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…

Objective: In the UK there have been no initiatives identified to increase the use of sun safety policies in preschool establishments. This study tests the hypothesis that health visitors with appropriate sun safety training can successfully facilitate the development and implementation of sun safety policies and practices in preschool education…

This report summarizes Austin Independent School District's prekindergarten program for the 2007-2008 school year.

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…

In inclusive education different pupils, including pupils with special educational needs and high ability pupils, can be stimulated to learn according to their capacities and potentials. The research question concentrates on the design features of inclusive education that will optimally promote the motivation and learning processes and outcomes of…

Facing mounting evidence that California has fallen behind on many key indicators of educational performance, policymakers and the public share considerable interest in exploring whether California should expand public funding for preschool education. This expanded funding will be most effective if resources can be directed to their most efficient…

The "2009 State Preschool Yearbook" is the seventh in a series of annual reports profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest Yearbook presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2008-2009 school year. The first report in this series focused on programs for the 2001-2002 school year and…

The United States is as known for its high-quality universities as for its poor-quality public schools. Many states are taking steps to improve the likelihood that their children will succeed in grades K-12 by providing funding for pre-kindergarten (PK). More than $2.4 billion dollars is spent on these programs, and the number of children…

This executive summary describes a study that analyzes the content of early learning standards, operationally defined as documents that articulate expectations for children's development and learning during the preschool period (ages three to five years). Standards from 36 states were collected and analyzed to address the following research…

The first in a series of three books on P-16 systems of education, P-16: The Last Education Reform chronicles the establishment of Ohio's first regional P-16 Compact and how one community began the process of large scale systemic education reform not just for K-12 education, but for its entire education system--preschool through college and…

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.…

It has been recognised for some time that the effects of disadvantage are in place early in a child's life, and early intervention has become an established element of efforts to alleviate such effects. This paper describes the range of interventions that exist to address disadvantage among children in the birth to six age range in Republic of…

In order to study the influence on memorization of external inputs as well as children's own strategies, we examined both parental discourses in terms of distancing (Sigel, 1970) and spontaneous rehearsal by children during a memory task. Our aim was to assess the influence of each factor for children between 3 and 5 years of age. In our study of…

"Education Matters" is the monthly newsletter of the Association of American Educators (AAE), an organization dedicated to advancing the American teaching profession through personal growth, professional development, teacher advocacy and protection. This issue of the newsletter includes: (1) Are They Ready? National Study Reveals Civics…