Child Development Education Research Articles

Legacy of British Colonial Early Childhood Education

This article examines early childhood educationin Hong Kong from three perspectives: historical, socio-economic, and educational development. Each perspective highlights different issues and problems in the development of early childhood education. The historical perspective identifies some major events and their influence on the formulation of educational policies particularly at pre-school level. The social-economicperspective considers education as the means toachieve economic development, which is whythe amount of resources allocated is closelylinked with the future needs of the economy;therefore preschool education has long beenneglected in Hong Kong. The educationaldevelopment perspective reflects the Hong Konggovernment's expectations for education, and thereview of the educational policies helpsunderstand the development of pre-schooleducation. Analysis of some historicalbackground and current trends of early childhoodeducation development, highlight possible future developments of early childhood education in Hong Kong, particularly after the reunification with her motherland, China, in 1997.

Gender differences in memory and learning in children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) over a 4-year follow-up interval.

To examine demographic and disease predictors of memory and learning performance for children with diabetes and controls. Children with diabetes (N = 95) and demographically similar control children (N = 100) were administered the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) initially and 4 years later. Unlike other groups, boys with diabetes did not make expected developmental gains on the learning trials of the RAVLT. Boys with diabetes showed a plateau in words learned from the primacy position, and girls with diabetes appeared to lose their relative gender advantage for verbal information. Longer disease duration predicted poorer learning over time. Subtle difficulties were found in learning related to longer disease duration for a predominantly middle-class group of children with diabetes over a 4-year follow-up interval. It will be important to monitor children's educational development to help avoid a cumulative toll on classroom performance.

The Value of Hard Work: Lessons on Parent Involvement from an (Im)migrant Household

In this article, Gerardo López expands the concept of "parent involvement" by illustrating ways that parents are involved in their children's educational development that lie outside of traditional school-related models. Rather than viewing involvement as the enactment of specific scripted school activities, López describes how the Padillas, an (im)migrant family, understood involvement as a means of instilling in their children the value of education through the medium of hard work, and viewed taking their children to work as a form of involvement. López argues that, while exposing their children to their hard work in the fields, the Padilla parents were simultaneously teaching them three important, "real-life" lessons: 1) to become acquainted with the type of work they do; 2) to recognize that this work is difficult, strenuous, and without adequate compensation; and 3) to realize that without an education they may end up working in a similar type of job. These findings not only challenge discursive/hegemonic understandings of parent involvement, but also open up new avenues for research and practice. (pp. 416–437)

Early childhood education and cognitive development at age 7 years

Internationally, one area of interest to developmental psychologists has been the impact of early educational experience on later developmental outcomes for children, particularly those considered at risk of later school failure. The study reported is part of an international, longitudinal, crosscultural study of the impact of early childhood experiences on later development. This paper presents data about early educational settings and the observed experiences of a sample of 396 Irish 4-year-olds. It details the cognitive development level of the sample of children at age 4 and age 7. Results indicate that 4-year-olds attending national school experience a more formal early education than their counterparts in preschools. Children who attended designated disadvantaged (DD) preschools at age 4, and were attending DD schools at age 7, achieved a significantly lower mean cognitive score at age 7 when compared to all other groups. A gender difference in cognitive development was also found at age 7. Boys attending designated disadvantaged settings achieved a significantly lower score than all other groups.

Early Childhood Education and Teacher Development in Kenya: Lessons Learned

This article draws from the authors' experiences over several years in early childhood education research and professional development activities in Kenya. Both authors have conducted national studies in collaboration with leaders of the National Centre for Early Childhood Education (NACECE) in Nairobi. This article synthesizes findings from these studies, focusing on the national and district systems of preschool teacher training and development and discussing Kenya's rich history of early education and care. Cross-national studies of early childhood professional development and the roles of the state in providing for early childhood development and care can be informed through the “lessons learned” in one contemporary African society.

Characteristics of Teachers Who Talk the DAP Talk and Walk the DAP Walk

Studies consistently find a discrepancy between teachers' self-reported beliefs about developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) and their actual, observable classroom practices. Teachers attribute the discrepancy to a variety of environmental/work-related stresses or institutional barriers. Some early childhood professionals, however, are either unaffected by, or able to cope with, these same obstacles and live out DAP beliefs in practice. What are the characteristics of teachers who both state a belief in DAP and engage in DAP practices in their early childhood classrooms? Although there were differences between preschool and primary teachers in this sample of 20 early childhood educators of children ages birth through 8, DAP beliefs overall were strongly correlated with practices at the p <.001 level (r = .79). Also, high personal teaching efficacy and internal locus of control were significantly related to high DAP beliefs and predictive of DAP practices. In addition, teachers who either had an academic background in early childhood education or child development, or who had experience working in a preschool, were found to be significantly more DAP in their actual classroom practices than those who had an elementary education degree and no preschool experience. Implications for teacher education and professional development are discussed.

