Education Commons^™

Acquisition Of Aquatic Motor Skills Through Children’S Motor Stories, Juan Antonio Moreno Murcia, Elisa Huescar Hernandez, Jose Antonio Richart Parra

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

An increasing interest in the renewal of traditional recreational content and the use of the aquatic environments as educational resources is supported by very few empirical, evidence-based studies that link the two. This quasi-experimental study analyzed the role of stories in influencing perceived motor competence and real motor skills in seventy-eight children ages between 4 and 5 years through the administration of two questionnaires on aquatic motor ability and aquatic motor competence. Differences were found in aquatic motor competence (p < .01) and aquatic motor ability (p < .05) for the experimental group, where higher means values were obtained after the intervention. We present this methodological proposal as a useful educational tool for early childhood stimulation with achievements that go beyond motor progress itself.

Can A Three-Day Training Focusing On The Nature Of Science And Science Practices As They Relate To Mind In The Making Make A Difference In Preschool Teachers' Self-Efficacy Engaging In Science Education?, Colleen Meacham

Dissertations and Theses

As technology and our world understanding develop, we will need citizens who are able to ask and answer questions that have not been thought of yet. Currently, high school and college graduates entering the workforce demonstrate a gap in their ability to develop unique solutions and fill the current technology-driven jobs. To address this gap, science needs to be prioritized early in children's lives. The focus of this research was to analyze a science training program that would help pre-school teachers better understand Mind in the Making life skills, the nature of science, science practices, and improve their self-efficacy integrating …

"Building Up": Block Play After September 11, Lisa Edstrom

Occasional Paper Series

Like most people in New York City, the children in Edstrom's class were affected by the events of September 11. However, not until five weeks later did these particular five- and six year-olds begin to make sense of what happened. Through the use of block play, they were able to explore the difficult emotions and questions we all had about the World Trade Center attack

Safe, Patricia Lent

Occasional Paper Series

The first four sections of this essay chronicle her attempts to make sense of September 11 in the succeeding weeks and months. The final section—”Corn, Beans, and Squash”—was written to and for her students at the end of the school year.

Studying Early Childhood Education In The Philippines, Amanda Taylor

International Developments

A recent ACER research report highlights the importance of preschool education for children in the Philippines.

Conversations With Children About Death, Molly Sexton-Reade

Occasional Paper Series

This paper emphasizes the need for conversations around death in the classroom. Today's children are exposed to information about death through a wide variety of media. Teachers have a responsibility to provide opportunities for children to process this information in ways that are developmentally appropriate - acknowledging children's "magical thinking" as well as experiences children may have surrounding death.

Wrong Place, Right Time, Rachel Mazor

Occasional Paper Series

Mazor recounts working in the three distinctly different environments during her first year of teaching: sixth-grade math, pre-school social studies, and first-grade reading. Each of these experiences taught her specific skills that she later applied to assignments; additionally, each experience helped her develop her own style as a teacher.

Quality Is Key In Early Childhood Education In Australia, Kate Torii, Stacey Fox, Dan Cloney

Early Childhood Education

Early education benefits all children, and can be transformative for the children with the greatest challenges. But not all children in Australia experience a high quality early education. Getting quality right is the key piece of the puzzle needed to deliver the promise of early education. Investing in early learning is a widely accepted approach, backed by extensive evidence, for governments and families to foster children’s development, lay the foundations for future learning and wellbeing, and reduce downstream expenditure on health, welfare and justice. While all children benefit from high quality early learning, research also shows that children experiencing higher …

Leader-Parent Relationships In The Early Childhood Education Context: An Exploration Of Testimonial And Epistemic Justice, Shirley Eileen Adams

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

In this qualitative study, I examined epistemic justice and testimonial injustice experienced by parents of children enrolled in preschool programs. I used a triadic model arising from the synthesis of Fricker’s (2003) markers of epistemic justice, Hoy and Tschannen Moran’s (1999) Five Facets of Trust and Lea’s (2006) markers of collaboration, and employed modified grounded theory (Charmaz, 2008). Public preschool programs often promise that they can ameliorate cognitive and experiential gaps experienced by children who at risk and allow them to enter kindergarten on an equal footing with their more privileged peers (Hulme, Goetz, Gooch, Adams & Snowling, 2007; Camilli …

11.001 Lesley College Schools For Children, 1909-2002, Alyssa Pacy

Finding Aids

The Lesley College Schools for Children collection contains catalogs produced annually and other records from the schools (the Carroll-Hall School, the Lesley-Dearborn School, and the Lesley-Ellis School) that the former Lesley College acquired. Each catalog contains a history of the school, information about faculty, admission, buildings, course descriptions, academic calendars, school policy, and tuition and expenses. The collection also contains a book of published poems from students in Lesley-Ellis Schools' creative writing class from 1958 - 1964.

