The present study focused on professionals' meaning-making support to young children (1-6 years old) anticipating and grieving the loss of a parent because of a severe, somatic disease. A two-phased interview study with palliative health-care professionals (11) and kindergarten teachers (18) provided data for a comparative analysis of…

Many studies have reported that early interventions on language and early literacy skills are important for preventing later reading difficulties at primary school. The aim of the study is to assess the effectiveness of a 12-week intervention programme focused on enhancing pre-schoolers' language and early literacy skills. Two groups of children…

Research Findings: The present study examined children's listening comprehension during a two-semester-long dialogic reading. We explored the extent to which the development of children's listening comprehension was accounted for by initial listening comprehension and whether children's engagement and the amount and level of their verbal…

The acquisition of reading skills is a critical component of early education in the United States, beginning with the introduction of pre-literacy skills to children as young as pre-school age. Students are tasked with developing the ability to decode and comprehend text across various subject areas. However, national reading data indicates that a…

Much attention has been paid to storybook reading as a context for supporting preschoolers' emergent language and literacy. Inferential thinking is essential to listening comprehension and to reading comprehension. Understanding the story deeply and reasoning about events and characters are central to children's enjoyment and to comprehension…

There remains a persistent achievement gap among English learners (ELs) and their English-speaking peers. A typical, native English speaker begins schooling with years of oral language experience in the language of instruction, which provides the required precursors necessary for reading acquisition. The latest research indicates for many ELs,…

The curricular reform of 2016 presented us with a unique opportunity to compare children who had followed the previous early childhood curriculum in Slovakia with children who attended preschool after the successful implementation of the new preschool curriculum. Our book is based on the findings of research carried out in the ecologically valid…

Reading comprehension is a mental skill that requires establishing connections between the content of the text and the individual's prior knowledge. The purpose of the current study is to examine the reading comprehension levels of primary school fourth grade students based on their answers to open-ended questions about a narrative text in…

The acquisition of vocabulary and narrative comprehension are key abilities for children's literacy development and to potentiate cognitive and academic skills from early ages. The aim with this study was to analyse the effects of a 6-week integrated active-lessons programme based on playful games, vocabulary, and narrative comprehension.…

This dissertation examines the meaning-making of children (ages 2-5) as they read and play with picture books related to social justice themes, such as identity and diversity, in a preschool and childcare center. The study goal is to investigate the analysis of children's meaning-making of picture books to understand the social world around them…

Many early childhood educators use the evidenced-based practice of interactive shared book reading (ISBR) to promote the development of important communication and literacy skills. ISBR for preschoolers has been shown to build both vocabulary and conceptual knowledge, which in turn contributes to later language and reading comprehension…

In 2009, the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences (IES) allocated $120 million to establish the Reading for Understanding (RfU) initiative. This initiative responded to concern that children's improvement in reading comprehension had leveled off over the previous few decades, coupled with the observation that research on reading comprehension had…

Children develop early literacy and numeracy skills from an early age. The primary aim of the current study is to examen links between early literacy skills and early numeracy skills during preschool education in France. This study involves 313 kindergarten students (152 girls and 161 boys), aged between 3.44 and 7.02 years (mean age = 5.07 years,…

Although young children from low-income families may (or may not) have fewer quality literacy experiences at home before attending preschool or kindergarten, instruction from an exemplary teacher matters most for emergent comprehension development. This single, intrinsic case study describes how one exemplary teacher's interactions with her…

In response to growing attention to young children's citizenship, and recent calls for critique of Western discourses and practices, we explore the movement of Western 'pioneering' pedagogies of early childhood education (ECE) and their localisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Employing a poststructural positioning, and theoretical devices drawn from…