Children with histories of trauma exposure experience a wide-range of developmental, social, emotional, and behavioral symptoms. The effects of traumatic life experiences can impact children's ability to learn and function within the school environment. Trauma-informed (TI) schools seek to create environments in which children with experiences of…

This qualitative phenomenological study utilized structured interviews with 23 preschool administrators to explore their beliefs about preschool inclusion and needed resources for providing high-quality preschool inclusion. Themes emerged regarding administrators' beliefs about inclusion, including divergent understandings of inclusion as…

With intentional adult guidance, all children have opportunities to learn new skills across developmental domains during motor play. We collected and analyzed 501 written responses from 16 preschool teachers regarding their perceptions of intervention outcomes across domains, based on their observations during the CHildren in Action: Motor Program…

Supportive early relationships are critical to young children's development. Previous research has focused primarily on aspects of specific parenting practices that impact infants' and toddlers' development. However, additional research is needed for a more nuanced understanding of the relationships among family experiences, parenting behaviors,…

This article examines the effects of Montessori music-movement activities on the development of the rhythmic abilities of 59 children from Montessori preschools, aged between 3 and 6 years. Children were deployed into two experimental groups (EG 1 (n = 20) & EG 2 (n = 22)) and a control group (CG) (n = 17). Our intervention consisted of…

Emotion-focused teaching in early childhood promotes children's early academic and social-emotional development and can occur through planned or informal classroom interactions. We observed video recordings of preschool teachers engaging in typical teaching practices and carrying out researcher-assigned book reading and social-emotional learning…

Preschool teachers are uniquely positioned to impact children's physical activity levels, yet the relationship between teachers' and children's physical activity levels has not been widely investigated. The purpose of this study was to explore preschool teachers' physical activity levels, practices, and perceptions and how this relates to…

Play, of varied type and form, provides opportunities for children to acquire a sense of competence and belonging when engaging in classroom life. The purpose of this study was to investigate ways that the inclusion of play as a curricular component eased academic stressors and supported motivation during the transition to kindergarten. In this…

The present study examined how the dosage and quality of the federal preschool program "Head Start" (HS) in the US related to children's self-regulation skills in kindergarten. Using Propensity Score Matching and multiple regression (OLS), this study explored how the number of years and hours a week of HS were related to self-regulation…

Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs provide skills needed for successful kindergarten strides, especially for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. While Florida's Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) program currently serves most four-year-olds, some educators have questioned the program's quality. The purpose of this study was to…

This study on technology education in preschool aims to explore how technology activities in preschool are enacted and what knowledge, related to the five dimensions of the nature of technology, is made possible for the children to learn when intersubjectivity is established in the interaction between the participants. The empirical data encompass…

Most research on dual language learners (DLLs) in preschool has focused on language and literacy development. Less work has been done on their play and social interactions, in spite of the importance of these for development and learning. Although DLLs possess many social strengths, they also face challenges, particularly in an English-dominant…

High-quality caregiver-child relationships are critical to healthy development, including the acquisition of language and literacy skills. However, their potential benefits to early mathematical development and its underlying mechanisms have been minimally explored. In view that language and literacy development play prominent roles in…

This article highlights the "Picturebooks for Social Justice" approach which the author developed within her preschool program. "Picturebooks for Social Justice" was born of 2-year design-based qualitative research study exploring the intentional use of interactive read-alouds in early childhood education. This was not a…

Although there are many tools for assessing young children's self-regulation according to varied conceptual definitions and purposes, the purpose of this study was to develop, validate, and norm a Self-Regulation Assessment Scale for Early Childhood (SASEC) for directly evaluating observed behaviors of young children in naturalistic play…