Attachment is the emotional bond between children and their caregivers (parents or otherwise). Infants and young children usually have more than one selective attachment, and all of these attachment relationships, including those between children and teachers, have important effects on cognitive and social development. Secure attachment to a…

Little is known about preschool teachers' attitudes and beliefs toward science teaching, in part, because the field lacks valid and reliable measures of these teacher-related factors. To address this need, the current study developed and validated a rating scale (P-TABS) using a statewide sample of Head Start teachers (N = 507). A series of…

This study examined teachers' questions and children's responses during a play-based activity implemented in small groups within preschool classrooms. The first aim of this study was to describe teachers' questions in terms of four levels of abstraction (i.e., a continuum of literal to inferential questions) and children's responses to these…

Effective behavior support is an important component of high-quality and nurturing early childhood classroom settings. At present, there are few studies that investigate the best way to train and support teachers in these strategies. The present study compared two different training approaches: (1) a workshop that included a one-day…

Storybooks are the most frequently chosen genre for read alouds in preschool classrooms. However, growing evidence suggests that genre may influence the quantity and quality of talk produced outside of the text. The current study compared twenty preschool teachers' extratextual talk across read-aloud sessions with a storybook and an information…

Participation in shared-reading experiences is associated with children's language and literacy outcomes, yet few standardized assessments of shared-reading quality exist. The purpose of this study was to describe the psychometric characteristics of the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR), an observational tool designed to characterize…

The present study investigated the effect of professional development (PD) on preschool teachers' conversational responsivity in the classroom, defined as teachers' use of strategies to promote children's participation in extended conversational exchanges (communication-facilitating strategies) and exposure to advanced linguistic models…

This study examined preschool teachers' (n = 59) explicit print instruction during shared reading and considered whether the benefits of this practice to children's learning (n = 379) varied as a function of the classroom environment and children's developmental characteristics. Measures of explicit print instruction and the classroom environment…

This study investigates whether a curriculum supplement organized as a sequence of teacher-led literacy activities using digital content from public educational television programs can improve early literacy outcomes of low-income preschoolers. The study sample was 436 children in 80 preschool classrooms in California and New York. Preschool…

This study uses the Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) data from 1997 to investigate the degree to which child, family, classroom, teacher, and Head Start program characteristics are related to children's school readiness and continued development over the four-year-old Head Start year. Latent class analyses were used to examine the…

With the rising number of Latino and dual language learner (DLL) children attending pre-k and the importance of assessing the quality of their experiences in those settings, this study examined the extent to which a commonly used assessment of teacher-child interactions, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), demonstrated similar…

This study examined classroom-level contributors to an acceptance of diversity in publicly supported pre-kindergarten classrooms across 11 states. Classroom composition, process quality, and teacher characteristics were examined as predictors of diversity-promoting practices as measured by the ECERS-R, acceptance of diversity construct. Findings…

Creating opportunities for children to apply newly learned vocabulary in meaningful contexts is an important aspect of supporting vocabulary development. However, previous research has not adequately examined how this can be accomplished in preschool classrooms. To address this issue, we explored using story dictation to support preschoolers'…

The purpose of this study was to test a model of adult-child play interactions in preschool classrooms, based on the work of Vygotsky and neo-Vygotskian scholars. The model predicts that adults will tailor the play support they provide to the immediate needs of individual children, and that this will lead to subsequent independent play. Classroom…

This study used data drawn from a large, national sample to describe transition practices provided to 1989 children with disabilities as they entered their kindergarten year, obtained through a survey administered to kindergarten teachers. Using path modeling, we examined the child and family, school, and district factors that predict which…