The success of new pedagogies depends on teachers' beliefs about what they entail, and the promises and challenges they hold. This study uses a mixed-methods approach to understand the beliefs of early childhood teachers who attended a professional development conference on STEAM teaching, an emerging approach that combine STEM disciplines and the…

Professional development for early childhood educators (ECE PD) is an essential component of supporting a professional early childhood workforce. Yet research on ECE PD frequently centers on narrow fidelity data, while teachers' individual voices and teaching contexts are only rarely considered in order to understand teacher experiences with PD…

Planning is one of the professional tasks teachers have to carry out before their direct action in the classrooms. This planning is closely interrelated to the way teachers teach. The question about how and why teachers reach their decisions in their pre-class planning is a classical one in the research into curricular design and development. The…

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of mental health clinicians in providing services in the preschool setting. Clinicians provided services for 3 years in urban, northern New Jersey preschools, in order to expand access to mental health services for vulnerable children. At the conclusion of the three-year period, focus groups…

The study aimed to investigate how teachers' perceptions of emotional intelligence, and social and emotional learning (SEL) relate to teacher-student relationships. Teachers' perceptions of teacher-student relationships and the degree of agreement with students' perceptions was also investigated. Preschool teachers from 92 public schools in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the incorporation of iPads into the early childhood classroom through an exploratory teacher professional development initiative. Eighteen early childhood educators participated in a 6-month study targeting teacher professional development and pedagogical innovation. This study included built-in…

Cumulative risk theory suggests that a variety of social risk factors would have an additive effect on obesity risk. Multiple studies have suggested that obesity is related to basic resources such as transportation and financial resources. Additional research points to parental engagement and parental monitoring as additional sources of risk. This…

Using an ethnographic case study approach, we examined how teachers and parents within an ethnically diverse early childhood program conceptualized and implemented culturally relevant pedagogy and how these primary caregivers were encouraging children's socio-cultural development and awareness. Data sources included questionnaires, interview…

This qualitative study of three Head Start Centers analyzed surveys, interviews, and focus group data to determine how education coordinators, teachers, and teacher assistants believed professional development activities could support teamwork at their centers. The researchers sorted data related to teamwork into four categories: knowledge and…

Early reading development is a complex process that includes the acquisition of skills such as alphabet recognition, phonemic awareness, and vocabulary development. Early educators make important instructional decisions in their classrooms about how to support these skills. Understanding these decisions, and the beliefs and experiences that…

Surprisingly little is known about Head Start teachers; who teaches, why they teach, and how they think and feel about their work. To begin to address these issues, a survey was developed and distributed to Head Start teachers, assistant teachers, and aides in one three-county program to examine their motivation and well-being. Follow-up…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of print literacy in preschool classrooms. There were seven preschool teachers working in central Canada who were observed over three sessions. The process of analytic induction was used to formulate categories based on interviews, classroom observations and documents. The following categories were…

The purpose of this study was to investigate young children's perspectives related to their experiences in child care. Researchers used individual interviews and drawings in an early childhood program in Denmark and one in the United States as the basis for examining children's perspectives on their everyday lives in child care. Observations…

Early childhood educators are likely to encounter youngsters who experience problems at home impeding their abilities to learn and benefit from the program. One such group is children who live or have lived with adult domestic violence. Children yet to begin elementary school are over-represented among groups of young people known to live with…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the mentor-coach initiative model on participating Head Start Programs. The researchers interviewed 44 participants across two mid-western states. The participants provided positive feedback about the initiative and identified specific literacy practices based on this model that were…