As Papua New Guinea undergoes a period of major education reform that includes the establishment of an elementary education programme, the development of an elementary teacher education curriculum is proving to be a challenging task. As a background this paper provides contextual information about the elementary education programme and highlights…

Examining the processes of natural selection, described by Darwin in "The Origin of Species", casts light on our own species' fundamental needs and on the far greater role that early childhood educators can play in their fulfillment. The second section of this paper analyzes how our fundamental needs emerge in a sequence underpinned by the…

This study investigated the phenomenon of transitional object (TO) use by young children who have been parented within the framework of Attachment Parenting (AP). A sample of 275 mothers were recruited through an international magazine marketed towards AP mothers. Mothers who indicated they had children who were parented with such AP methods as…

This article presents a case study indicating that "Herpes simplex" virus (HSV) encephalitis may cause permanent learning disabilities due to damage to the temporal lobes, as it discusses the results of a case study extending over 10 years to determine the long-term effects on both the anatomy of the brain and the intellectual functioning of the…

The effectiveness of educational activities on changing the handwashing habits of preschool children was evaluated using parental surveys and direct observations. Baseline handwashing behaviors were observed and recorded, and parents completed a pre-intervention survey. After interventions were administered, post-intervention data was collected on…

Early childhood, when young children are already capable of undergoing aesthetic experience, must be the starting point for aesthetic education. Despite increasing attention to the significant values of the arts in early childhood classrooms, no theoretical framework to support aesthetic education has been established. This article introduces the…

This article aims to explore Executive Emotional System (EES) disruption as causal agent in frontal lobishness among abused children. The "Revised Senior South African Individual Scale" (SSAIS-R) was used to assess a sample population of seventy-five male and female subjects between the ages of 8 years 0 months and 16 years 11 months who were…

Promoting moral, language and literacy development is particularly important for children in inclusive early childhood programs serving disadvantaged children. In the first section of this article, the author: (1) summarizes research about the gap between typically developing children in professional families and most disadvantaged children and…

In current early childhood literature, it appears that anything called 'a caring community of learners' is considered excellent practice. In this article, however, we look critically at the idea of community. We examine the shifts in the field that led to community's transformation from an implicit assumption to a recognized and explicit…

Violence in schools and communities is no longer an urban school problem; it is every school's problem ( Garbarino, 1999 ). What factors cause children to interact with increasingly violent and anti-social behaviors? What strategies can teachers and schools use in order to help these childhood bullies who grow up to be violent youths? This paper…

Anti-social behaviors in children are on the rise, and many schools and classrooms are implementing pro-social and anti-violent curriculums to combat these behaviors. However, before they implement new curricula, schools and teachers should first examine their classroom management strategies, for a change in paradigms of classroom management must…

In many ways, teacher preparation programs have made great strides in preparing future teachers to work with an increasingly diverse population. However, there is still controversy about whether or not these courses are adequate and result in real change. This article represents a study that was designed to investigate preservice teachers' beliefs…

Beginning teacher development involves both a personal and professional reorganization of major individual investments. In a longitudinal study of first-year teachers across the first year of teaching, these dual processes were found to significantly challenge beginning teacher development and confidence. In this paper, the simultaneous…

Cultural differences and bilingualism should not stand as obstacles in the intellectual and linguistic growth, as well as the social and the psychological potential, of bilingual children. So, the aim of the present study was the construction and the application of an intervention programme for the developmental speech problems of a bilingual,…

Attachment Q-Sort (AQS) is a tool for quantifying observations about toddler/caregiver relationships. Previous studies have applied factor analysis to the full 90 AQS item set to explore the structure underlying them. Here we explore that structure by applying multidimensional scaling (MDS) to judgements of inter-item similarity. AQS items are…