There is a growing recognition that for an educational innovation to be successful it needs to be more than a good idea--success requires an understanding of how change is implemented. Reggio, a widely-applied, innovative philosophy in early childhood settings, has some support in primary schools. Yet there is very little research to guide primary…

This study describes early childhood teachers' own beliefs and concepts of aesthetic experience in young children. The teachers involved in this study were directly engaged in preschools for 4 and 5 year-olds where arts and aesthetic education are a primary consideration of their integrated curriculum. These teachers identified a variety of…

Young children with special needs and their families often experience transitions across multiple environments in the early childhood years. Many transitions are identified as stressful for children and families. In the present study, a series of focus groups involving administrators, practitioners, and family members were held around the United…

This research investigated the use of electronic journaling to promote collaboration between special education and general education preservice teachers. During the field experience component of their methods courses, the participants responded to weekly prompts, shared experiences with each other, and frequently offered advice about events their…

This article examines a group of New Zealand preschool teachers' perspectives on their early childhood curriculum--"Te Whariki: He Whariki Maatauranga mo ngaa Mokopuna o Aotearoa" (Ministry of Education, 1996). In this discussion we focus on the teachers' understandings of the meaning, value and focus of this curriculum document. This is…

This article explores the training needs in speech and language of teachers and other early years educators in education settings. Results from the interviews demonstrate that practitioners have clear ideas about preferred training formats and they specifically want more training in identifying children with communication difficulties and…

Preschool and kindergarten teachers set the stage for a child to learn to read with some critical early skills. First, second, and third grade teachers then take up the task of building the skills that children will use every day for the rest of their lives. Parents can help by understanding what teachers are teaching and by asking questions about…

Preschool is an institution for cultural preservation, which responds to social change. Guided by this assumption, this study used a recent video of Chinese preschool in conjunction with the questionnaire from "Preschool in Three Cultures", a study by Joseph Tobin and his colleagues in the 1980s, to examine the cultural and professional beliefs of…

As a part of efforts to evaluate and monitor the increasing public investment in early childhood education, teachers are being asked to assess children's school readiness. In this study, preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers rated children's skills in three areas (kindergarten readiness, academic skills, and communication skills), and these…

This study assessed the extent to which teachers' perceptions of their relationships with young students varied as a function of child and teacher characteristics in a large, demographically diverse sample of 197 preschool and kindergarten teachers and 840 children. Children were approximately evenly divided between boys and girls. Regression…

One of the responsibilities involved with teaching is disciplining, an area where teachers teach their male and female students in accord with their beliefs and expectations as to which behaviors are appropriate in which situations. In this study, teachers? beliefs about the use of appropriate discipline philosophies for the misbehaviors of male…

The purpose of the study was to explore how young children express their perception of gender dynamics (e.g., gender-bending and gender-doing) in their play. A total of 84 children (52 boys and 32 girls) and 4 teachers from the U.S. and South Korea participated in the study. To capture perspectives from the children, qualitative data were…

Two studies examined the effects of using a formal assessment instrument on preschool teachers' beliefs concerning the importance of various developmental skills and abilities. In Study 1, users of a formal assessment instrument rated skills and abilities assessed by the instrument as more important for preschoolers to develop than non-users. In…

This article explores conversations between preschool children and their teachers in the classroom environment. Teachers have an opportunity to engage students in cognitively challenging conversations at critical times during the day: book reading, playtime, and mealtimes. The article provides examples of the types of conversations preschool…

The purpose of this study is to determine the attitudes of preschool teacher candidates studying through distance education approach towards the teaching profession and to determine their perception levels of teaching competency. The population and sampling of the study were the senior students of Anadolu University, Open Education Faculty,…