The purpose of this study was to describe literacy instruction in child care centers, examine aspects of child care center quality that may predict such instruction, and provide a limited analysis of whether literacy instruction impacts children's concurrent pre-academic functioning. Staff and children in 103 classrooms serving preschool-age…

Although widely adopted, the efficacy of the Six Traits Analytic Writing Model for raising student writing achievement is uncertain. This comparison group study investigated teachers' perceptions of the efficacy of professional development in the model and students' writing gains. Data included teacher surveys and writing samples of 4th-graders…

This study focused on a specific feature of preschool teacher talk, revoicing (a situation in which the teacher repeats, fully or partially, what the child said in the immediately preceding turn), within a specific interactional context, circle time, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the type of language mediation that occurs in this…

This qualitative study investigated young children's mathematical engagement in play with wooden unit blocks. Two boys, ages 6 and 7, were independently observed completing the task of filling outlined regions with the various sets of blocks. Three major mathematical actions were observed: categorizing geometric shapes, composing a larger shape…

Frame analysis was used to examine how competing stakeholders framed a sixth grade curriculum controversy over whether the WWII internment of Japanese Americans should be categorized as a controversial issue. Teachers and administrators in a northwestern U.S. school claimed that the internment was clearly wrong and not controversial, but these…

This study examines the effectiveness of asynchronous communication in facilitating historical discussions among adolescents, with a specific focus on the ways in which teachers can affect this process. Threaded discussion board posts and teacher-student email correspondence from a five-week American history summer course are analyzed and…

In this article we examine preservice teachers' ideas about the role of multicultural citizenship education in social studies classrooms. We use qualitative techniques to explore data collected from observations and interviews with preservice teachers enrolled in a secondary social studies methods course. The findings suggest that even when…

Many scholars agree that students should be regularly engaged in dialogues that require them to question texts, values, or issues. We observed social studies classrooms in secondary schools serving urban, rural, and suburban students of different socioeconomic backgrounds in New York to learn what kinds of questioning strategies teachers were…

There is limited research in the field of social studies that documents how immigrant teachers are working to make social studies classrooms a space for critical dialogue, especially within settings where immigrant and nonimmigrant students interact. By using data from a yearlong qualitative study in which interviews and observations were…

Children employ different types of humor as they explore, interpret, and negotiate their environments. Whereas an appreciation of verbal incongruity has been a hallmark of older preschooler humor (e.g., McGhee, 1989), more recently, other violations of expectations and clowning also have been identified as ubiquitous during the first two years of…

The purpose of this study was to explore the predictive relationship between the level of symbolic representation in preschoolers' sociodramatic play and reading and mathematics abilities and rate of growth in early elementary grades for children with and without disabilities. The relationship of three aspects of sociodramatic play--symbolic…

Based on teacher questionnaires and close ethnographic observation of 40 first-grade students, this article explores the learning possibilities the arts present for teaching young children and fostering developmentally appropriate practice. Its aim is to reinforce the value of the arts already being used in early childhood classrooms and to…

This longitudinal study examined the effects of a comprehensive professional development program on literacy environments of preschool classroom/teacher units. The Early Language & Literacy Classroom Observation Toolkit (ELLCO) was used to assess effects of treatment. Forty (40) classroom/teacher units, representing 14 preschool centers,…

Early childhood educators have competing demands that minimize their ability to utilize evidence-based practices and respond to the challenges posed by culturally diverse classrooms. Using a case study method, we studied four female early childhood teachers at a university-affiliated preschool who developed mini-research projects using a mediated…

This study investigated the physical activity (PA) levels of 6- to 8-year-old children over a seven-day period. The participants consisted of 35 girls and 36 boys in kindergarten and 113 girls and 131 boys in 1st grade. Physical activity (PA) is defined as "any body movement produced by skeletal muscles resulting in energy expenditure" and…