities--Changing Research" (Sharon L. Kagan and Samantha Wechsler); (3) "Helping Things Come out Much Better: Understanding the Students' Perspective in an Early Childhood Vocational Education Program" (Rachel Theilheimer); (4) "Using Climate Assessment To Improve the Quality of Work Life in Early Childhood Programs" (Paula Jorde Bloom); (5) "The Rhetorics of Adult and Child Play Theories" (Brian Sutton-Smith); (6) "How Preservice Early Childhood Education Teachers Understand Play and the Uses of Sutton-Smith's Rhetorics of Progress and Phantasmagoria in Teacher Education" (Mary S. Rivkin); (7) "Rhetoric of the Imaginary/Children's Phantasmagoria and Rhetoric of Play as Progress: A Study of Persistence and Facilitation" (Mary G. Fryer); (8) "Implications of the Rhetoric of Play as Progress for Preservice and Inservice Teachers" (Anastasia P. Samaras); (9) "Reflections on Rhetoric and Rhetorics Redux" (Greta G. Fein); and (10) "Play Research and the Early Childhood Profession" (Stuart Reifel). Each chapter contains references. (KB)