Education Commons^™

School Readiness At The Nexus Between Poverty And Education: The Insights Of Two Jamaican Teachers, Zoyah Kinkead-Clark

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

In this article, the role of poverty as a barrier to children’s readiness for school is discussed. Using two Jamaican early childhood teachers to illuminate the findings, this piece sought to gain insight into teachers’ perspectives about supporting children, who come from impoverished circumstances, to be ready for primary school. Thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews revealed two dominant themes; Better preparation to meet children’s developmental needs Unrealistic expectations- curriculum expectations perpetuate knowledge gap These findings draw attention to some of the challenges teachers face in meeting the needs of children who live in poverty. These challenges have implications for …

The Missing Links: Enhancing Anti-Bias Education With Anti-Racist Education, Kerry-Ann Escayg

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Social justice in early childhood has generally been conceptualized to include the anti-bias curriculum, and to a lesser extent, anti-racist education. Over the years, however, scholars have highlighted the many areas in which anti-bias education falls short both pedagogically and conceptually. In keeping with such discussion, this paper highlights significant gaps of anti-bias education by engaging central premises of anti-racist education. By centering a critical race and anti-racist perspective, the paper further provides practical suggestions on how to align early childhood classroom practices with anti-racist principles.

The Effects Of Code-Mixing On Second Language Development, Aimee K. Spice

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Second language development is an important topic of discussion in an increasingly multilingual world. This study aims to examine and detail research on the effects of code-mixing (CM) on second language development, answering how CM facilitates or constrains second language acquisition. Peer-reviewed articles on the topic published between 2013 and 2018 were examined and synthesized. Language learners/multilinguals answered questionnaires about their views on CM and second language acquisition, and a language teacher was interviewed regarding use of L1 in the language classroom and CM as a pedagogical tool. This study found that CM can be a beneficial tool for language …

Metacognitive Reading Strategy And Emerging Reading Comprehension In Students With Intellectual Disabilities, Natasha Cox-Magno, Peter Ross, Kathleen Dimino, Andrea Wilson

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This article ventures to address the gap in special education practices by providing a metacognitive reading strategy to support the emerging reading comprehension skills of kindergarten students with intellectual disabilities. Historically, students with intellectual disabilities have low reading comprehension skills that can impede their overall academic success. There is a gap in practice regarding the identification and effective use of evidence-based reading comprehension instructional strategies for students with intellectual disabilities. Guided by Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s constructivist theories, the purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a metacognitive reading strategy on the emerging reading comprehension (ERC) skills of …

Hands Of The Future, Inc.: Connecting Children To Nature, Rebecca Busse

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Rebecca Busse is the project coordinator for the Nature of Teaching Extension Program. This provides K–5 teachers with standards-based lesson plans related to wildlife, food waste, and health and wellness. She has been volunteering with Hands of the Future, Inc., for three years. In this article, she describes the organization and her experiences with it.

Easy As Abc?, Allison Bickerstaff

Quest

Professor Introduction: The Profile Essay

Research in progress for English 1301: Composition 1

Faculty Mentor: Lisa Roy-Davis, Ph.D.

The following paper represents research work begun by students in English 1301, the first course in the two-semester composition sequence at Collin College. Students in English 1301 are introduced to the concept of academic research by learning to ask research-focused questions and then use the library resources to find sources that provide answers.

In the following profile essay, Allison Bickerstaff merges her research-based understanding of the elementary education field with her subject’s experiences of teaching at a local elementary school. By focusing …

An Assessment Of Bullying/Victimization Behaviors Among Third-Graders In Jordanian Public Schools, Majedah Abu Al Rub

International Journal for Research in Education

This study investigates the prevalence of bullying/victimization behaviors among third graders in Jordanian public schools from the perspectives of both students and their teachers. The study involved 500 third-grade students and 52 teachers who randomly selected from 20 Jordanian public schools in the first Irbid directorate schools. Results of the students’ perceptions of bullying and victims of bullying behaviors indicated a generally low amount of bullying and victims of bullying among third graders. However, teachers reported more bullying by other students than the students reported. Also, teachers in this study reported physical bullying/victims of bullying as the most frequent and …

Early Childhood Leadership: A Photovoice Exploration, Kristi Cheyney-Collante, Melissa Cheyney

The Qualitative Report

The first five years of a child’s life represent critical windows in physiological, social-emotional, and cognitive development. Administrators of early childhood (EC) programs play a pivotal role in determining the quality of experiences that unfold for young children in center-based care. Using photovoice, semi-structured administrator interviews, and participant-observation, we aimed to identify the factors contributing to one center’s atypically excellent outcomes with diverse children and families. Our textual and photographic analyses revealed three findings. First, administrators saw themselves as embedded within a larger system of barriers characterized by low positionality within an educational caste system that is marked by pervasive …

Portuguese And German Repertoires Perceived By Portuguese Speaking Children In Germany: A Tale Of Two Continua, Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer, Alexandra Fidalgo Schmidt

