A Text-Based Intervention to Promote Literacy: An RCT.

We need expanded federal leadership in early education to develop an excellent, coherent, and equitable system. The authors recommend 13 ways for the government to develop a universal and sustained approach to early childhood education. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The federal government's role in early education has a long and contentious history. While the nature and amount of federal engagement has shifted in response to changing social, political, and economic needs, the lack of long-term planning or coordination has yielded an array of programs, dispersed across federal agencies and legislative committees, which begs for greater excellence, coherence, and equity in early childhood education. The history of American early education is one of changing roles and goals. From the privately funded Infant Schools for indigent families in the earliest days of the republic, to the federal government's foray into early childhood with Depression-era nursery schools, to more recent investments in Head Start, federal early education policies can best be understood as a series of responses to shifting social, economic, and political phenomena (Beatty 1981; Cahan 1989; Cohen 1996). Amid these changes, four durable polemics have shaped the federal response. First, American society has long questioned whether young children should be served outside their homes at all. From the nation's birth, the primacy and the privacy of the home were ideological mantras, forcing early education programs to legitimate their existence; such programs have never been considered an entitlement akin to K-12 education. Second, because public values haven't generally supported out-of-home, nonmaternal care, federal support for early education grew during times of national crises and declined as the crises ebbed, leaving early education bereft of three essential mainstays: vision, permanence, and infrastructure. Third, there has been an enduring ambivalence regarding which children should be served and how. Most public programs have targeted children from low-income families, while the private sector has served children from middle- and upper-income families. Leaving a legacy of services segregated by income, which often translates into quality differences, early education policy defies deeply held American values regarding the equal opportunity that all young children need in order to thrive and learn. Fourth, there is no consistent agreement about the mission of early education. Should early education focus on care as the day nurseries did? Should it focus on socialization and education as nursery schools purported to do? Although increasingly regarded as a false dichotomy because good early education does both, federal and state policy makers still must tussle with the question as they debate early education's departmental jurisdictions and funding amounts. 5 Cornerstones Recognizing this historical context and building on the past, we first recommend five cornerstones for American early education: * Keep early education voluntary before kindergarten. * Maintain a diverse delivery system with both public and private providers for both fiscal prudence and choice for parents. * Foster developmentally oriented pedagogy that stresses cognitive, language, social, emotional, and physical development for all children. * Honor linguistic, cultural, and programmatic diversity. * Conceptualize early education as a partnership among families, programs, and communities. Second, we see a need for expanded federal leadership and investments in early education. However, such investments must be guided by clearly defined roles for federal and state governments. These roles must frame and bound the public early childhood policy agenda. In addition to role clarity, the goals of federal intervention must be clear. Early education efforts should focus on advancing excellence, coherence, and equity. …

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 crystallized the concern for accountability in education. National testing was mandated as a way to improve the “broken” educational system. Publicly funded early education programs were not spared from such testing. While the positive effects of high-quality early education on children’s later school achievement is well demonstrated, too many early care and educational settings in the United States are of minimal or poor quality. Accountability is clearly important for increasing the quality of our early childhood programs, however, it is not yet evident how best to formulate a standard of accountability that reflects the body of knowledge we have gained concerning how young children learn. In this report, we propose two major thrusts designed to bring about a more scientifically informed accountability system: reconceptualizing the ways in which we think about the validity of our test instruments, and reconceptualizing markers of development from products of learning (performance standards) to processes of learning. We introduce the term “empirical validity” to draw attention to the fact that assessments should be built on current empirical work in the various developmental domains. This report focuses on the domains of language and literacy, two areas of major concern for the Federal Head Start program and for which there is an abundance of current research. This body of knowledge provides many examples illustrating how an emphasis on process rather than product can be vital for improving the quality of education. For example, although vocabulary is centrally important and psychometrically adequate tests of early vocabulary exist, these tests do not measure essential aspects of word learning that have been identified as predictive of later language and reading success in early language learning literature. Our case study of language and literacy illustrates how today’s developmental science offers a new knowledge that can be strategically incorporated in assessments for empirically valid testing of children’s competencies. The same argument for “empirically valid” and evidence-based assessments applies to other domains of cognitive growth and to socio-emotional development. The future of preschool assessment would be well served by attention to primary research that focuses on the processes of learning. In this report, we also suggest that one possible avenue for progress in assessment would center on integrative and dynamic assessment techniques that would comprehensively capture the nature of children’s learning, minimize validity concerns related to context and culture, and evaluate how competencies in different developmental domains interact for optimal learning. To bridge the gap between science and policy, developmental scientists and test developers are urged to work together to create innovative ways to chart the developmental processes that support learning and progress toward social maturity in ways designed to ensure that research findings are continuously reflected in current assessments.

