Early childhood can be a time of rich discovery, a period when educators have an opportunity to harness their students' fascination to create unique learning opportunities. Some teachers engage with their students' ideas in ways that make learning collaborative--but not all students have access to these kinds of learning environments. In…

Background/Context: Both correlational and experimental evidence suggests that having access to books can be a key resource for accelerating the literacy outcomes for children. Results from a 20-year study across 27 nations by Evans, Kelley, Sikora, and Treiman (2010), suggest that children growing up in homes with many books obtain 3 years more…

The author presents ethnographic data drawn from an 18-month critical qualitative case study to examine how one white preservice teacher attempts to resist normative whiteness in her student teaching classroom. The author discusses the potential such moments hold for deepening white preservice teachers' sociopolitical consciousness and supporting…

This paper examines the long-term impact of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) on postsecondary education outcomes, with a focus on historically underserved students. MERA aimed to improve educational standards and close achievement gaps through the introduction of MCAS,…

Decades of research demonstrate that young children make meaning about race and racism. Yet there remains a dearth of scholarship about whether and how African American children are thinking across racial and ethnic difference to make sense of systemic inequities. Moreover, there are but a handful of scholars who have documented the ways that…

Based on sociological, economic, and social-psychological theories of discrimination and bias, this study addresses non-native accents among ethnic minority students as they begin school and explores effects of such accents on their teachers' achievement expectations. Using a unique data set of first graders in Germany, the analysis reveals that a…

Children of color are more likely to have poor sleep health than White children, placing them at risk for behavioral problems in the classroom and lower academic performance. Few studies, however, have utilized standardized measures of both classroom behavior and achievement. This study examined whether children's sleep (parent and teacher report)…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula are being increasingly implemented with young children; however, access to comprehensive programs can be prohibitive for programs limited by finances, time, or other factors. This article describes an exploratory case study that investigates the use of creative activity in the direct promotion of empathy…

When language is defined narrowly in mathematics classrooms, racially and linguistically minoritized students in classrooms could be systematically positioned as "learners of deficiency." Recent scholarship calls for expanding the notion of language to emphasize embodied expression of mathematical ideas. Taking a critical perspective to…

Significant attention and legislation have been directed to assessment intervention for students with word-level reading disability (WLRD; i.e., dyslexia). Scholars have called for similar attention to prevention-oriented approaches in which intervention is provided to students at risk for WLRD from the earliest grades. Progress monitoring is a…

At the Center for Black Educator Development, the organization Sharif El-Mekki founded and leads, they believe that to teach Black children "superbly" is a revolutionary act. In service of that goal, they prepare educators to instill in Black children a positive sense of their own racial identity and, in so doing, equip them with the…

School-based day treatment is an intensive mental health service for children with social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. Research on day treatment is scarce and descriptions of program models are lacking. We used stimulated recall interviews to explore the moment-to-moment processes and strategies of classroom staff in a day treatment…

This study examined the biliterate writing abilities and development of 25 Spanish-English Latinx children over the course of their first-grade year. As part of their regular classroom instruction, each student created 16 writing compositions over the year, once a month, eight entries each in Spanish and English. Using embedded mixed methods and a…

Grade retention, the practice of holding a student back in the same grade, has been a controversial topic in the United States for decades. English learners, a growing population in US schools, are consistently identified for grade retention more often than their English-only counterparts. The purpose of this study is to test the impact of grade…

Reading self-beliefs, comprising self-concept and self-efficacy, play a pivotal role in shaping students' learning engagement and learning outcomes. However, existing literature on the self-beliefs of school-entry students primarily originates from Western contexts, and the exploration of differences in self-beliefs, engagement in learning, and…