In "The Critical Advantage," noted scholar and early childhood expert William T. Gormley, Jr. takes a wide ranging look at the important role of critical thinking in preparing students for college, careers, and civic life. Drawing on research from psychology, philosophy, business, political science, neuroscience, and other disciplines,…

Differences in emotion knowledge by children's age, gender, and socioeconomic risk status, as well as associations of emotion knowledge with executive control, social competence, and early classroom adjustment, were investigated. On emotion knowledge, 4- and 5-year-olds scored higher than 3-year-olds, with girls showing this effect more strongly.…

It is the responsibility of every early childhood program director to support the development of staff, to ensure that teachers and caregivers have the skills and understanding they need to provide the highest quality of services to children. For Head Start directors, this same responsibility is intensified by federal mandates and a mission…

The present research represents a test of the effect of adding seriation instruction to oddity instruction to produce an advantage in both forms of abstraction. Pasnak et al. (2007) and Kidd, Pasnak, Gadzichowski, Ferral-Like, & Gallington (2008) have shown that at risk kindergartners profit academically from instruction in both oddity and…

The friendships of 59 ethnically diverse (African American, European American, Latino, Middle Eastern, and West African) children enrolled in Head Start classes were assessed in the spring of the school year via a peer nomination technique and a roster rating method. Two types of behavior that earlier researchers found to be predictive of how well…