Star of The Week Programs Based on Peer Relationship for Children Social Emotional Development

STEAM to R-SLAMET Modification: An Integrative Thematic Play Based Learning with R-SLAMETS Content in Early Child-hood Education

1. Timothy R. Shope, MD, MPH* 1. *Department of Pediatrics, Division of General Academic Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA. * Abbreviations: AAP: : American Academy of Pediatrics CFOC3: : Caring for Our Children , 3rd ed ECE: : early care and education RSV: : respiratory syncytial virus Out-of-home care and education are the norms for most young children and lead to increased exposure to infectious diseases. Pediatricians need to be aware of strategies to reduce the risk of infection and guidelines for determining exclusion and return to care for mildly ill children who participate in group care arrangements. After completing this article, readers should be able to: 1. Recognize the risks of infectious diseases in children who participate in early care and education programs. 2. Understand methods for reducing infectious diseases in early care and education settings. 3. Identify which infectious diseases require exclusion from early care and education programs. Two-thirds of children younger than 6 years participate in nonparental out-of-home early education and child care. Demographic trends during the past several decades reflect an increased desire and need to work for men and women who are parents. During the first 2 years of participation, children enrolled in early care and education (ECE) programs experience a higher incidence of respiratory and diarrheal infections, otitis media, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria compared with their peers primarily cared for at home. The types of infection generally reflect common respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses in circulation in the community. However, there are some infectious diseases that can cause outbreaks or clusters of infections in ECE settings. When ill children are excluded from an ECE facility, parents may miss work, lose income, and seek health care services in an effort to return their children to child care. Pediatricians need to be aware of the infectious disease risks of child care attendance and various strategies for reducing them. In addition, pediatricians need to be knowledgeable about rational exclusion and return …

Self-regulation in children is an important thing that needs to be prepared from an early age. Besides affecting children's school readiness, this also makes it easier for children to have good academic achievements. This study aims to determine the influence of moving to the beat of early childhood self-regulation. This research was conducted on kindergarten group B students in East Jakarta. The research method used is a quasi-experiment method with a sample of 20 students. The data collection technique uses observations by analysing paired t-test statistical data. The results of the study explained that there was a significant effect of moving to the beat of early childhood self-regulation. The significance level is 0.000 < 0.05, which means that H0 is rejected and H1 is accepted, this indicates a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test. For further research, it is recommended to look at the influence of other factors on early childhood self-regulation.
 Keywords: Beats, Early childhood, Moving, Self-Regulation

The Elementary School Journal Volume 83, Number 2 ? 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984183/8302-0009$01o.00 Teachers approach their instructional tasks with a variety of perspectives and strategies that emphasize certain aspects of teaching and deemphasize others. For example, some teachers teach language skills using organized games, while other teachers teach the same skills by direct instruction. Teachers adopt different approaches to the same subject matter partly because their teaching situations differ. Their students may have different learning problems or their classrooms may have varied resources and facilities. Even in the