A Comparative Analysis of Some Aspects of Educating Young Children in Tanzania and in North America: Tanzanian Parents’ Perspectives*

Children moving from one country to another to continue their education at an early age, face serious adjustment challenges. Smooth transition from one education system to another depends on many factors, but parents play an important role. This paper is a comparative analysis of some aspects of educating young children in Tanzania on the one hand and in the United States and Canada on the other. Parents’ perspectives on their children's transition to the new education systems are examined and discussed. Data were collected through questionnaire and interviews. The data included demographic information, schooling and transfer information, presence or absence of educational aspirations ("dream") in both contexts, choice of school in the new education system, ratings on some school and home related factors, and parents’ specific observations and concerns about their children's educational development. Each set of data was analyzed separately using appropriate software and methods. Findings indicated that Tanzanian children who came to North America to continue their education were mostly from publicly owned schools or childcare centers, and most of them had high educational aspirations when they left the country. Parents indicated that learning English and speaking it at home and availability of learning materials were the major advantages of coming to Canada and the United States. Factors that prohibited smooth transition into the new education systems included inability to speak English fluently especially at school, lack of enough and directive teacher attention, lack of close and strong relationship with the teacher. Others were lack of focus on learning content, reduced enthusiasm about school, and feelings of inferiority among their peers. The findings are synthesized and discussed under three sup‐topics, namely, language and cognition, the Tanzanian child's perception of race, and confusion between racial label and socio‐economic background. Suggestions for parents and teachers are provided, as well as recommendations for further research. *Paper presented at the AERA Annual Meeting Montreal, Canada, April 19‐24, 1999.

Parents and Drug Education: Parents’ Concerns, Attitudes and Needs

Parents play a key role in their children's education and social development and therefore can be very influential to their children's learning about drugs. Despite this there has been little research done to date that explores parents’ perceptions. This paper reports research from questionnaires, which sampled 947 parents of 14‐16‐year‐olds, telephone interviews of 60 of these responses and six focus groups of primary and secondary school parents. The issues explored included parents’ concerns, needs and knowledge of drugs issues in respect to their children as well as parents’ perspective on drug education. The results show that parents are concerned about drugs in relation to their children, and report that drugs are easily available to young people and very much part of today's youth culture. The study revealed that parents are largely misinformed about the drug situation and request accurate and up‐to‐date information. They are unaware of their children's school drug policies and programmes and feel the need for easier access to relevant services. Parents rate drug education as important and report it should begin at late primary school age. Parents predominantly want their children to be taught the ‘Just Say No’ message. Finally, issues of communication about drugs, between parent(s) and their chiid(ren), were raised. A number of implications of the results for drug education are presented.

The problem of atopic eczema: aetiological clues from the environment and lifestyles

Atopic eczema is the most common inflammatory skin disease in children, affecting around 10% of children in the developed world. It can be a distressing condition, influencing children's well-being, personal and educational development, and family life, and it has huge economic implications for health services and individual budgets. Like other atopic diseases such as asthma and hay fever, the prevalence of atopic eczema has increased substantially over the last 30 years, for reasons largely unknown. Although a genetic predisposition to the disease has been implicated, evidence from a range of sources suggests that environmental factors play a crucial role in the disease expression. This paper reviews the epidemiology of atopic eczema, with particular attention to potential environmental aetiological factors and draws evidence from studies in the UK and internationally. First, atopic eczema has been found to vary socially and to be more prevalent in the UK among social class I and II families than among other socio-economic groups. Second, it has been suggested that cross infection from other siblings in large families may have a protective role in atopic disease expression. Third, it has been proposed that an increased risk of atopic eczema may result from decreases in helminthic infestation. Fourth, studies of migrant groups have shown large increases in disease prevalence compared with migrants' country of origin, suggesting clues as to the importance of socio-economic and environmental changes such as those associated with industrialization. Finally, a distinct and consistent geographical pattern of eczema has been observed in the UK which cannot be explained by social class distribution. The various types of study have attempted to identify reasons for differences in prevalence but, to date, no definitive causation has been identified. In some cases, specific risk factors have been suggested and include house dust mites, dietary allergens and irritants. It is argued here that the aetiology is unlikely to be simple or uni-causal and that an understanding of the relationships between the disease and behaviour, lifestyle, home and external environmental factors is crucial. This paper reports the preliminary stages of an interdisciplinary research project involving dermatologists, epidemiologists and health geographers, and calls for investigation into associations between atopic eczema and possible environmental and lifestyle factors. These include behavioural factors, microenvironment factors and macroenvironments.

