This study investigated microaggressions Black children experienced in early childhood education during the pandemic. Using racial microaggressions as a framework, we sought to gain insights into these experiences through counter-narratives from parents of Black children. Parents provided unique insights into their children's experiences, giving…

The current study examines the contribution of racial congruence on young children's speech and language production to determine if African American children produce more or different language with an African American assessor, as opposed to a White assessor. Participants for the current study were selected from a larger group of children…

African American English (AAE)-speaking children's ability to judge the grammaticality of sentences was evaluated by their clinical status and grammatical structure. The study originated from a need to understand more about the tense and agreement systems of AAE speakers with specific language impairment (SLI) relative to their typically…

This article explores the impact of critical, humanizing pedagogies in early childhood education by focusing on the joyful experiences of Black children in PK-2 classrooms. Through the use of photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997), a participatory research method, senior-level undergraduate early childhood education teacher candidates documented and…

This study utilized data from the Family Life Project (FLP) to examine Head Start children's school readiness skills at the end of preschool in comparison to two other care groups: home-based care and other center-based care. The FLP study enrolled a birth-cohort of 1,292 children born in two historically low-wealth, rural regions of the U.S.,…

The early years are a critical period for setting children up for school and life. For Black children who are exposed to adversities before and after birth, early childhood education (ECE) has been shown as one potentially strategy to mitigate against systemic inequities. However, evidence continues to show the negative impact of structural racism…

The prison abolition movement has brought attention to the American carceral crisis, or better yet, the mass incarceration and disproportionate criminalization of Black people in America. It has also led to and fomented recent calls to defund prison systems, the police, and to remove police from schools. While discussions of prison abolition have…

Purpose: Both fictional oral narrative and expository oral discourse skills are critical language competencies that support children's academic success. Few studies, however, have examined African American children's microstructure performance across these genres. To address this gap in the literature, the study compared African American…

The goal of every early educator is to prepare all students for school success--but for young Black children, entrenched biases and racial inequities have created an achievement gap that must be closed. Transform your practices "and" work for systemic change with this visionary guidebook, a comprehensive roadmap to promoting racial…

Purpose: In this mixed-methods study, we address two aims. First, we examine the impact of language variation on the ratings of children's narrative language. Second, we identify participants' ideologies related to narrative language and language variation. Method: Forty adults listened to and rated six Black second-grade children on the quality…

Anne Dyson confronts race and racism head-on with this ethnographic study of a child's efforts to belong--to be a child among children. Follow the journey of a small Black child, Ta'Von, as he moves from a culturally inclusive preschool through the early grades in a school located in a majority white neighborhood. Readers will see Ta'Von…

In September 2021, the Equity Research Action Coalition, in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute and POINTS of ACCESS, LLC, collaborated in creating the Black Child National Agenda to challenge the negative and stereotypical narrative of Black children, families, and communities and to identify 10 priorities to dismantle…

This qualitative study explores the transition to kindergarten special education of four Somali autistic children in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This dissertation answers a single, two-part research question: What aspects of the transition to kindergarten process do stakeholders find facilitate the transition process? What parts of the transition do…

This phenomenological study used individual interviews with ten graduate students in school counseling and school psychology to understand their experiences in a University-Church service-learning partnership to support PreK-12th grade youth in response to COVID-19. Most graduate participants identified as White/Non-Hispanic, and all youth served…

Three aspects of cognition (fluid intelligence, executive functioning, and crystallized intelligence) in pre-K were examined as predictors of math and reading achievement in kindergarten among an economically diverse sample of 198 African American children. From a variable-centered perspective, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the three…