At its core the political push for full inclusion models of special education delivery derives from the belief that inclusion provides equal access, equitable distribution of resources and increased social opportunity to children. This study focused upon the evolution of special education programming within a pre-K to sixth grade elementary school…

In this text, the authors are analyzing preschool care and education in local community. They are focusing on the problem of information transfer between the kindergarten, parents and local community, as well as the model of relationship participation. Cooperation between parents, kindergarten and local community is an important element in the…

This study explores preschoolers' real life engagement with music in everyday life, examining the choices that they have over music listening and the engagement that they show in relation to music in different contexts. A total of 32 children from the United Kingdom aged 3.2-3.9 years participated with their families, nursery teachers and other…

Interviews with 15 mothers were analyzed to investigate how these mothers, who chose to delay their child's kindergarten entry, organized their children's environments during the hold-out year. Previous analyses of the interviews identified two categories of mothers, who were substantially different in their decision-making. In the current paper…

Objective: Determine relationships between self-efficacy, decisional balance, and processes of change and Stages of Change (SOC) related to fruit and vegetable (FV) availability among Hispanic Head Start parents. Design: A 2-phase descriptive study with mixed methodology. Setting: Two Head Start sites in a city in the midwestern United States.…

What constitutes quality in early childhood settings, and how can it best be measured with today's widely used tools and promising new approaches? Find authoritative answers in this book, a must-have for high-level administrators and policymakers as more and more states adopt early childhood Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. The most…

In this article, the author presents a discussion regarding the sharing of decision making regarding curriculum in preschool. The preschool where she teaches is housed in a diverse, faith-based elementary school in the heart of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a midsize, midwestern city. It offers full-day, half-day, and two-and-a-half-hour preschool…

Implementing the Pyramid Model with fidelity and achieving positive outcomes for children and their families requires that administrators understand their roles in the implementation process. Every administrative decision impacts program quality and sustainability. This Policy Brief underscores the importance of facilitative administrative…

This issue of "Early Developments" examines a relatively new phenomenon in the early childhood field called "evidence-based practice," defined herein as "a decision-making process that integrates the best available research evidence with family and professional wisdom and values." This issue of "Early Developments" includes the following articles:…

Increasing demands for evidence-based early childhood services and the need by policymakers to know whether a program is effective or whether it warrants a significant investment of public and/or private funds--coupled with the often-politicized debate around these topics--make it imperative for policymakers and civic leaders to have independent…

Singaporean preschool teachers are responsible for preparing their young students for a formal education that is predominantly conducted in English. What these teachers believe about how young children learn English literacy skills is important to study, especially when much of the research is situated in very different contexts. Talking to…

This compendium, a deliverable for "Assessments for Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning with Preschool/Elementary-School Children," focuses on tools to assess the social and emotional learning (SEL) of preschool and elementary school students (i.e., five- to ten-year-olds), along with aspects of the contexts in which they learn and…

The current study examined the reinforcing effects of choosing among alternatives in a four-part evaluation. In the first study, initial-link responses in a concurrent-chains arrangement resulted in access to terminal links in which the completion of an academic task resulted in (a) the choice of a reinforcer (choice), (b) the delivery of an…

The authors' goal in conducting this study was to explore the association between temperament and future-oriented decision making. Forty-three preschoolers (mean age = 51 months) were given a child variant of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and asked to choose between a deck with higher immediate rewards and a deck with higher future rewards.…

This paper presents a rationale for consulting with very young children to enable their voices to be heard, and taken into consideration, when planning pre-school provision. It goes on to suggest that the expressed preferences of pre-school children can be taken as an accurate account of their thoughts and feelings. This is tested through a case…