A Playful Context Enhances Bilingual And Monolingual Preschoolers’ Mastery Motivation And Private Speech, Jeremy Sawyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children’s private speech (audible self-talk) has been studied primarily as a cognitive tool for thinking, planning and self-regulation. This study investigated whether private speech may also function as a tool for motivation. Vygotskian and self-determination theory suggest that children can develop to become agentic and inspired, or conversely disengaged and alienated, based largely on their social conditions of development. Thus, it is important to investigate children’s motivational processes in social and educational contexts that are central to child development. U.S. preschool enrollment is expanding, accompanied by a decline in play-based pedagogy and growth of didactic, teacher-centered approaches. To illuminate the …

Looking For The X-Factors: Contextualised Learning And Young Indigenous Australian Children, Karen L. Martin, Stuart Fuller

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

This presentation outlines a research project into early childhood education funded by Queensland Department of Education and Training’s Education Horizon research grant scheme. The project will run from July 2016 to June 2017. This project involved two main research activities: an online survey of early childhood educators of young Indigenous Australians and a small case study of early childhood and early years education programs in Logan, Darling Downs and Far North Queensland regions. The pilot case study sought to identify ‘X-factors’ regarding the contextualisation of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for young Indigenous Australian learners. This presentation will outline the case …

Leading Age-Appropriate Pedagogies In The Early Years Of School, Beverley R. Fluckiger, Julie Dunn, Madonna Stinson, Elizabeth Wheeley

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

There is increasing pressure on leaders and teachers to improve the academic achievement of children in the early years of school. Alongside this is recognition that social and emotional development are the important drivers of children’s school and lifetime success. This paper reports on the design and leadership of the pilot phase of the Age Appropriate Pedagogies program commissioned by the Queensland Department of Education and Training to refocus pedagogical practices in the early years of school. This refocus was deemed to be necessary in order to achieve strong academic outcomes while ensuring that children’s holistic development remained a key …

Facing Diversity In Early Childhood Education: Teachers’ Perceptions, Beliefs, And Teaching Practices Of Anti-Bias Education In Korea, Yerim Hong

MSU Graduate Theses

The changing composition of early childhood classrooms challenges teachers to be more responsive to the diverse needs of all children. This study explores the challenges and successes early childhood teachers experience with facing diversity in their classrooms. The purpose of this qualitative interview study was to investigate kindergarten teachers’ perceptions, beliefs, and teaching practices concerning anti-bias education in Seoul, South Korea. There were two groups of in-service kindergarten teachers, four teachers in each group, who participated in one-on-one interviews with structured and open-ended questions. The teachers in one group had more experience with teaching in diverse classroom settings than the …

The Case For Urgency: Advocating For Indigenous Voice In Education, Kevin P. Gillan, Suzanne Mellor, Jacynta Krakouer

Australian Education Review

In 2004 the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) published an Australian Education Review (AER) on Indigenous Education: The Case for Change: A review of contemporary research on Indigenous education outcomes, AER 47 (Mellor & Corrigan, 2004). In the 13 years since its publication, the state of Indigenous education outcomes has remained substantially unaltered. All the social indicators demonstrate that Australia’s First Nations people continue to be the most socio-economically disadvantaged population cohort in Australian society. This is after decades of continued policy efforts by successive Commonwealth, state and territory governments to ameliorate Indigenous education disadvantage. We still struggle with …

The Case For Urgency: Advocating For Indigenous Voice In Education, Kevin P. Gillan, Suzanne Mellor, Jacynta Krakouer

Jacynta Krakouer

In 2004 the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) published an Australian Education Review (AER) on Indigenous Education: The Case for Change: A review of contemporary research on Indigenous education outcomes, AER 47 (Mellor & Corrigan, 2004). In the 13 years since its publication, the state of Indigenous education outcomes has remained substantially unaltered. All the social indicators demonstrate that Australia’s First Nations people continue to be the most socio-economically disadvantaged population cohort in Australian society. This is after decades of continued policy efforts by successive Commonwealth, state and territory governments to ameliorate Indigenous education disadvantage. We still struggle with …

