"Improving Your Reflective Practice through Stories of Practitioner Research" shows how research has informed and created effective and valuable reflective practice in early years education, and offers depth to the arguments for a research-orientated stance to this vital field of study. This thought-provoking text explores and documents a variety…

Against the background of Swedish preschool's historical and traditional functions in Swedish society, this article focuses on some of the choice points and their implications for professional and organisational development in preschool. By combining feminist pragmatism and feminist action research, some analytical points are made regarding the…

The growth of interest in historical research into the commonplace provides opportunities to explore the different means through which we can understand the everyday world of teachers. Unlike the "well-known" in education past, where significant traces of their lives remain in archives and official records, little such evidence exists of…

The purpose of this study was to apply and explore, in the context of an Icelandic preschool, the methods developed by the New Zealand "Te Whaariki" curriculum to assess children's well-being and learning dispositions. This article describes the process of piloting learning stories as a research method, where researchers and preschool…

A child's chance for success in school and in life can be greatly enhanced by their participation in a high-quality preschool program. This message was made loud and clear by participants in a policy forum, "Preschool Education: New Jersey and the Nation," sponsored by Educational Testing Service (ETS), the New Jersey Department of…

Early childhood educators should be prepared to intervene when children demonstrate challenging behaviors. Researchers have reported many factors that may influence teachers' behavior management strategies. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among specific program, teacher, and child factors and teachers'…

This documentation is for the revised file (Version 1b) of the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) for school year 2008-2009, fiscal year 2009 (FY 09). It contains a brief description of the data collection along with information required to understand and…

High-quality pre-K that really improves children's outcomes--that's the goal early childhood professionals will work toward with this groundbreaking text, the first volume in the NEW National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE) series. Combining the most current knowledge of top researchers, policy makers, and federal and…

This study provided information on the impact of graphical feedback on teachers' frequency of use of a specific teaching strategy as a supervision method which might be used to measure a change in behavior. Graphical feedback allowed for a systematic application of support and mentoring to the teachers which was displayed as data in a…

This report contains resources to help researchers and policymakers review measures used in NCEE evaluations of educational interventions. The measures included in the Compendium are applicable to settings for preschool through grade 12. The Compendium discusses criteria and their importance in selecting measures for assessing intervention impacts…

This book makes explicit connections between young children's spontaneous repeated actions and their representations of their emotional worlds. Drawing on the literature on schemas, attachment theory and family contexts, the author takes schema theory into the territory of the emotions, making it relevant to the social and emotional development…

This study sought to further investigate the effects of an observational intervention for two participants on the reinforcing property of pieces of string. Pre-observational intervention data showed that the neutral stimuli (strings) did not function to reinforce two participants' responding to a performance task or learning three new skills that…

The policy brief "Ethnographic Knowledge for Early Childhood" details the contributions of current ethnographic research in the area of early childhood education. The brief's main purpose is to demonstrate how ethnography (as a methodology) helps us better understand the context of early childhood programs, the types of settings and…

"Evaluation Science Briefs" summarize the findings and implications of a recent study evaluating the effects of an early childhood program or environment. This Brief evaluates the study, "Building Support for Language and Literacy in Preschool Classrooms through In-Service Professional Development: Effects of the Literacy Environment Enrichment…

Recent studies do not find consistent relationships between teacher degree, major, and certification, and PK outcomes (Early, D. M., Bryant, D. M., Pianta, R. C., Clifford, R. M., Burchinal, M. R., Ritchie, S., et al. (2006). Are teachers' education, major, and credentials related to classroom quality and children's academic gains in…