Black and Latinx educators make up a critical portion of the early child education (ECE) field; 31% of the center-based workforce and about half of those employed in Head Start. These diverse educators are from communities where the impacts of the pandemic have been the most detrimental -- according to the Centers for Disease Control and…

This Self-Study Guide has been developed to support Florida Voluntary Prekindergarten Providers (VPK) who are required to complete an improvement plan process (i.e., low-performing providers). The guide has sections that can be used during both the process of selecting target areas for an improvement plan and the process of implementing new or…

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of the Quality Improvement System (QIS) developed and implemented by Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County (Florida) as a voluntary initiative to improve the quality of childcare and education. They adopted a growth model approach to investigate whether childcare sites that participated in QIS…

Bullying is well recognized as an experience with negative and potentially adverse consequences. Specifically, research has consistently shown that involvement in bullying has been linked to a wide range of psychosocial difficulties. There are three forms of bullying that have been identified in the literature: Overt bullying, relational bullying,…

Multi-age classrooms feature the purposeful grouping of students from two or more grade levels in order to form communities of learners. During the past 40 years, multi-age education has been examined in literature and research in many different ways and contexts. In the subject area of visual art, however, little literature can be found that…

Most teachers and the public believe that children in kindergarten and the primary grades benefit from small classes because of children's need for individualized instruction and teacher attention. This report, part of a comprehensive policy study of early childhood education, presents a review of the research on the effect of class size on…

Developed out of a recognized need for practical, career-related suggestions, this booklet was designed for parents to use with their children. Eight major subtopics considered important by career educators are used to group the information: (1) Career awareness, (2) attitudes and appreciations, (3) self-awareness, (4) decision-making, (5)…

This report is designed to provide Florida's school personnel with assistance in working with students prenatally exposed to cocaine or other toxic substances. The report offers background data, practical strategies for teaching and learning, and resources for networking. The first chapter outlines statistics on the incidence of the problem of…

Activities of the Institute for Development of Human Resources provide the information contained in this document. This first large-scale project of the institute was in parent education of disadvantaged mothers in the north central Florida area. The purpose of the project was to investigate a way in which early intervention into the lives of…

Compelling evidence from neuroscience about how early relationships and experience influence the architecture of the brain, and in turn early school success, has led to increasing policy and practice attention to implementing child development and family support programs like Early Head Start for infants and toddlers. But, there is also a group of…