The Case For Urgency: Advocating For Indigenous Voice In Education, Kevin P. Gillan, Suzanne Mellor, Jacynta Krakouer

Suzanne Mellor

In 2004 the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) published an Australian Education Review (AER) on Indigenous Education: The Case for Change: A review of contemporary research on Indigenous education outcomes, AER 47 (Mellor & Corrigan, 2004). In the 13 years since its publication, the state of Indigenous education outcomes has remained substantially unaltered. All the social indicators demonstrate that Australia’s First Nations people continue to be the most socio-economically disadvantaged population cohort in Australian society. This is after decades of continued policy efforts by successive Commonwealth, state and territory governments to ameliorate Indigenous education disadvantage. We still struggle with …

Phonemic Awareness Interventions And Their Effects On Fast Scores, Shari Lehnhoff

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The purpose of this action research project was to determine if there is a correlation between the implementation of phonemic awareness interventions in the transitional kindergarten classroom and the results of the Early Literacy Implementation (FAST) scores. Technology-enriched phonemic awareness interventions were provided weekly over a period of two months. Data was collected through qualitative observations and quantitative FAST test scores. Analysis of the data collected suggests that the transitional kindergarten student’s FAST scores increased as the phonemic awareness intervention is implemented in the classroom.

Creating A Curriculum For Preschool Educators In Asia: How To Teach Kindergarteners Speaking And Listening Skills In English Through Games, Yue Kuang

Master's Projects and Capstones

There is a rapid development of science and technology, and international information exchanges have become increasingly frequent as well in 21^st century. English learning is becoming a requirement of career success, especially in Asia (Graddol, 2006). So people are beginning to pay more attention to English education, especially early childhood English education. However, most Asian kindergarten teachers prefer to pay more attention to teaching English reading and writing skills, while ignoring the teaching and practices of English listening and speaking (Wang, 2016). Most 3-6 age children do not have the attention span of adults (Garba, Yusuf, & Busthami, 2015), …

Play As A Social Justice Issue In Early Childhood Education, Britt Kroll

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Play is a vital part of the early childhood experience to develop in cognitive and social-emotional realms. Schools are taking away an important tool for children to process new information and build skills needed for lifelong problem-solving by allowing less time for play in early childhood classrooms. This research combines data gathered to show the unique benefits of play in both cognitive and social-emotional areas, as well as qualitative data collected in a play-based and a non-play-based classroom.

The research defends the importance of play-based learning in early childhood and equips teachers with rationale to use play as a tool …

Preschool For Parents: A Website For Parents To Review The Benefits Of A Proper Early Childhood Education, Tahrae L. Bonnes

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Every year many parents of young children face the challenge of deciding when and where they should start their child's educational career. Parents have to decide whether to keep their kids home with themselves or send them to daycare or preschool. These are just some of the many questions that run through their minds. Not to mention, this task has become increasingly difficult because of the many changes to the educational systems. This paper will explain a website created to help parents make informed decisions about their child's early childhood education through review of the various benefits a quality preschool …

Integrating Technology Into Morning Meeting In Early Childhood, Micaela Borer

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

In early childhood education (ECE), there are many interpretations of the morning meeting. This meeting can encompass learning in several areas of early childhood namely mathematics, literacy, and social skill building. Many activities within morning meeting help with classroom management and can be beneficial to children with special needs as well including morning message, visual schedules, and calendar time. Some ECE professionals are beginning to note that technology can also be included in this crucial part of the school day. Incorporating technology not only will encourage young children to learn, but will prepare them for their future. Technology use is …

Early Years Transitions: Supporting Children And Families At Risk Of Experiencing Vulnerability: Rapid Literature Review, Jacynta Krakouer, Pru Mitchell, Jenny Trevitt, Anita Kochanoff

Pru Mitchell

This rapid literature review on support for children and families at risk of experiencing vulnerability in early years transitions was commissioned by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. It sought to understand how Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services, professionals and teachers could better support children at risk of vulnerability, and their families, during transitions. The transitions included are from home, out-of-home care (OOHC) and other programs/services to ECEC services and to school. In particular, this review focuses on the support needs of children who have experienced trauma, children living in out-of-home care, refugee children, and children who …

