During the past two decades, a convincing body of evidence has accumulated to indicate that unless children achieve minimal social competence by about the age of 6 years, they have a high probability of being at risk into adulthood in several ways. This digest presents a checklist of attributes of child social behavior that teachers are encouraged…

The best childhood predictor of later adult adaptation is the adequacy with which a child gets along with other children. Because social development begins in the early years, it is appropriate that early childhood programs include regular formal and informal assessment of children's acquisition of social competence. This digest presents the…

This Spanish-language ERIC Digest addresses the question of what young children should be learning that will best serve their development and learning in the long term. Two major dimensions of development--normative and dynamic--are explored, and four categories of learning goals are discussed: (1) knowledge; (2) skills; (3) dispositions; and (4)…