This volume is the first in a set of two to be published as the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook for 2008. Planning for the volumes began more than five years ago, when the Society's Board of Directors expressed an interest in taking steps to encourage a more expansive, robust, and inclusive dialogue about education in…

Author reviews gains made in the last decade in knowledge of the nature of child development and learning, and cautions against a lessening of commitment. (MB)

Discusses the issues relevant to the relationship between theory and practice. (Author/MB)

Three themes have dominated the history of early childhood education in the U.S.: the ethic of social reform; the uniqueness and importance of childhood; and the reform of educational practices. (Author/MB)

Malnutrition, contrasted with hunger, is defined as a state of impaired functional ability or development resulting from an inadequate supply of essential nutrients or calories to meet long-term biologic needs. (Author/MB)

The educator, the health professional, and the parent should form the team which will concern itself with the influences of emotional, social, environmental and health attitudes on the learning process. (Author)

The needs of medicine and education for diagnostic information do not always coincide, and a number of educators and social scientists have turned to a description of information-processing models as an alternative route to describing handicapping conditions in an educationally meaningful way. (Authors)

Author focuses on both comparative studies and developmental sociolinguistics and suggests some research problems, with particular attention to social dialects. (Author/MB)

Authors review a body of data on theory which casts doubt that a deficit exists in minority group children, and even raises doubts as to whether any nonsuperficial differences exist among cultural groups. (Authors/MB)

Mass media affects children's aggressiveness, morality, anxiety, social knowledge, cognitive functioning, and positive interpersonal behavior. (Author/MB)

Analysis of models applicable to public school systems developed by six groups of scholars and researchers from the universities and regional laboratories. (MB)

Questions arising in research and evaluation are more complicated in the area of early childhood education because of the vagaries of measurement with very young children and the occurrence of rapid changes during the early years. (Authors/MB)

Material presented resulted from visits by the authors to a number of countries as members of the International Study Group for Early Child Care, a group of 24 participants from eleven nations. (MB)

Author emphasizes the need for parent participation in early childhood education as vital to child development. (MB)