The student demographic in United States public schools is becoming increasingly diverse. Yet, the curriculum used in classrooms throughout the country remains largely Euro-centric. Despite research confirming that the use of culturally relevant literature can increase engagement and academic achievement, most historically marginalized students…

The Child Care Apprenticeship Program of Pinellas (CCAP) was created by an advisory committee made up of local childcare facility directors, in 1989, in response to the need for better training in the community. CCAP is a two-year program that emphasizes 4000 hours of on-the-job-training and 288 hours of classroom instruction credentialing working…

A child's social and emotional development has a powerful impact on every aspect of their life. When a child develops a strong social and emotional foundation, they learn how to express their feelings, empathize with others, and build relationships. All of these skills could influence a child's academic achievement and successful adult life.…

Self-regulation, an increasingly focus of social-emotional learning curriculums for over twenty years according to Zimmerman (2008), provides students with the ability of "setting goals, selecting strategies, and self-monitoring their effectiveness" as opposed to waiting for others to redirect their behavior (p. 166). Prekindergarten…

Self-directed learning has contributed significantly to adult learners' personal and professional growth. Approximately 70% of adult learning is through a self-directed learning context (Heimstra, 2008). This quantitative correlational study involved an attempt to determine the nature of the relationship between situational, dispositional, and…

This qualitative case study focused on how school leaders' understandings of (dis)ability were implicated in decision-making and affected student (dis)enrollment in Florida's Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (VPK). More specifically it explored how leaders in private VPK programs invoked conceptions of normality, and subsequently abnormality,…

Florida has undergone a 27.8% increase of ELL PreK-12 public school students within the last twenty years (www.fldoe/aala). Of the total student population in Florida, 9.4% speak 230 different languages and dialects with the highest percentage in Hispanic speakers. This is followed by Haitian-Creole, Arabic, Vietnamese, Hmong, Chinese, and Korean…

High teacher turnover was a problem at the preschool for students with autism where this study took place. The primary purpose of this project was to create and implement a mentor program that would effectively decrease turnover rates of newly hired teachers. The secondary purpose was to determine whether newly hired teachers changed their…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the beliefs and skills of community early childhood lead teachers and community child care center administrators participating in Florida's Four Year Old Voluntary Pre-kindergarten (VPK) Program in five rural, north Florida counties hold regarding the inclusion of young children with disabilities…