In 1994, the federal Early Head Start program was created to address the comprehensive needs of low-income children under age 3 and pregnant women. Since 1965, the Head Start program has served low-income 3- and 4-year-old children and their families with comprehensive early education and support services. Programs provide services focused on the…

The purpose of this study was to explore Vygotsky's notion of private speech as a cognitive self-regulatory process and how it related to creativity measures among at-risk children. Thirty-two Head Start and state-funded Pre-K children completed the Torrance creativity test Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM). The children's private…

Background: School readiness, conceptualized as three components including emotional self-regulation, social competence, and family/school involvement, as well as absence of conduct problems play a key role in young children's future interpersonal adjustment and academic success. Unfortunately, exposure to multiple poverty-related risks increases…

Research Findings: This study examined the stability of preschoolers' peer play behavior across the school year and the relations between emotion regulation, receptive vocabulary, and the trajectory of social competence deficits. Participants were 331 preschool children attending Head Start; they were primarily African American and from a low-SES…

The study examined the longitudinal association of parental involvement in Head Start parent-focused programs, parenting behaviors, and the cognitive development of children by specifying two longitudinal growth models. Model 1 examined the longitudinal effects of the parental involvement in three Head Start parenting programs (parenting classes,…

With children's early years increasingly recognized as a critical time for learning, more policymakers see a four-year college degree as a necessity for teachers in preschool programs receiving state and federal money. Many state-financed preschool programs require teachers to have four-year degrees. As federal lawmakers debate renewing the Head…

Studied the early literacy practices of a 3-year-old Chinese girl in her family restaurant in an underprivileged community in Canada. The literacy practices indicate that home contexts have a role in shaping emergent literacy. Discusses implications for teaching minority children. (SLD)

This study introduces a portable direct assessment of young children's self-regulation--the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA). The PSRA was designed to assess self-regulation in emotional, attentional, and behavioral domains by using a brief, structured battery of tasks in conjunction with a global report of children's behavior. Factor…

Teacher response to intervention and unique impact on student outcomes was evaluated. Sixty-three lead and assistant early childhood educators from 14 Head Start programs participated in a randomized-controlled trial in which 40 teachers were assigned to participate in a classroom management program as part of a multicomponent conduct problem…

Children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are more often over- and underreferred for special education services than children from the mainstream culture. In fact, African American children, particularly boys, are more likely to be expelled from preschool programs. Differences in African American communication styles may be…

The inclusion of young children with disabilities has remained a function of the Head Start program since its inception in the 1960s when the United States Congress mandated that children with disabilities comprise 10% of the Head Start enrollment (Zigler & Styfco, 2000). Standardized, norm-referenced tests used to identify children with…

In a series of New Jersey Supreme Court decisions known as Abbott v. Burke, the 28 (now 31) urban school districts serving the state's poorest students were ordered to create systems of high-quality preschool for all three- and four-year-old children, beginning in the 1999-2000 school year. The Abbott Preschool Program now serves approximately…

There is concern that parents under stress may not be effective in promoting health and preventing injury in young children, but research in this area has been limited. To explore this issue, a study was conducted to look at the relationship between self-reported parenting stress and actions taken to promote health and to prevent injury in…

Research Findings: This article is based on the premise that the field of early childhood education needs to begin to study the details of teacher-child interaction if it is to understand fully what aspects of classrooms foster development and to create effective professional development interventions. To this end, we report analyses of four Head…

This secondary analysis of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a randomized study of program participation of children and families in Early Head Start (that is, enrolled in programming prior to children's first birthdays) investigated sociodemographic (race and ethnicity, income level, and maternal education level) and program…