What is childhood like today? Is it a world fraught with endless joy, fun, and games, or are children experiencing a much different reality? A child's social interactions can be a source of great enjoyment and are essential to early development. Conversely, young children routinely experience tension, ambiguity, and conflict as they navigate…

Emotional well-being of child care providers is important to the welfare of their young charges. Elevated depression and job-related stress may affect caregivers' ability to establish empathic connections with children. This study examined work conditions, job-related stress, and depression in 51 orphanage workers and 69 preschool teachers in…

Accreditation is a widely accepted indicator of quality in early education and includes many of the components cited in broad conceptualizations of quality. The purpose of this study was to examine whether kindergarten readiness rates differed between Florida child care facilities that were and were not accredited by any relevant national…

This study examines the effect varying models have on student understanding of fractions. The study addressed the question of what students know and understand about fractional concepts through the use of discrete and continuous models. A sample of 54 students in kindergarten and 3rd grade were given an interview pretest, participated in…

This investigation examined the influence of varying levels of Spanish receptive vocabulary and phonemic awareness ability on beginning English vocabulary, phonemic awareness, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension development across kindergarten through second grade. The 80 respondents were Spanish speaking children with no English…

The current English-language research and educational program was driven by an initiative to create a more interactive, theme-based bilingual language education model for preschools in Chengdu, China. During a 2-week teacher education program centered at the Experimental Kindergarten of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Chengdu, China, a team of…

Past research has established that children typically learn better from live demonstrations than from two-dimensional (2D) media. In the present set of experiments, we investigated the efficacy of a new 2D learning medium-the self-paced slideshow. A primary goal was to determine whether the "video deficit effect" extended to self-paced…

This phenomenological study examined the experience of fostering creativity and creative thinking in the classroom under high-stakes testing conditions, as described by teachers at a magnet elementary school in Central California. The tensions between standardization and professionalism, as well as performativity and creativity, served as the…

Worldwide demographic change means that the responsibility for an aging population will fall to younger generations. This narrative literature review comprises an international examination of what has been published about children's views of older people between 1980 and 2011. Sixty-nine academic articles were inductively analyzed, and the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role and responsibilities of Norwegian kindergarten (i.e., preschool for ages 0-6 years) from the perspective of participants involved in multidisciplinary collaboration on behalf of children with severe disabilities and their families. The authors employed a multiple-case study approach comprising 26…

In the early 1800s, the U.S. President Thomas Jefferson assembled a team of explorers led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to forge a waterway connecting the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. How has this environment changed in 200 years and how do elementary students make sense of those changes? This study looks at the impact of…

This study presents findings from the first cohort of teachers in a U.S. Department of Education Mathematics Science Partnership (MSP) grant designed to support the use of a standards-based elementary school mathematics curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (Investigations). In line with the goals of the MSP program, the 84-hour…

This study investigates the perceptions of 207 college students in early childhood education and child and family studies (future professionals) regarding the role of play in early childhood classrooms. The results indicate that future professionals in their freshman and sophomore years in college held relatively positive perceptions of play in…

This study examined relations between parenting, shared reading practices, and child development. Participants included 28 children (M = 24.66 months, SD = 8.41 months) and their parents. Measures included naturalistic observations of parenting and shared reading quality, assessments of child cognitive and language development, and home reading…

This study examines the similarity of socialization goals of a group of mothers with different cultural backgrounds and their children's respective preschool teachers in Germany. Additionally, the researchers were interested in the relationship between the degree of mother-teacher similarity and maternal satisfaction with child care.…