Three papers have been collected dealing with basic aspects of early childhood education: professionalism, child development, and knowledge dissemination. The first paper, "The Nature of Professions: Where Is Early Childhood Education?" applies eight main features of the concept of a profession to the current state of the art of early childhood education including social necessity, altruism, autonomy, a code of ethics, distance from clients, standards of practice, prolonged training, and specialized knowledge. The second paper, "Current Perspectives on Child Development," highlights aspects of development that seem to have fairly clear implications for pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Topics are presented in the form of broad general principles that seem to apply to many aspects of child growth and behavior: optimum influences; the recursive cycle of development; and the development of dispositions, particularly the disposition to become interested and motivated to learn. The third paper, "Issues in the Dissemination of Child Development Knowledge," describes five issues related to the dissemination of information in general as well as information about child development in particular. Issues are related to the information flow; the conceptual scope of the ideas presented; the vividness of the presentation; the timeliness of concepts; and the orientations to knowledge characteristic of the scientists and practitioners involved in the information dissemination. (RH)