This study examined the influence of the quality of home and preschool learning environments on the development of early numeracy skills in Germany, drawing on a sample of 532 children in 97 preschools. Latent growth curve models were used to investigate early numeracy skills and their development from the first (average age: 3 years) to the third…

Although Belgium is characterized by a widespread consensus that a functional proficiency in the two major national languages, Dutch and French, as well as in English is desirable, educational provision to achieve such proficiency has long been constrained by an official language policy which mandates that education must be monolingual in Dutch,…

This article deals with the results of a questionnaire survey, in which attitudes and beliefs of people working in German kindergarten about "mathematics," "teaching and learning of mathematics" and "mathematics in the early years" were evaluated. After a quantitative analysis it can be stated that a schematic view of…

Forest kindergartens are a new idea in the United States but have been around in Germany, Norway, and other European countries for decades. Forest "kindergartens" are preschools for children ages 3-6 and focus on being outdoors and learning through interacting with nature. Instead of building with blocks or doing puzzles at a table…

Mathematical development processes begin long before school starts and the importance of previous mathematical knowledge for later school achievements is beyond dispute. For a suitable pre-school education, the focus of interest must be to find out which early learning processes prepare children best. In this article, the acquisition of the key…

The present paper was written under the auspices of the interdisciplinary research group "Educational Processes, Competence Development, and Selection Decisions at Preschool and Primary School Age (BiKS)" (FOR 543), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The surveys were conceptualised and supervised as part of the developmental…

In the light of the European Union's interest in creativity and innovation, this paper, drawing on data from the EU project Creative Little Scientists (2011-2014), explores the teaching and learning of science and creativity in Early Years education. The project's conceptual framework, developed from detailed analysis of relevant literatures,…

Few studies have investigated how preschool and primary school interact to influence children's cognitive development. The present investigation explores German children's numeracy skills between age 3 (1st year of preschool) and age 7 (1st year of primary school). We first identified the influence of preschool experience on development while…

Emergent literacy activities are considered to be important for promoting children's emergent literacy skills. However, little research exists, especially in Germany, regarding how often such activities occur and in what context. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of emergent literacy activities occurring in the final preschool…

The article focuses on bilingual kindergartens in Germany and Israel offering education in both host (German or Hebrew) and immigrant (Russian) languages. The main questions are how teachers of bilingual kindergartens understand and explain the organizational and pedagogical principles of the kindergartens and how they negotiate home and host…

Early childhood education and school readiness is essential to preparing children to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy. Compared to other countries, however, the United States lags far behind on preschool, trailing a number of other countries in enrollment, investment, and quality. In February 2013, however, President Barack…

In an effort to better understand how Americans' mobility outcomes compare with those of their counterparts in other nations, the Pew Economic Mobility Project partnered with the Russell Sage Foundation and the Sutton Trust to commission a multi-country study on economic mobility, "Cross-National Research on Intergenerational Transmission of…

What do citizens of the United States and Germany think about their schools and school policies? This paper offers the first broad comparison of public thinking on education in the two countries. We carried out opinion surveys of representative samples of the German and American adult populations in 2014 that included experiments in which we…

The present article investigates the effects of individual and contextual variables on children's early learning in French nursery schools and German kindergartens. Our study of 552 children at preschools in France (299 children from French nursery schools) and Germany (253 children from German kindergartens) measured skills that facilitate the…

Purpose: Early onset of behavioral disorders is predictive of long term adverse outcomes. There are some indicated and selective early prevention programs for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the most common behavioral disorders in childhood and adolescence. The purpose of this paper is to present a universal preschool…