Children growing up in disadvantage often enter school without the requisite social, emotional, and behavioral skills to be successful. Considering the importance of social-emotional skills for school and later life success, it is critical to understand factors associated with social-emotional development across the transition to elementary…

Background: Healthy child development is imperative for future success, parents/caregivers are at the helm of guiding children down a path that supports health and wellbeing for future success. When there is a lack of education, information, and resources readily available to families there is a risk for delayed development and lack of engagement.…

A key component of effective early childhood programs is collaborative relationships between schools, families, and the community (Fiese, Eckert, & Spagnola, 2005). One of these early childhood programs, Head Start, stands out among the others in its efforts to work with children, families, and communities to promote parental involvement. Some…

This study used latent class analysis to examine profiles of Head Start classroom quality as measured by the Arnett Caregiver Interaction Scale (CIS) and the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) with a large sample of classrooms (n=379). Data used in the study were taken from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth…

The purposes of this study were to examine how Social Justice Education (SJE) was envisioned and enacted at an elite school and to examine what the experiences of the school's early childhood teachers were as they participated in professional development (PD) programming around SJE. Through embedded case study methodology, the researcher analyzed…

This qualitative case study investigated and described the views of both Head Start staff and a refugee family regarding adult fostering of foundational skills leading to self-determination in a young child at risk for disability as well as how these adults worked together in partnership. Chapter 1 provides an overview of this dissertation. It…

This study compared the standardized reading achievement scores in grades 1, 2 and 3 of two groups of students: one group who participated in Pre-Kindergarten (PK) in a large urban public school district in North Texas, with the assessment results of a group of grade level peers with similar ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics, who did not…

Increasing demands for design rigor and an emphasis on evidence-based practice on a national level indicated a need for further guidance related to successful implementation of randomized studies in education. Rigorous and meaningful experimental research and its conclusions help establish a valid theoretical and evidence base for educational…

The purpose of this qualitative, purposeful, bounded case study was to explore the influences that promoted and restricted three women early childhood educators' inclusion of open-ended outdoor learning in a Head Start center. A continued degradation of nature, along with the predominance of women working in the early childhood workforce, led me…

This study investigated the impact of child teacher relationship training (CTRT) on teachers' ability to provide emotional support in the classroom, teachers' use of relationship-building skills, and teachers' level of stress related to the student-child relationship. Teachers and aides from one Head Start school were randomly…

This study examined the effects of a parent-led intervention focused on developing children's early literacy skills within the home setting. The lesson plans contain scripted steps for completing activities to teach letter names and phonological awareness skills. Archival data were analyzed from a study conducted with 26 families from three…

Research indicates that linguistic input from teachers may affect child vocabulary development in preschool and beyond (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001). Currently, there is little research on the relationship between specific teacher language use in individual interactions on child language outcomes for preschool children at risk for academic delays.…

The primary purpose of the current research was to determine whether low-income, high-risk young children's emergent literacy skills, including measures of oral language and letter knowledge, were related to their social competence. Other goals included determining the reliability of a social competence rating scale, the Social Competence…