Education Commons^™

The Interplay Between Early Childhood Education And Mental Health: How Students In An In-Service Early Childhood Teacher Education Program Experience Children With Mental Health And Behavioral Challenges In The Classroom, Katie Statman-Weil

Dissertations and Theses

All early childhood educators who work with children between birth and six years of age are likely to encounter young children who experience behavioral and mental health challenges throughout their careers. Research demonstrates that educators can play a vital role in children's mental health and behavioral development. However, often early childhood educators do not believe they have the knowledge or tools to accurately identify and successfully handle the unique challenges that arise when working with children with behavioral and mental health issues.

Using an Anti-Oppressive Framework, this research study explores, through a qualitative case study design, how students in an …

Engaging Extended Family And Friends In Young Children’S Education, William A. Parnell, Ellie Justice, Laure Pearson Patrick

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

Currently in our Reggio-inspired lab school, we continue experimenting with ways to connect extended family and friends to the school’s everyday practices, curricula, and philosophy. One approach that has been particularly valuable is our annual Friends and Family Day. This opportunity for engagement is not simply a demonstration of what and how the children have been learning—it is an event in which we all learn together. Friends and Family Day includes hands-on curriculum-based events in which children’s relatives and friends join in theory building, experimentation, and learning at our school (Parnell 2011b). We see such events as a way for …

Building Successful P-3 Initiatives: Foundations And Catalysts For Systems Change, Lindsey Brianna Patterson, Beth L. Green, Callie H. Lambarth, Mackenzie Burton, Diane Reid

Early Childhood

Across the United States, there is a growing recognition that early education and K-12 systems require transformative changes to address racial, ethnic, linguistic and economic disparities in school readiness and success.

Prenatal-through-Grade-3 (P-3) initiatives address these disparities by coordinating, strengthening and aligning fragmented support systems for families and children from birth through third grade.

These increasingly popular initiatives:

• Are based on accumulating evidence that standalone early childhood and school-based programs are not sufficient to sustain long-term success for children facing early childhood inequities
• Take a collective impact approach that brings families, early childhood providers, K-12 staff and other partners together …

Pathways To Kindergarten Growth: Synthesizing Theories Of The Kindergarten Transition To Support Children's Development, Rita Yelverton

Dissertations and Theses

The transition into Kindergarten is a critical time for children's development--children's patterns of academic development and engagement with school often start in Kindergarten and persist throughout their academic careers. This is a developmental period that is marked by many changes in children's lives, and therefore it is not a surprise that many children struggle during this transition. These struggles are more common for children who are living in poverty, and although there have been national initiatives to address opportunity gaps in access to early education, investigations into the effectiveness of these programs in promoting children's Kindergarten development have shown mixed …

Ideas In Dialogue: Leveraging The Power Of Child-Led Storytelling In The Multicultural Preschool Classroom, Erin E. Flynn

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

An investigation into the interactive features of small group, child-led storytelling in preschool classrooms serving lower socioeconomic status (SES), multilingual children shows both the affordances and constraints of positioning children to author their own experiences in the classroom. In story circles, children told stories which included canonical instantiations of story and culturally-shaped features. Through their stories, the children advanced ideas, built connections, and evaluated ways of telling stories as they continued ideas like threads from story to story. Child-led storytelling did not disrupt the dynamics of power through which some ways of using language are privileged while others are marginalized. …