Objectives. Has inequality in access to early education been growing or lessening over time?Methods. Using the October Current Population Survey education supplement from 1968 to 2000, we look at three‐, four‐, and five‐year‐olds' enrollment in early education—including center‐based care, Head Start, nursery school, prekindergarten, and kindergarten.Results. Our analysis shows a strong link between family income and early education enrollment for three‐ and four‐year‐olds, especially when we compare the bottom two and the top two income groups. These differences remain even after controlling for a large variety of factors, including race/ethnicity, maternal employment, family structure, and parental education.Conclusions. Inequality in early education by income group varies by age of child: it is most pronounced for three‐year‐olds, who have been the least likely to benefit from public early childhood education programs; it has diminished in the past decade for four‐year‐olds, who have been increasingly likely to have access to public prekindergarten programs; and it has all but disappeared for the five‐year‐olds, who now largely attend public kindergarten. This pattern suggests a potentially important role for public policy in closing the gap in early education between children of different income groups.

Early childhood care and education is a growing area for international research and policy development. However, young deaf children and their caregivers in Africa and other southern, low-income contexts have been ignored in research debates and international and local policy development. The Early Care and Education of Deaf Children in Ghana examines how understanding social-cultural and resource dynamics can support early education to help young deaf children progress through early childhood in terms of language, communication, and learning. Section one introduces local and global issues in early childhood care and education, critically discusses the academic context of this work, and sets the scene and approach of the Ghana research project described in section two. Traditional and contemporary perspectives of local caregivers and scholars associated with educating and caring for young deaf children are focused on the challenges of early childhood deaf education. The rest of the book describes the focus and impact of the Ghana research project. The authors share findings in relation to the experience of caregivers, the multilingual context for development, multi-professional working, deaf participation, and leadership in early childhood care and education. Ways in indigenous knowledge can inform early education programming to reach beyond the Western lens and sensibilities are discussed. Developing the book involved collaboration between UK and Ghana scholars and practitioners to produce a text that goes beyond the translation of Western concepts and allows for authentic voices from the African context to be projected so little known, indigenous knowledge on early childhood care practices and conceptions of deafness can inform the field.

The Elementary School Journal Volume 86, Number S O 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/86/8603-0002$01.00 Teachers have strong opinions about parent involvement. Some believe that they can be effective only if they obtain parental assistance on learning activities at home. Others believe that their professional status is in jeopardy if parents are involved in activities that are typically the teachers' responsibilities. The different philosophies and beliefs of teachers reflect the two main, opposing theories of school and family relations. One perspective emphasizes the inherent incompatibility, competition, and conflict between families and schools and supports the separation of the two institutions (Parsons, 1959; Waller, 1932; Weber, 1947). It assumes that school bureaucracies and family organizations are directed, respectively, by educators and parents, who can best fulfill their different goals, roles, and responsibilities independently. Thus, these distinct goals are achieved most efficiently and effectively when teachers maintain their professional, general standards and judgments about the children in their classrooms and when parents maintain their personal, particularistic standards and judgments about their children at home.

This chapter provides a complex dynamic systems view on curriculum-based learning in early education. We first discuss the general notions of curriculum, assessment, skills, and learning in early education and give a short overview of curriculum-based assessment in early childhood education (ECE) in the Netherlands. We conclude that for assessment to be usable in an educational context, an understanding of the process of learning is crucial. We then present the theory of complex dynamic systems as a general framework for defining learning, skills, and assessment. A complex dynamic system is defined as any network of interacting components (e.g., cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components in an agent, such as a learning child, and components of the teaching process in a teacher). As a consequence of their interactions in a network of dynamic connections, complex dynamic systems undergo typical change in the form of self-organization, variability, temporal stability, and so forth. These patterns of change characterize the processes of learning and associated teaching in young children and educators. In spite of the abstract nature of this theoretical framework, we show that its basic concepts are intuitively appealing in educational contexts and provide concrete and usable ways for assessment in early childhood education. To this end, we present a taxonomy of assessment forms based on complexity thinking and provide two practical, complexity-based examples of the assessment of learning processes in early childhood education: a web-based program for assessing students’ learning and behavioral goals and a video feedback coaching program for teachers giving science lessons for young children. We conclude with practical recommendations for early childhood curricula and for early childhood assessment.