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

After a theoretical overview of the concept of heritage language (HL) from a plurilingual perspective, we will describe the project “Images on the (teaching of) Portuguese Language abroad”. For this project, several drawings were collected, produced by lusodescendant children living in Germany and attending supplementary Portuguese lessons. We will analyze four tendencies of students’ representations towards Portuguese and German, as well as towards the skills they have developed in those languages. These representations illustrate four profiles of Portuguese Heritage Language (PHL) learners present in the classroom (in terms of motivations, skills, linguistic repertoires, etc.). As conclusions, we will point at: …

The Power Of Pictures: Drawing On Visual Sign-Systems To Teach Inference In Gerstein’S The Man Between Two Towers, Shannon Howrey

The Journal of Balanced Literacy Research and Instruction

The ability to infer while reading is a critical part of meaning-making. Readers who infer go beyond the literal words on the page by adding information to the text and making implicit connections between the text and their prior knowledge (Barr, Blacowicz, Bates, Katz, & Kaufman, 2013). This skill allows them to establish causal relationships between story events, connect the events to their personal experiences, and determine relationships, motivations, and emotions within and between characters. Drawing on dual coding theory and visual literacy principles, the author demonstrates how the lines in the illustrations of The Man Between Two Towers assist …

Illegal; Dreamer; Home For Refugees, Ana Herrera

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

A collection of three poems focusing on the critical social issue of immigration in order to educate young children. Each poem consists of a different issue in the wide range of topics of immigration. The topics include: deportation of illegal immigrants, the DREAM Act, and homing refugees in the United States from countries of war.

Was The Professional Development I Conducted In South Africa Evident In Teachers’ Practices Many Years Later?, Darlene Demarie

Journal of Practitioner Research

I conducted professional development by working alongside the teachers I hired at a child development center in South Africa. I spent one year and 9 months there while I was a Fulbright CORE Scholar from 2007 to 2009. After 8 years with only two short visits back, the digital tools (photographs and videos) I used and reviewed with teachers at the time of the professional development also helped me to assess the impact of that professional development. I saw how it influenced the teachers' practice and noted what was similar and what had changed over the years.

An Investigation On Gender And The Effects On Behavior In Early Childhood Classrooms, Chia Jung Yeh, Aspen Rae Yordy, Ajay Singh

Journal of Research Initiatives

Researchers who have studied children behavior in early childhood classrooms have found that classrooms are the first place where children learn about acceptable behavior and societal norms. Gender and behavior have been studied on children of later ages, i.e.; elementary, middle, high school, and higher education, but little has been researched regarding children of younger ages. Researchers of this study used quantitative methods to investigate, gender and the effects on children behavior in early childhood classrooms? The researchers recruited a total of 105 preschoolers from seven different classrooms in the Southwest Central region in the United States, to investigate, if …

Leisure Reading Behaviour Of Young Children In Singapore, Shaheen Majid

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Leisure reading is important for personality development and mental growth of children. Reading habits developed during early childhood are likely to continue rest of the life. The main purpose of this study was to investigate leisure reading habits and preferences of young children in Singapore. A questionnaire was used for data collection and 254 children, aged between 6 to 12 years, participated in this study. It was found that reading was among the top five leisure-time activities of the surveyed children. Mostly mothers, followed by fathers, encouraged children to read books. The major reasons for leisure reading were to learn …

Supporting Primary Students’ Story Writing By Including Retellings, Talk, And Drama With Strategy Instruction, Zoi A. Traga Philippakos, Sarah Munsell, Logan B. Robinson

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

Story writing and story grammar have been studied extensively in an effort to improve students’ reading comprehension. Instruction on story structure and on elements of stories can improve the writing quality of students’ papers. This paper explains a process of supporting primary-grade students’ story writing. The approach is based on strategy instruction and incorporates talk and dramatic play as ways to support the development of characters, descriptions of characters and events, and dialogue between characters. Guidelines are provided and step-by-step directions for teachers to use this work with their students.

Building Bridges Between Home And School For Latinx Families Of Preschool Children, Gigliana Melzi, Adina Schick, Lauren Scarola

Occasional Paper Series

All children, regardless of their backgrounds, enter the classroom environment with a set of cultural and communal resources known as funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). Educators can support children’s learning and achievement by incorporating these funds of knowledge – which include, for example, cultural and familial values and traditions, family activities, and home language – into classroom learning experiences. All too often, however, educators fail to take advantage of these resources, and instead draw on mainstream values, traditions, and practices that have historically been embedded into classroom culture and protocol. Even …

Rethinking “Parent Involvement”: Perspectives Of Immigrant And Refugee Parents, Zeynep Isik-Ercan

Occasional Paper Series

I arrived in the U.S. 15 years ago as a master’s student in early childhood education after teaching in elementary schools in Turkey. Becoming a permanent resident in my new country and parenting my two Turkish-American boys fueled my scholarly interest in the experiences of immigrant communities with their children’s early school years, specifically the ways they negotiate cultural and linguistic identities in educational settings. Among many encounters with my children’s teachers, one is particularly memorable.

