The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to focus on teachers' perceptions regarding professional development training for early childhood education. The problem addressed in this study was the inadequate amount of professional development training available for early childhood teachers to address children with challenging…

A focus on early literacy that became heightened in the early 21st century has had the unintended consequence of restricting our ideas about what children should be doing in classrooms, creating a preoccupation not only with literacy in general but also with a specific subset of early literacy skills that often reflect Eurocentric cultural norms…

Early childhood inclusion classrooms are becoming more prominent, but Head Start teachers need more job training to prepare them for the diversity of students in their classrooms. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to investigate research questions about the challenges faced by Head Start inclusion teachers, the strategies they use…

Student-teacher relationship quality (STRQ) influences a variety of student outcomes, including academic, social, and behavioral functioning (McGrath & Van Bergen, 2015). Less is known about the importance of STRQ for preschool students with disabilities. Many studies are conducted with school-aged, typically developing students (Ansari et…

Play is essential to children's growth and development. For many years, theorists have defined play as active, engaging, and interactive. Play has been identified as a way in which children communicate and learn. Such skills are important as children interact and communicate with their family members, teachers, peers, and the community at large.…

With the incidence of prenatal drug exposure increasing, it is important that preschool teachers are prepared and confident in serving the needs of children affected by this exposure. Teachers need more training and education to prepare them for working with children with prenatal drug exposure. The purpose of this sequential mixed-methods study…

In recent decades, the share of ethnically and linguistically diverse children enrolled in schools in the United States has exponentially increased. Despite the growing representation of ethnic minority and dual language learner (DLL) children, there is persistent evidence of early vocabulary gaps between low-income and DLL children and their…

The purpose of this study is to explore whether storybooks designed to elicit talk about letters and sounds, termed "alphabet-storybooks" will generate more print referencing behaviors from Head Start teachers than traditional storybooks, and if there is a concomitant positive impact on the learning of the children in these classrooms.…