In 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Early Learning Initiative (ELI) to improve the school readiness of Washington State's children through three main strategies: (1) development of high-quality, community-wide early learning initiatives in two communities; (2) enhancement of statewide systems that support early…

Developmental research suggests that some of the mechanisms that underlie numerical cognition are present and functional in human infancy. To investigate these mechanisms and their developmental course, psychologists have turned to behavioral and electrophysiological methods using briefly presented displays. These methods, however, depend on the…

The first legislative control over early education services in Ireland came into place in 1996, in the form of the Child Care (Pre-School Services) Regulations (Department of Health, 1996). The research hypothesis of this study was that the implementation of the Regulations would have had an impact on quality of early childhood care and education…

Child engagement can be used as a child outcome measure, a measure of program quality and a guide for programming decisions. Measures of engagement cited in the literature are examined and features of those measures are described. Based on the gaps identified in the existing measures, the characteristics of a measure of engagement with the…

This volume of transformed research utilizes an activist approach to examine the notion that nothing is apolitical. Research projects themselves are critically examined for power orientations, even as they are used to address curricular problems and educational or societal issues. Philosophical perspectives that have facilitated an understanding…

The recent foundation of a 'Young Children's Perspectives' special interest group in the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) reflects a general move in social research towards the respectful and inclusive involvement of children in the research process. However, established education research guidelines often provide…

This paper engages with questions of logic and its politics to explore how those of us in early childhood education can become critical consumers of "brain research". The research truths we use to construct classroom practices decide the meanings of our actions, thoughts and feelings and our interactions with children. Following Foucault (1980), I…

Family-school partnerships are increasingly touted as a means of improving both student and school improvement. This recognition has led to an increase in policies and initiatives that offer the following benefits: improved communication between parents and educators; home and school goals that are mutually supportive and shared; better…

This methodology guide is designed to help study teams answer basic questions about how to conduct a regional economic analysis of the child care sector. Specific examples are drawn from a local study, Tompkins County, NY, and two state studies, Kansas and New York, which the Cornell team conducted. Other state and local studies are also…

This report documents the design and collection of the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) of 2001. It begins by providing an overview of the collection and the report. Next, the design of the questionnaires are discussed. Chapter 3 presents the sample design which is followed by information about the data collection. Chapter 5…

The study was conducted with a group of 5 and 6 year old children in one playschool in Reykjavik, Iceland. The purpose of the study was to shed light on what life in an Icelandic playschool is like for the children attending the program, finding out their views on why they attend playschool, what they do and learn in playschool, what the adults do…

This article is a synthesis of early literacy research organized according to critical lessons that delineate our shared knowledge base that we name a 'transactional perspective on early literacy development.' The critical lessons are grouped into three sets to present the continuum of methodological stances that interpretive researchers take as…

This article describes how preservice teachers accomplish and write up action research projects as part of their teacher preparation at one university in the United States. The paper is divided into four major sections. In the first section, the instructor describes how teacher research is introduced to teacher education students and how they are…

A predominantly positivistic-quantitative research tradition is uncovered through a survey of selected Nigerian universities with particular reference to the faculty of education. This predominance of what appears to be a one sided research enterprise and the neglect of the qualitative approaches is born out of the self-evident lack of history of…

University-community partnerships are becoming increasingly salient to the development of early childhood education experiences that promote school readiness for young children (Barnett & Frede, 2001). Given the unique skills required for such collaborative research endeavors, there is a need for capacity-building that begins with training of new…