The authors ask if participating in an early-childhood theater production improves pretend play and cooperation among preschoolers. They examined play sessions immediately before and after productions of interactive earlychildhood performances at Imagination Stage, Inc. and measured children's engagement, cooperation, pretense, and misbehavior.…

Toddlers' engagement with their social and physical environment is an important aspect of their experience in early care and education programs. The purpose of this research study was to examine how global quality relates to children's engagement in toddler child care classrooms. Additionally, this study explored how toddlers' group engagement…

The Learning Target Rating Scale (LTRS) is a measure designed to evaluate the quality of teacher-developed learning targets for embedded instruction for early learning. In the present study, we examined the measurement dependability of LTRS scores by conducting a generalizability study (G-study). We used a partially nested, three-facet model to…

Background: The template for the current study was the project conducted by Rosenthal [1973. "An Ecological Study of Free Play in the Nursery School." Doctoral diss., Wayne State University] where she investigated the attraction and holding power of various learning centres during free play in a naturalistic preschool setting.…

Blocks and block play are ubiquitous to early childhood settings and as such provide a normative context for social interactions between children with and without disabilities. However, children with disabilities tend to engage in more repetitive and less complex play than their peers, which might limit social interactions and opportunities to…

Research demonstrates young children with autism and other developmental disabilities can benefit from participation in play activities with peers. Play provides opportunities to increase social skills across developmental domains in an integrated manner and provides opportunities to develop a sense of belonging and friendship; these goals…

This rigorous literature review analyzed how 28 U.S.-based research studies conducted between 2001 and 2015 have defined, described, and measured changes in teaching practices related to implementation of Differentiated Instruction (DI) in P-12 classrooms. Research questions examined frameworks that defined DI, classroom operationalization of DI,…

The research on elementary teachers' implementation of peer collaboration strategies is limited. Yet, the extensive peer collaboration literature that does exist focuses on student outcomes in urban and suburban settings. A problem with most of the current scope of research about peer collaboration is that it has marginalized the voice of teachers…

The book was designed to determine if students were using the recently purchased Chromebooks as well as if they were cognitively engaged when using the technology. Data collected using the IPI-T process suggested teachers were typically the users of the technology, students were often disengaged, and teachers were asking students to participate in…

This article will review many forms of home-based parent involvement (e.g., shared reading; books at home; helping with homework; visiting museums; monitoring grades), parent beliefs (e.g., about the importance of school readiness skills; growth mindset for their children), parent expectations, parent-school relationships, and parent autonomy and…

This report explores the impact of schools and other settings working with families to improve learning and achievement. It identifies the key features of highly-effective practice in engaging families in learning and provides examples of quality family learning which are helping to secure better outcomes for children and young people. The case…

A gap exists in the information needed to make intervention decisions with preschool children who are unresponsive to instructional intervention. "Multi-Tiered System of Supports/Response to Intervention" (MTSS/RTI) progress monitoring is helpful in indicating when an intervention change is needed but provides little information on what…

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate whether and how teacher-child interactions, teacher-child relationships, children's self-control, parents' education levels, teachers' teaching experience and education levels, and classroom physical environment impact children's engagement levels. Preschoolers from Head Start programs and a university…

Many preservice and practicing elementary teachers are familiar with the 5E learning cycle. This cycle provides a relatively simple, alliteratively memorable framework for teaching science in which lessons (or even entire units of instruction) consist of five distinct phases: Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration/Extension (hereafter,…

Our goals in this study were to examine (a) the degree to which teacher perceptions of children's behavior in kindergarten (averaged across fall and spring for each child) predict retention by Grade 5 and (b) whether these relationships are moderated by student race, gender, or socioeconomic status (SES). Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…