Local Childcare Cultures: Moral geographies of mothering and the social organisation of pre-school education

Child-rearing has not been a major focus of research in geography despite the fact that its organisation is both spatially and temporally variable. Geographical work on pre-school childcare provision in the 1970s and 1980s tended to focus on the implementation and implications of government policy; more recently there has been a growth of feminist work on child-rearing which has employed a diversity of approaches. These studies have made a valuable contribution to our understanding of how mothers organise the care of their children, often whilst undertaking paid employment; nevertheless they can not always explain how a wide range of mothers negotiate specific aspects of 'maternal responsibility'. This article draws on an empirical investigation of pre-school childcare cultures in two areas of Sheffield, UK, in order to analyse the ways in which mothers' attitudes to their children's educational development and their strategies for accessing non-parental educational care are jointly shaped within the context of different local childcare cultures. The importance of two key components of these local childcare cultures, the moral geographies of mothering and the local social organisation of non-parental educational care, is emphasised.

Parents and Drug Education: parents' concerns, attitudes and needs

Parents play a key role in their children's education and social development and therefore can be very influential to their children's learning about drugs. Despite this there has been little research done to date that explores parents' perceptions. This paper reports research from questionnaires, which sampled 947 parents of 14–16-year-olds, telephone interviews of 60 of these responses and six focus groups of primary and secondary school parents. The issues explored included parents' concerns, needs and knowledge of drugs issues in respect to their children as well as parents' perspective on drug education. The results show that parents are concerned about drugs in relation to their children, and report that drugs are easily available to young people and very much part of today's youth culture. The study revealed that parents are largely misinformed about the drug situation and request accurate and up-to-date information. They are unaware of their children's school drug policies and programmers and feel the need for easier access to relevant services. Parents rate drug education as important and report it should begin at late primary school age. Parents predominantly want their children to be taught the ‘just Say No’ message. Finally, issues of communication about drugs, between parent(s) and their child(ren), were raised. A number of implications of the results for drug education are presented.

Which Counts More for Excellence in Childcare Staff — Years in Service, Education Level or ECE Coursework?

A sample of 81 caregivers in 24 urban centers was observed in interactions with preschool children three‐to‐five years old, in domains of positive and negative socioemotional inputs, language facilitation, concept promotion, and caregiving and cleaning up (of children and of environment).The teachers independently had provided responses to questions about their: number of years of formal schooling, years in childcare, years at the same center, own parenting status, and how many ECE/CD (early childhood education and child development) courses and workshops they had ever taken. Hierarchical stepwise regressions and ANOVAs showed the importance of ECE/CD training. When all positive teacher interactions tallied in the classroom were combined, ECE/CD training accounted for over 62 percent of the variance in teacher inputs. Thus, when interviewing candidates for childcare positions, directors need to verify a candidate's prior ECE/CD training and they need provide supports for staff to obtain ongoing ECE/CD coursework to ensure high quality childcare.

Accentuating the positive??: An analysis of teacher verbalizations with young children

One of the primary influences on the quality of child care classrooms is teacher behavior, and a critical component of teacher behavior is verbal communication. This study examined the quality of teacher verbalizations with young children in preschool classrooms. Nineteen of the teachers were enrolled in community college courses in early childhood education and child development between pre- and posttesting and fifteen were not. Results indicated that although there was significant improvement on a measure of global classroom quality for those teachers involved in college coursework, teacher verbalizations did not become more appropriate. These findings are discussed in light of current teacher education programs and policy issues.

The Ecology of Family Guidance in Low‐Income Mexican‐American and European‐American Families*

AbstractThis two‐part study applied an ecocultural perspective to socialization of daily and long‐term goals in low‐income Mexican‐American and European‐American families with children in third, fifth, and seventh grades. The first part of the study examined family members' participation and parents' socialization goals and guidance strategies for their children's daily household chores and homework activities. The second part of the study examined parents' long‐term aspirations and guidance strategies for their children's educational, vocational, and moral development. For daily activities, results showed that in Mexican‐American families both parents and siblings played important roles, whereas in European‐American families parents were the primary socialization agents. As predicted, in both groups parents' expertise influenced their guidance strategies. Finally, Mexican‐American and European‐American parents differed in their relative endorsement of gender, relational, and self‐reliance goals for household chores. For long‐term goals, parents in both groups held high educational, vocational, and moral aspirations for their children. However, some parents of seventh‐graders had lower educational and vocational aspirations than those of fifth‐ and third‐graders. Although expertise consistently influenced Mexican‐American parents' guidance strategies, the pattern for European‐American parents was mixed. The discussion highlights between‐ and within‐group differences in daily and long‐term socialization practices with an emphasis on resources and vulnerabilities in the families.