Early Years Transitions: Supporting Children And Families At Risk Of Experiencing Vulnerability: Rapid Literature Review, Jacynta Krakouer, Pru Mitchell, Jenny Trevitt, Anita Kochanoff

Jacynta Krakouer

This rapid literature review on support for children and families at risk of experiencing vulnerability in early years transitions was commissioned by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. It sought to understand how Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services, professionals and teachers could better support children at risk of vulnerability, and their families, during transitions. The transitions included are from home, out-of-home care (OOHC) and other programs/services to ECEC services and to school. In particular, this review focuses on the support needs of children who have experienced trauma, children living in out-of-home care, refugee children, and children who …

A Circle With Edges: How Story Time Privileges The Abled Learner, Melissa Tsuei

Occasional Paper Series

Takes a critical look at one of the commonplace features of early childhood classrooms—story time. In her essay, Melissa considers the ways in which story time reinforces unequal power dynamics for diverse learners by privileging the able-bodied learner. In response, Melissa creates and presents the SPHERE model, which promotes active engagement and shared dialogue through collaborative storytelling and nurtures an inclusive literacy-learning environment.

Talking Tolerance Inside The “Inclusive” Early Childhood Classroom, Karen Watson

Occasional Paper Series

Provides an inside look into what the Australian government calls “inclusive learning communities.” This term emerges from a national early-years learning framework that highlights ability and disability as diversity. Following the course of a six-month period in three “inclusive” early childhood classrooms, Karen offers an account of the transformative potential of inclusion in contrast to the harmful effects of teaching tolerance. Tolerance, as Karen’s study reveals, preserves the dualism of normal versus abnormal (or Other) and hinders critical reflection about ableist assumptions.

Early Childhood Teachers’ Pedagogical Reasoning About How Children Learn During Language And Literacy Instruction, Rachel E. Schachter

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The knowledge that teachers hold about children’s learning is important to teachers’ practice. Few studies have examined how early childhood teachers use such knowledge during moment-to-moment instruction for language and literacy learning. This study employed a phenomenological approach to understand the knowledge that eight early childhood teachers used to inform their pedagogical reasoning during language and literacy activities. Stimulated recall interviews about practice were conducted with the prekindergarten teachers. Results indicated that the teachers used multiple sources of knowledge to inform their pedagogical reasoning that included: conceptions about how children learn; knowledge about specific children and the learning goals for …

Kids In Transition To School (Kits), Beth L. Green, Lorelei Mitchell, Lindsey Brianna Patterson

Early Childhood

During the summer and fall of 2016, children and families in 16 schools in Lane County participated in the Kids in Transition to School (KITS) Program. KITS includes 16 weeks of group-based child classes and 12 weeks of parenting workshops, using an evidence-based curriculum designed to improve school readiness skills and parenting. To learn more about the KITS program from the perspective of participating families, four focus groups were held with parents who participated in KITS. A total of 44 parents participated in the groups, which were located in four different schools (two small, rural locations and two larger more …

Interpretations Of Mentoring During Early Childhood Education Mentor Training, Päivi Kupila, Tuulikki Ukkonen-Mikkola, Kyllikki Rantala

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study examines how interpretations of mentoring by trainee mentors (TMs) changed over the course of a mentor training programme, and how this contributed to the TMs’ professional development. The context of the study was a mentor training programme for preschool teachers who mentor early childhood teacher students during their practicums. This article presents a thematic content analysis of qualitative narrative data gathered from the TMs’ narrative writings on the mentor training programme (N=36) and the TMs’ contributions at one focus group interview (N=5). The findings suggest that the TMs’ interpretations produced two main themes. First, changes in the interpretations …

Early Years Transitions: Supporting Children And Families At Risk Of Experiencing Vulnerability: Rapid Literature Review, Jacynta Krakouer, Pru Mitchell, Jenny Trevitt, Anita Kochanoff

Early Childhood Education

This rapid literature review on support for children and families at risk of experiencing vulnerability in early years transitions was commissioned by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. It sought to understand how Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services, professionals and teachers could better support children at risk of vulnerability, and their families, during transitions. The transitions included are from home, out-of-home care (OOHC) and other programs/services to ECEC services and to school. In particular, this review focuses on the support needs of children who have experienced trauma, children living in out-of-home care, refugee children, and children who …