Although numerous studies examine the effectiveness of intensive behavioral intervention programs (EIBI) for young children with autism, few focus on the family aspect of the program. In particular, involvement of mothers in the program, which is strongly recommended, is the subject of only a small number of studies. The goal of this research is…

Preservice teachers enrolled in an early literacy or developmental preschool course collaborated in order to create inclusive, literacy-embedded play centers at a local children's museum. Using a grounded theory approach, theoretical questions were generated after analyzing multiple data sources. The focus of this paper is how preservice teachers…

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of an integrated science and mathematics methods course on preservice early childhood teachers' efficacy beliefs for integrating these content areas. Thirty-four preservice teachers participated in this study, which utilized a quasi-experimental design with two treatment groups. Participants in…

Given the prevalence of popular media in the lives of young children today, early childhood teacher education stands to benefit from fostering critical media literacy practices. Through the use of critical media literary practices, early childhood teacher educators can facilitate a process whereby preservice teachers learn how to critically…

Set in a yearlong, school-based tutoring program, designed as a community of practice, we use qualitative methodology to examine how 14 preservice teachers learned to become responsive teachers. We focus on one question: In what ways does participating in a yearlong, supervised tutoring program mediate preservice teachers' learning about…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of simultaneous prompting instruction with high and low treatment integrity on the learning of children with developmental disabilities. Low treatment integrity was defined as not delivering a controlling prompt during 30% of the teaching trials. Three preschool children with autism and…

The purposes of the study were to determine (a) the ability of two spontaneous language measures, mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-m) and number of different words (NDW), to identify African American preschool children at low and high levels of language ability; (b) whether child chronological age was related to the performance of either…

Social competence intervention studies published from 1970 to 2008 for preschoolers were reviewed for reports of social validity assessment. Analysis of 90 studies indicated that nearly 27% (n = 24) of studies reported at least one measure of social validity assessment for the goals (n = 7), procedures (n = 8), or effects (n = 19). The methods…

Since the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), there has been a growing focus on improving the quality of programs for children with disabilities and measuring the results/outcomes of those programs. Across the country, IDEA Part C Programs for Infants and Toddlers and IDEA Part B, Section 619 Preschool…

Young children with disabilities are increasingly attending inclusive early childhood programs with their typically developing peers. Within these programs, research efforts and practice have supported young children's understanding and acceptance of peers with disabilities. However, there is limited information about the measures used to assess…

This study reports the results of a cross-sectional analysis of variables associated with parents' reading to young children among participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in Texas. The participants were 600 WIC mothers visiting WIC clinics in Texas. The data were collected by survey, and…

The purpose of this collaborative schools-university study was to investigate how the explicit instruction of literary devices during designated literacy sessions could improve the quality of children's narrative writing. A guiding question for the study was: Can children's writing can be enhanced by teachers drawing attention to the literary…

This initial study explored the social behaviors of kindergarten children in two classrooms (one developmentally appropriate, one developmentally inappropriate) where the teacher used either positive or negative guidance strategies. Six pairs of kindergartners--three dyads (boy-boy, girl-girl, boy-girl) from a classroom in which the teacher used…

The positive effects of joint book reading (JBR) between parents and children have been widely presumed. However, the impact of JBR has not been widely investigated in toddlers, nor has the extant literature considered the context of JBR reading sessions (e.g., reader, prompt, occasion, who chose the book, etc.). The present study examined the…

This issue highlights seven distinct studies. The first study examines the perceptions of early childhood educators and elementary educators concerning their beliefs about young children and how those beliefs translate to practice. The second explores joint book reading among parents and very young children. The third investigates the importance…