Today, for an increasing number of infants, toddlers, and young children, early childhood education programs provide their first institutional experience outside the home (Edlefsen & Baird, 1994; Fennimore, 1989). The results of recent studies support a positive relationship between quality early childhood programs and later successful school achievement, particularly among economically deprived children (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, & Barnett, 1984; Lally, Mangione, & Honig, 1988; Ramey & Ramey, 1992). Research has repeatedly shown that early educators are the most important ingredients in the delivery of quality educational experiences (Field, 1991; Wasik et al., 1990). Early educators play a critical role in facilitating children's positive experiences in school (Bredekamp, 1989; Galinsky, 1988; Kontos & Fiene, 1987; Ruopp et al., 1979, Travers et al., 1980). Further, early educators are in tune with the realities of today's society, particularly with regard to changing familial structures (Hamburg, 1992); socioeconomic problems of poverty, poor health, child abuse, domestic violence, and drug abuse (Schorr & Schorr, 1988); and sociocultural discontinuities between the dominant culture and home. Such discrepancies sometimes lead to misconceptions based on perceived ethnic and socioeconomic differences (Jordan, 1985; Ogbu, 1991; Phelan, Davidson, & Cao, 1991; Slaven & Madden, 1989; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). The quality of early childhood experiences for children depends on the quality of teachers and directors in centerand home-based programs. Leadership is sorely needed in order for early childhood practitioners to provide high quality early childhood experiences and build the foundation for every child's healthy growth and development. In April of 1998, 200 leaders from across the State of Hawaii were convened in an Early Childhood Symposium, sponsored by the Hawaii Association for the Education of Young Children (HAEYC), People Attentive to Children (PATCH), Good Beginnings Alliance, Seagull Schools, and Kama'aina Kid. The Symposium was funded by the Hawaii State Department of Human Services and served as a forum in exploring the kind of leadership needed for the twenty-first century. Five types of leadership were examined at the symposium. They were drawn from a timely book, Leadership in Early Care and Education (Kagan & Bowman, 1997), which served as the basis for fruitful discussion. A panel of distinguished leaders and experts shared their reflections and lessons they learned in each of five areas of leadership: advocacy, administrative, community, conceptual, and career development. They offered specific calls to action with the hope of lighting the way for others who wish to become leaders and thereby change the future for the better for all children and their families across the nation.

Twenty-first-century preschool children, with and without disabilities, may be found using technology, including assistive technologies, on a daily basis in their homes, schools, and communities. Early childhood educators are exploring opportunities to integrate technology and interactive media into the present-day curriculum. The authors suggest implementing the following five-step process to support using technology in early childhood inclusive programs: (a) assessing technology knowledge of young children, (b) developing technology rules with young children, (c) applying professional judgment and program policy, (d) implementing technology into the curriculum, and (e) collecting data for decision making. Through this process, early educators may define children's background knowledge and subsequently design a curriculum approach, including instructional methods and strategies, to engage young children while fostering creative learning experiences.

PROTOCOL: Home based child development interventions for pre‐school children from socially disadvantaged families

To learn about early educators' belief systems about the types of learning experience children should have in preschool prior to entering school, the authors conducted 11 focus group interviews with 75 early childhood educators from three learning settings: private center-based programs, public center-based programs, and family child care centers. Results from the qualitative data analyses showed that participants believe that when working with preschool-age children who will be entering kindergarten that the following dimensions should be considered: (1) the type of teacher-child interactions offered in the preschool setting, (2) what children's learning environment should consist of, and (3) the kinds of learning opportunities teachers offer. Each of these dimensions was made up of several factors. Although educators from all three types of early education programs mentioned these dimensions, the authors found variation within the factors that make up each dimension with differences between and within center type.