A pressing need exists within the field of early intervention and early childhood special education to identify and measure outcomes for young children and their families as a result of participating in publicly funded services. This article identifies critical issues for state administrators; providers, families, and researchers to consider when…

The future of Greece's well-being will depend on improving educational performance to boost productivity and improve social outcomes. In the current economic context, with the need to get best value for spending, Greece must and can address inefficiencies in its education system. The challenges are significant. For example, Greece lags behind many…

Meeting a crucial need, this book provides clear recommendations for authentic developmental assessment of children from infancy to age 6, including those with developmental delays and disabilities. It describes principles and strategies for collecting information about children's everyday activities in the home, preschool, and community, which…

This book focuses on basic strategies you can integrate into everyday instruction in every subject area and across grade levels. It shows teachers how to motivate and engage students. The practical examples in this book make it easy for you to apply these strategies in your own classroom. It presents lively stories about how teachers help their…

Continuous improvement in the quality of service offered to children, young people, parents and carers has been a key priority of the education system in Scotland over many years. Scottish pre-school centres and schools have well-established processes for self-evaluation based on the quality indicators in "How good is our school?" (1996,…

This study explores how teacher quality matters in improving early childhood performance in US kindergartens. We find that it is what teachers do rather than the credentials they hold that matters. Different from previous research on the effect of teacher quality on student achievement, this paper first rejected the common practice of using…

The authors undertook a review of measures available for assessing outcomes of early childhood services for children with disabilities and their families. With principles of family-centered practice mandating the inclusion of both family and child outcome measures in effective evaluation plans, the review examined measures with established…

This paper considers some of the current knowledge about our understanding of and provision for early childhood internationally. It looks at its relative importance, offers a short overview of research and terminology, outlines a global perspective (the big picture) and provides a brief summary of the current South Australian policy and position.…

Increasingly, kindergarten has become a full day of school, and nearly the whole day is devoted to academic instruction. Early childhood education is being pushed strongly toward the cognitive approach, with strong emphasis on early academic achievement, including the testing of young children to measure their accomplishments. What is lost or…

To raise the achievement of every student, Maryland designed "Achievement Matters Most," a plan for public schools that sets goals in the areas of achievement, teaching, testing, safety, and family involvement in schools. Achievement Matters Most is based on the work of the Visionary Panel for Better Schools and also includes the requirements of…

In this paper the author would like to share a small section of text that emerged in the process of analyzing and synthesizing data from her self-study research into her role as a coordinator for special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream infant education in the UK. The section consists of three Imaginative Conjectures in which she re-envisions…

The influence of early childhood programs on the entire education community cannot be overstated. These programs have highlighted the important role that successful learning experiences at home and experiences in high-quality early childhood programs play in future academic success (Wesley & Buysse, 2003). The purpose of this article is to…

Efforts to transfer research findings on autism into public schools would benefit from further evaluation of teacher preparation models. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a model program that was deigned to prepare current teachers in evidence-based practices for children with autism. Drawn from the extensive literature on caregiver…

A contemporary view of early childhood motor development considers environmental influences as critical factors in optimal growth and behavior, with the home being the primary agent. However, there has been minimal research examining the relationship between motor development and the home. The present study addresses this gap with the goal of…

This article summarizes a formative evaluation of a two-year project to provide professional development in technology for urban early childhood teachers. The researcher collected and analyzed data from interviews of 18 teachers. Using the constant comparative method the researcher identified common barriers that inhibited the effective…