The relationship between less than optimal parenting styles, child transgressions and maternal depression were examined. It was predicted that variations in parenting styles would predict maternal depression over and above child transgressions. The present study involved approximately 68 children, their mothers and their preschool teachers.…

Three blocks of factors were considered as predictors of four year old children's (N = 286) personality, non-verbal intelligence and social behaviour in preschool: (a) personality characteristics at time 1 (T1) when the participants were three years old; (b) parental education and parenting practices measured at T1; and (c) age of child's entry to…

This volume in the Language Teacher Research Series (Thomas S. C. Farrell, series editor) presents research conducted by language teachers at all levels, from high school English teachers to English language teacher educators, reflecting on their practices. The countries represented in this book are Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,…

This article emphasises the importance of research that helps us to understand how things are in early childhood education and care, why they are the way they are, what are the alternative decisions or actions we might take in order to change things and what are the implications of choosing among those alternatives. As an illustration of this, it…

This article first offers an overview of policy contexts in the four countries of the UK. Second, it reviews recent research into perspectives on special educational needs and inclusion in the preschool years. Third, the rationale and research design of a study to investigate preschool educators' perspectives on these issues are outlined. Five key…

Public Act 05-245 called for the establishment of a committee to assess pathways to baccalaureate degree programs in early childhood education; make recommendations to increase access to initial certification in early childhood or child development; and make recommendations for strengthening articulation between two-year and four-year early…

Joint attention refers to an early developing set of behaviors that plays a critical role in both social and language development and is specifically impaired in children with autism. In a series of three studies, preschool teachers demonstrated the effectiveness of discrete trial instruction and pivotal response training strategies to teach joint…

Excursions, or field trips, are a common component of early childhood programs, seen as a means of enriching the curriculum by providing experiences with people, places, and things in the community. Although excursions have been used as a framework for research on children's memory development, research on the efficacy of excursions in terms of…

Early childhood teachers' understandings of play were examined in a qualitative comparative study of 41 Japanese and 41 American participants. Qualitative analysis of the data yielded five themes: the power of living, the opportunity to learn and to develop, fun activities, child's work, and the opportunity to explore nature. Two themes emerged in…

The idea that children are not objects nor subjects but participants constitutes children as social actors with a part to play in their own educational processes and research connected to these processes. As a consequence, there is growing awareness that knowledge about children should be constituted on the basis of listening and hearing them.…

This study evaluates the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI) for assessing pre-school children's social competence across home and school settings. Data were collected on a multi-ethnic sample of 191 3- to 5-year-old children attending Head Start centers. Parents, teachers, and teacher aides rated children similarly on the three ASBI…

This was a correlational study conducted with a population of prekindergarten educators from a large, metropolitan school district. The purpose was to examine if there were relationships between and among early childhood teachers' sense of self-efficacy, their beliefs about the importance of mathematics, and their mathematics instructional…

This paper examines the interactions between teachers and children based on a micro-ethnographic study of an early childhood classroom in which the teacher attempts to scaffold children's learning. The attempts at scaffolding are subverted by children as they resist the teacher's endeavors to modify their play. Teacher's attempts at scaffolding,…

How do we educate for peace in a context of pervasive social violence? This paper explores this question as it presents the development and evaluation of a South African peace education programme at pre-school level. The programme comprised a pre-school curriculum and a teacher development course and was developed in conjunction with a team of…

The purpose of the present study was to examine perceived levels of burnout and job satisfaction of Greek early educators, across public and private sector. One hundred and seventy eight childhood educators participated in the study. 108 were working in the public sector, 67 in private sector, whereas three did not respond. Participants were…