Parents' selections of proprietary day care centers for their school-age children: A study of three southeastern University Communities

A sample of 145 parents whose 5- to 12-year-old children attended one of 25 profit-making day care centers located in three southeastern states completed a questionnaire designed to determine how and why they selected day care for their school-age children. Results revealed that the typical parent visited two or three centers, including the one they ultimately selected, before making a choice. Parents' most common first source of information about day care came from friends; very few first obtained information from child development specialists, licensers, or doctors. Across the three communities, the parents' rank-ordered reasons for selecting day care were strikingly similar. Health and safety, caregiver quality, the child's social development, and the child's educational development were the most important considerations; cost was the least important consideration. In contrast to earlier research with a preschool sample, no demographic or day care selection variables were associated reliably with selecting better quality day care by these parents. Follow-up telephone interviews with 28 parents yielded several possible factors that could have operated to minimize the prediction of quality day care in the present study.

Important Factors in the Provision of Appropriate Daycare Environments for Young Children: A Review of Research

Summary ’Day care’ is any form of care for preschool children which is not full time care by a parent at home. This article traces the route of research into the efficiency of such provision with particular reference to its effects upon children's subsequent educational development. First the significance of the social context of such research is noted, followed by a review of early research and the identification of key independent variables which may play a part in determining later outcomes. The next section analyses a seminal paper on the long term effects of childcare on schooling. The paper concludes with the identification of key aspects of ‘quality of care’ together with some suggestions for future research.

Cerumen-impaction management for clients of all ages.

A cerumen plug in the external auditory canal can cause dizziness, pain, itching, ringing or decreased hearing. These symptoms are particularly distressing to elderly clients who may already have compromised hearing or be experiencing changes in functional ability. A cerumen plug that causes hearing impairments can retard children's educational and psychosocial development. This article focuses on the physiology of cerumen, the risk factors of cerumen plugs and the best way to remove cerumen in clients of all ages. The contraindications and complications of aural lavaging and instrument removal of cerumen are discussed. An ear-irrigation flow sheet is also included for ambulatory clinical use.

Ways of assessing children and curriculum: stories of early childhood practice

This text is a response to the increasingly widespread practice of administering standardised tests to pre-school and primary-grade children. As Celia Genishi points out, such traditional tests are often misused and fail to measure many significant aspects of children's growth and learning. Here she and her colleagues present teachers' alternative ways of meeting the need for the assessment of young children. Ways of Assessing Children and Curriculum: Stories of Early Childhood Practice is the result of a collaboration between early childhood teachers and teacher educators. The stories in the central chapters provide a look at the ways these teachers document the development of children from diverse cultural backgrounds in varied contexts, including play-oriented, bilingual and Foxfire classrooms. The alternative ways of assessing, some traditional and some novel, include observing, note-taking, role-playing and keeping portfolios of children's work over time. They are developmentally based and have grown out of curricula co-constructed by these teachers and their children, in contrast to standardised measures designed by outsiders to evaluate groups statistically. This book should be a valuable resource for all teachers, teacher educators and upper-level students in early childhood education and child development. It should also be of interest to school district administrators and policymakers.

Staff—child interaction styles in multi‐ethnic nursery schools

Nursery staff‐child interactions were analysed to determine if adult style varied according to the ethnicity of the child. A series of situations was set up to highlight certain specific educationally important aspects of adult‐child interaction. Individual adults were paired with a Scottish child and an Asian child in counterbalanced order. Across the three situations staff adopted a more controlling style with Asian children; they were moreover less responsive to Asian children than to Scottish children. The implications of these findings for Asian children's educational, language, social and emotional development are discussed.

An evaluation of a pre‐school home‐teaching project

Summary Although there have been several pre‐school educational home‐visiting initiatives in the UK, few have been evaluated. A study of a pre‐school home‐teaching project in an inner city area is therefore reported. A qualitative research methodology, including a review of the project, interviews of parents, home teachers and allied professionals, was employed. The approach of the home teachers is detailed. Findings indicate that the project was successful in changing parents’ involvement in their children's educational development. Policy implications are discussed. Although there have been several pre‐school educational home‐visiting schemes in the UK, few have been documented (Aplin and Pugh, 1983), even fewer have been evaluated systematically (Smith, 1975; Jayne, 1976; Raven, 1980). Here we would like to report a case of a pre‐school home‐teaching project which was set up in a disadvantaged area of Sheffield, England.