Shortly after Enis, my older son, began attending the campus preschool at age two, his teacher asked me to speak only English at home …

Administrators’ Roles In Offering Dynamic Early Learning Experiences To Children Of Latinx Immigrants, Alejandra Barraza, Pedro Martinez

Occasional Paper Series

Principals and school administrators play a critical role in creating learning environments that are sensitive to the needs of students from immigrant families. School administrators, particularly principals, are tasked with making decisions that directly and indirectly impact what happens in a classroom. They act as instructional and visionary leaders as well as resource managers and so they determine both the culture and pedagogy of the school. They determine whether the main focus of the early learning classrooms will be academic skill development (literacy, numeracy), cognitive skill development (social competence, behavioral self-regulation, problem-solving, and decision-making), socio-emotional processing (helping others, empathy, sharing), …

Building Safe Community Spaces For Immigrant Families, One Library At A Time, Max Vazquez Dominguez, Denise Davila, Silvia Nogueron-Liu

Occasional Paper Series

In today’s political climate, supporting the needs of young children from Latinx immigrant families has become increasingly difficult at the community, institutional, state, and federal levels. This essay is about a group of Latinx families who participated in an innovative early literacy program at a county public library branch in the migration setting of the U.S. Southeast known as the New Latino Diaspora (Hamann, Wortham, Murillo, 2015). We describe the program and its role in building a safe and welcoming environment for Latinx students and their families. We include the voices of the librarian and parents who had never before …

No Room For Silence: The Impact Of The 2016 Presidential Race On A Second-Grade Dual-Language (Spanish-English) Classroom, Sandra L. Osorio

Occasional Paper Series

“¡Quiere sacar a todos los suramericanos! Quiere quedarse con solo los blancos,¹ shouted second grader Salvador² to his classmate Victor. They were supposed to be reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, but somehow the conversation had turned to the then presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Donald Trump. That was how Trump and his rhetoric entered our dual language classroom.

Far too often, the voices of students of color, their experiences, and their lives are not validated in the classroom. When Salvador and Victor’s conversation about Trump erupted, the teacher and I—the teacher …

Intersectionality And Possibility In The Lives Of Latina/O/X Children Of Immigrants: Imagining Pedagogies Beyond The Politics Of Hate, Ramon Antonio Martinez

Occasional Paper Series

I first met Alma¹ when she was five years old and a kindergarten student in a multi-age Spanish-English dual language classroom in southern California. Alma is the child of immigrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Somewhat shy and soft spoken, she nonetheless had many friends and seemed eager to engage with her peers in class. In interviews with me over the first few years of a longitudinal study that I was conducting at her school, she spent a great deal of time sharing the details of her rich literate life. Among other things, Alma loved poetry. In addition …

Driving Early Childhood Education Quality In Indonesia, Dan Cloney

International Developments

ACER has developed a ‘road map’ for quality pre-primary education and support for parental education programs throughout Indonesia. Dan Cloney reports.

Weaving Theory/Practice For Art As Knowing In Early Childhood Education, Corinna E. Peterken

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Early childhood education has a tradition of arts based pedagogy. Current emphasis on high stakes testing and test scores as evidence of learning, even for young children, has educators moving away from the arts as academic learning. This visual essay is an a/r/tographic inquiry with woven threads of theory/practice from this moving fault zone that support the arts as a way of knowing for the early years. Making and writing with woolen fibers and feathers form a mat as a surface that is thinking with encounters from teaching pre-service early childhood educators with art. The weaving is an opening to …

Teacher’S Use Of Technology In A Preschool/Kindergarten Setting, Maudi Mckell Sundrud, Jennifer Wimmer

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Teacher’s Use of Technology in a Preschool/Kindergarten Setting Mentor: Jennifer Wimmer, Teacher Education As a response to the increase of technology in society, the education system has pushed for greater technology integration in schools. Schools across the nation have invested in technology intended to help students learn more effectively the skills and strategies they may need to be competitive members of this technological society. From this, the question emerges: while funds are being allocated for technology, how often and when do teachers use the technology in their classroom?

Boyd's "Imaginative Prayer: A Yearlong Guide For Your Child’S Spiritual Formation" (Book Review), Lindsay Van Sicklen

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Leman's "Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours" (Book Review), Torri Beck

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Let Our Children Play: The Importance Of Play In Early Childhood Education, Julie Kessel

University of Montana Journal of Early Childhood Scholarship and Innovative Practice

No abstract provided.

Conquering Imposter Syndrome, Irene Tiefenthaler

University of Montana Journal of Early Childhood Scholarship and Innovative Practice

No abstract provided.

The Retreat Area: A Special Place To Be Alone, Kelly Chadbourne

University of Montana Journal of Early Childhood Scholarship and Innovative Practice

No abstract provided.

Critique Of The Owl Curriculum, Judi Guisti, Kathryn Hinkle, Gretchen Oldenburg, Heidi Paul, Jessica Vlasie, Beth Lincoln, Cindy Moulton

University of Montana Journal of Early Childhood Scholarship and Innovative Practice

No abstract provided.