In this study, we make the case for using texts children create as part of their play as a means for assessing their developing print literacy knowledge. We assessed 4- and 5-year-old children's authentic texts using categories and criteria from the "Assessing Young Children's Marks/Drawing/Print" tool, a research-based, classroom…

In a large rural region in a southeastern state in the United States, many children are not proficient in one to three areas of school readiness, including self-regulation, social skills, and mathematics. Although evidence exists that parents' perspectives about school readiness influence kindergarten preparedness, the problem that was the focus…

When novice music educators abandon their expressed dedication to forward-looking ideas like equity, epistemological distinctions between belief and knowledge, or lack of such distinctions, may influence such action. Political philosopher Russell Hardin argued that it makes sense for people to hold false, conflicting, and even extreme beliefs.…

In the global context, male participation in early childhood education is notably low, with only 3% of the workforce in mainland China comprising male professionals. This study delves into the intrinsic motivation of male kindergarten teachers, employing the framework of self-determination theory. Qualitative research, comprising face-to-face…

This dissertation investigates the issue of gender stratification within engineering and other STEM-related fields. The dissertation is divided into three articles that address different aspects of the problem and propose potential solutions. Article 1 explores the persistent gender imbalance within STEM fields, particularly in engineering and…

In order to explore the development mechanism of construction theory in the field of moral judgment, this study investigated the influence of age and social distance on such moral expectations in positive moral context and negative moral context. In both positive and negative moral contexts, 5-6-year-old children had the highest moral expectations…

This exploratory case study used purposive sampling to explore how third-grade students' reading identities in one suburban western New York school classroom are impacted by social negotiation. It found that social negotiation, literacy practices, the notion of a chapter book "benchmark," personal reading histories and book access, and…

Purpose: This study investigates the fairness preference of five-year-old children in Shanghai, observing their distributive behaviors in both stakeholder and spectator games and showing how this behavior is linked to their family background. Design/Approach/Methods: Participants had to make distributive choices in two experiments and distribute…

In Germany, there is still a great need for research on the quality of teacher-child interactions in ECEC institutions. Especially, because social interactions and relationships are crucial for (early) learning and development (Ulferts et al., 2019). However, there are hardly any results on factors influencing the interaction quality. This paper…

Research suggests that metacommunication in young children's social pretend play is the most complex form of cooperation. In this study, metacommunication was examined using audio and video recordings during pretend play. Participants were 24 children in kindergarten average age 5.1 years. Utterances were coded for metacommunication, the narrative…

Black children around the globe develop and learn in persistently racist environments. Decades of early racial awareness research primarily center on the development of young children's self-esteem, racial biases, or friendships. Researchers have yet to learn all that can be understood about young children's perspectives on structural racial…

Perceiving a calling toward one's career can provide kindergarten teachers sufficient internal motivation to resist massive job burnout and obtain high-level performance and well-being. Given the important role of leadership on followers' career calling, the present study takes the multilevel approach to examine the cross-level impact of…

Wordless picture book reading is one of the common literacy practices for young children that happen at schools and homes. This dissertation of three studies explores the reader-text transactions between young children and wordless picture books in three ways: a content analysis of wordless books potentially featuring characters of color, a…

Quality of life is a construction used to measure an individual's perspective on their well-being. In modern research, voice and speech disorders have been recognized as indicators of impaired quality of life in children. The aim of this research is to analyze the characteristics of quality of life in children with voice and speech disorders and…

The present work intends to analyse how pre-school aged children experience the re/construction of a 'gender identity' and the processes that create it as an essential, factual, and unchangeable reality -- therefore, suspect. Given the growing importance of 'gender identity development' in child development literature, as well as the arising…