This article is concerned with the attitudes and perceptions of a group of early years practitioners, without qualified teacher status, who were offered the opportunity to join a university in service course. Within this paper we reflect upon our realisation that pedagogy was the key to accessing meaningful learning experiences for our…

Educational process reflection (EPR) is a professional development model aimed at supporting preschool teachers reflecting on and changing their practice. A particular focus is on interaction between practitioners and children, and between the children themselves. In this article, I first describe the theoretical frameworks that helped shape EPR,…

Background/Context: Technological and economic changes have put a high premium on developing students' information literacy and research skills. Previous attempts to deploy educational technology toward these ends have proved disappointing because K-12 teachers have difficulty integrating shared computers into instruction. In response, numerous…

Studies have shown that early years teachers are the most influential factor contributing to the quality of early years education. Well-educated teachers are professionally more competent and can decisively influence the quality of curriculum, which is becoming less and less centrally defined. This article describes the creation of a new program…

This paper examines several issues involved in collaborative research between a kindergarten teacher-researcher and a university professor as they developed an early childhood anti-bias curriculum. Literature on collaborative research in early childhood settings is reviewed, and the concept of anti-bias, culturally inclusive education is defined.…

In the 1980s, the Border Early Learning Center (BELC) was established to provide support and training for preschools and communities in South Africa. This report describes the rationale and process of an evaluation of preschools associated with the BELC. (The data and conclusions of the evaluation are not included in this report.) A questionnaire…

Mapped existing literacy practices in early childhood classrooms and explored the understanding and perceptions of staff and families. Rated classrooms and staff. Identified five staff concerns for providing environmental support for early literacy development and noted staff belief/practice differences between low- and high-ranking classrooms.…

Assessed psychometric properties of new measure of beliefs concerning early-childhood inclusion, "My Thinking about Inclusion Scale." Found that parents of children with disabilities were more positive than parents of children without disabilities; parents' beliefs were related to educational level, number of children, and marital status.…

Assisting children with delays and disabilities to develop skills that will maximise their chances of success in regular education classrooms has become important with the trend to inclusion. This study examined (1) the essential skills for successful integration nominated by teachers, (2) the relationships between teacher perception and child…

This study compares perspectives about benefits and risks of inclusion of 237 parents of children with and without disabilities and 118 providers in the same community-based reverse inclusion preschool program, using the same measures. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a two factor structure, risks and benefits, based on scale scores from the…

The presentation is based on the ongoing research project The Pedagogical Formation of Early Childhood Education in Finland. The data of the first stage consists of all written kindergarten teacher training curricula drawn up in 1973-2002. The aim is to discover the nature of the expertise that the kindergarten teacher training programmes…

Research literature suggests that adults from working-class minority backgrounds demonstrate authoritarian and coercive tendencies in their choices of disciplinary strategies when compared with adults from middle-class, "white", "Anglo", or "North American" backgrounds. However, in a recent study in New York City,…

What teachers believe and the practices in which they engage are often not consistent, as they face accountability demands and a return to more structured approaches. Data were collected from 34 kindergarten teachers on their beliefs about instructional practice and the forces that shape the education. Findings indicated that regardless of…

This document provides a copy of the materials submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to obtain clearance for instruments used in a study funded by the Administration for Children, Youth and Families. The purpose of the study is to assess the impact of the educational services component of Head Start and the Basic Educational…

The Association for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) conducted interviews with teachers in one of the Abbott districts to identify the major barriers in the licensing process and identify needed policy changes. The district chosen was identified in another report by Ryan and Ackerman (2004a) as being in jeopardy of losing a significant percentage of…