Offers suggestions for resolving conflict between child care staff or between caregivers and parents. Suggestions include taking personal time, putting others first, being honest and up front, staying focused on being professional, letting go of selfishness, keeping quiet, listening, giving more than one takes, asking for a reprieve, and seeking…

Examines authentic leadership in the early childhood field. Recommends developing an authentic working definition of "leading" and using metaphors to build a conceptual framework of leading. Suggests principles to guide in learning leading: professional passion, professional rigor, and professional innovation. Presents steps for learning…

The influence of older peers on younger children's emerging symbolic play was examined for 24 young children in eight participating long-day child-care centres. Toddler participants (aged from 17 to 31 months) were observed and video-taped in three conditions in free play in the outdoor environment as follows: condition one, with their same-age…

Drawing on the perspectives of itinerant early childhood special education (ECSE) consultants reported in previous research, this article identifies issues and challenges specific to early intervention and education that must be considered for itinerant ECSE consultants to engage in productive consultation with personnel in child care or other…

School districts are central players in the child care delivery system: they operate a mix of child care centers and programs, serve a range of children of different ages, and fund their programs from a variety of federal, state, and local sources. This report provides a range of programmatic and fiscal information about the federal and state…

Attendance in preschool centers can yield short-term benefits for children from poor or middle-class families. Yet debate persists in Europe and the United States over whether centers yield gains of sufficient magnitude to sustain children's cognitive or social advantages as they move through primary school. We report on child care and home…

The historical process of the institutionalisation of childhood is in a period of intensification, as children enter institutions at ever earlier ages and remain in them for longer periods. This intensification presents great opportunities but also involves many risks since everything is dangerous. A particular set of risks are produced from the…

The study has focused on the transition from day-care centre to school. Questionnaires were completed by staff at several day-care centres, at three schools recruiting pupils from these and by the parents of these children. Schools were asked what kind of information they thought it was important to receive from the other parties about children…

One characteristic of long day childcare settings in New Zealand is the opportunity for teachers to continuously observe each other at work. Ngaire's story is an account of one teacher's problematic negotiation of her subjectivity (self-as-teacher) in the context of a wider institutional story drawn from Ngaire's colleagues' observations of her…

The aim of this paper is to produce an understanding of directors' work; perceptions of their role as managers in the centre; their experiences; and the nature of management within the context of the child care field in a complex social, legislative and economic climate. In the current context of the delivery of child care services in a…

This paper reports on the design, methodology, and results of a study of quality in 326 classrooms in 239 Canadian child care centers. This study, the largest and most extensive ever undertaken in Canada, used the Caregiver Interaction Scale (CIS) to rate the adult-child interactions in the classrooms and the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of a 2-day in-service education program for (a) promoting the use of two emergent literacy strategies by early childhood educators and (b) increasing children's responses to these strategies. Method: Sixteen early childhood educators were randomly assigned to an experimental and a…

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) administers the nation's largest and most widely recognized accreditation system for child care centers, preschools, kindergartens, and other early childhood education programs. The standards and accreditation criteria included in this book were approved by the NAEYC Governing…

There are an estimated 167,000 children in early care and education programs in Massachusetts. In 2000, the state department of education commissioned a study of the cost and quality of early care and education in the state. This report and executive summary are the first from the study, addressing early care and education for preschool-aged…

In recent years, researchers and practitioners have become increasingly interested in father/male involvement in early childhood programs. However, few empirical studies have examined early childhood educators' efforts to involve fathers in such programs. The purpose of the present investigation was to assess early childhood educators' efforts to…