Parent-teacher collaboration in early childhood education has been found to have a positive effect on students in the areas of academic achievement and appropriate behavior. The importance of enhancing parent-teacher collaboration in children's education has been supported by research (Walker, Shenker, & Hoover-Dempsey, 2010; Moorhouse &…

The principals of early intervention suggest that children learn best through everyday experiences and families can enhance their child's learning with the right supports and resources. This is especially true for young children with hearing loss. Research suggests there is a critical shortage of early intervention professionals trained to work…

The acquisition of literacy skills is a complex and multi-faceted process that begins long before typical school-based literacy instruction. The present study sought to examine and expand research regarding the independent and interactive contributions of neuropsychological development, movement, play, and music on the development of literacy…

An adapted alternating treatments design was used to evaluate the effect of context on the acquisition of intraverbals for three young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when utilizing instructive feedback (IF). All participants acquired secondary targets when presented in an instructional setting along with primary targets. Two…

The phenomenon of Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI) is not new, but in 2020 it was experienced at a historic scale. The purpose of this study was to examine the parent engagement experiences of parents with students in kindergarten through second grade during the COVID-19 school closings and their perceptions of their roles through the lenses of…

Center-based community early childhood programs are essential options for pre-kindergarten care and education. Consistent with federal legislation (IDEA, 2004), these settings should be accessible so that young children with disabilities can receive their special education services there. In the United States, fewer than 50% of children who…

For the past decade, the number of homeless youth in the United States has drastically increased, with public schools now consistently serving over one million homeless students each year. Research spanning three decades has linked youth homelessness and poorer academic achievement. In addition to decreased academic achievement, homeless and…

Implemented in 1998, the original intention of the California Newborn Hearing Screening Program (NHSP) was to provide Deaf babies early language opportunities so they can be successful academically. However, 20 years after the inception of the NHSP, Deaf children continue to be the lowest-performing group of students in public schools. One reason…

This qualitative phenomenological research study examined parent perspectives on shared reading in science. This study was designed to understand parents perceived shared reading to influence their child's science vocabulary and comprehension. The purpose of the study was to determine how parents perceive shared reading to impact their…

Oftentimes those within a particular minoritized group (e.g., refugees) are assumed to have had the same language and literacy experiences or to hold the same language- and literacy-related values and beliefs. This fails to consider the variation that exists both across and within these groups. Children from refugee backgrounds attend elementary…

School systems have been implementing trauma-informed curriculums to offset any trauma students may be experiencing. In the Head Start classroom, many students enter with trauma and display behaviors that cause secondary traumatic stress for the educators working with them. Exposure to students' traumas can cause educators to experience secondary…

For decades, educational researchers have reported joint book reading with caregivers promotes children's emergent literacy development (Bus et al., 1995; Demir-Lira et al., 2019; NELP, 2008; Pelligrini et al., 1990). However, the bulk of this research has been conducted with mothers (Bingham, 2007; Bojczyk, 2016; Roberts et al., 2005). Mothers…

Every year children are unintentionally injured or killed due to finding an unattended firearm. Although research evaluating various approaches to teach safety skills shows that behavioral skills training and in situ training are effective, limited research exists evaluating small-scale simulation training in teaching safety skills to children.…

The overarching goal of this research was to adapt and validate a scale for measuring self-compassion in early childhood. The initial 23-item scale was adapted from Neff's (2003a) original self-compassion scale and asked parents about concrete behaviors and coping methods of their child. Items assessed children's early expressions of…

Inequities have existed in formal public education since its inception in the United States. The educational experiences and outcomes for Black students have historically lagged behind their non-Hispanic, and White peers. This dissertation uses data from The Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey for the Kindergarten Class of 2011 (ECLS-K: 2011) to…