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Early Childhood Education Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Early Childhood Education

Application Of Multicultural Literature In The Early Childhood Classroom, Deborah Wheeler, Jennifer Hill Dec 2023

Application Of Multicultural Literature In The Early Childhood Classroom, Deborah Wheeler, Jennifer Hill

Journal of English Learner Education

Culture equates to identity; therefore, the implementation of multicultural literature in the early childhood curriculum is an essential method for securing children’s concept of self and cultural identity. This qualitative study explored the implementation of multicultural literature in early childhood classrooms, and the research included questions pertaining to multicultural literature training, instructional methods, and barriers encountered. The purpose of the study was to answer questions regarding teachers use of multicultural literature in the classroom, how often teachers read multicultural literature and how teachers integrated multicultural literature into instruction. An additional question inquired about what multicultural books titles were teachers reading …


Inclusive Education For All: Identifying Teacher Beliefs About Working With Students With Disabilities, Chelsea Sharek Dec 2023

Inclusive Education For All: Identifying Teacher Beliefs About Working With Students With Disabilities, Chelsea Sharek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the beliefs K-12 teachers have when working with students with disabilities in a rural Pennsylvania school district. This study aimed to identify if teachers’ personal beliefs created biases about their students and school systems; thus, forming barriers and preventing an inclusive education when working with disabled students. Instrumentation for this quantitative study is the Multidimensional Attitudes Towards Inclusive Education Scale (MATIES) survey. Findings suggest that some teachers at Sunnyside School District (pseudonym) hold personal beliefs that could create biases about their students and school system that may form barriers when working with …


Mathematical Identities And Tracking: An Exploration Of Efficacy In Children And Women, Emma Hagan Jul 2023

Mathematical Identities And Tracking: An Exploration Of Efficacy In Children And Women, Emma Hagan

Education | Master's Theses

This study seeks to understand the impact of elementary school mathematical identities and mathematics tracking on the identities of women and girls. “Tracking” is an institutionalized education method developed in the 1960s and 1970s in which schools sort their students into smaller class-sized groups based on their observed achievement (Domina et al., 2016). Too often, when students test onto the lower track, they are confronted with a sense of futility and a lack of self-efficacy (Domina, Hanselman, Hwang & McEachin, 2016; Houtte & Stevens, 2015). Further, in STEM disciplines, students who identify as female report lower self-efficacy rates than those …


Identity, Access, And Equity: An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study Of Mathematics Identity And Socialization In Pre-Service Teachers, Ashley Renaire Davis Jun 2023

Identity, Access, And Equity: An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study Of Mathematics Identity And Socialization In Pre-Service Teachers, Ashley Renaire Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Teaching practices in early childhood through post-secondary learning settings continue to reproduce inequities in mathematics education despite recognition of math’s utility and its necessity for competitiveness in the global economy. For reform efforts to be successful, teachers must change the way mathematics is presented in classrooms where students often experience differences in exposure to mathematics content and time spent covering particular mathematics topics. Therefore, teachers represent a critical component in the cycle of reproduction of unequal access to mathematics. This mixed-methods study examined the processes of mathematics identity formation and mathematics socialization in a diverse sample of pre-service elementary and …


How Can Early Childhood Educators Promote Equitable Outcomes Through Trauma-Informed Practice?, Elizabeth Terry Jun 2021

How Can Early Childhood Educators Promote Equitable Outcomes Through Trauma-Informed Practice?, Elizabeth Terry

Graduate Teacher Education

An abundance of research acknowledges the effects of trauma on children from an early age. Prolonged and severe trauma in early childhood can lead to adverse outcomes in important areas of development, such as one’s physical, mental, and social-emotional well-being (Morsy and Rothstein, 2019). Children present school systems and educators with the task of addressing this important, but infrequently considered issue. Trauma has lasting effects regardless of age, but the impacts of trauma during childhood are especially profound during such formative years. Children require safe spaces to learn and flourish as individuals, therefore it is important that early childhood educators …


Guilty By Association: A Critical Analysis Of How Imprisonment Affects The Children Of Those Behind Bars, Whitney Q. Hollins Feb 2019

Guilty By Association: A Critical Analysis Of How Imprisonment Affects The Children Of Those Behind Bars, Whitney Q. Hollins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As 2.2 million individuals in the United States are currently incarcerated and an additional 5 million are under some form of correctional surveillance, the push for prison reform has reached new heights. Intimately and inextricably connected to mass incarceration and the push for its reform (and in some cases abolition) are the children have been impacted by incarceration. About half of the individuals currently incarcerated are parents to at least one child under the age of 18. Current estimates suggest that 2.7 million children currently have an incarcerated parent and that 10 million children in the United States have experienced …


Kindergarten Teacher Autonomy In High And Low Socioeconomic Environments, Allison Catherine Mcdonald May 2018

Kindergarten Teacher Autonomy In High And Low Socioeconomic Environments, Allison Catherine Mcdonald

MSU Graduate Theses

Kindergarten teachers are immersed in a high stakes educational environment and this environment has altered how kindergarten teachers must teach. Exploring the different distribution of autonomy in high and low-income groups contributes to the research about educational equity. This study examined the relationship between income level of teaching environment and kindergarten teachers’ levels of self-perceived autonomy. The research question that guided this study was: do kindergarten teachers in higher income schools experience greater levels of self-perceived autonomy than kindergarten teachers in low-income schools? The Teaching Autonomy Scale developed by Pearson & Hall (1993) was used to survey 91 kindergarten teacher …


Seeing Mathematics Through Different Eyes: An Equitable Approach To Use With Prospective Teachers, Christa Jackson, Cynthia E. Taylor, Kelley Buchheister Jan 2018

Seeing Mathematics Through Different Eyes: An Equitable Approach To Use With Prospective Teachers, Christa Jackson, Cynthia E. Taylor, Kelley Buchheister

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

Teacher educators need to prepare prospective teachers by encouraging them to critically examine their current beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics while also providing opportunities for prospective teachers to develop an equity-centered orientation. Attending to these practices in teacher preparation programs may help prospective teachers observe actions that occur in classrooms and determine effective strategies that provide the opportunity to enhance all students’ access to high-quality mathematics instruction. As mathematics teacher educators, we must recognize what prospective teachers attend to as they direct their attention to various classroom events and how they relate the events to broader principles …


Multiple Perspectives On Cognitive Development: Radical Constructivism, Cognitive Constructivism, Sociocultural Theory, And Critical Theory, Meir Muller, Kelley E. Buchheister, Gloria Boutte Jan 2017

Multiple Perspectives On Cognitive Development: Radical Constructivism, Cognitive Constructivism, Sociocultural Theory, And Critical Theory, Meir Muller, Kelley E. Buchheister, Gloria Boutte

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

This multi-vocal article represents the work of three teacher educators. In conjunction with Glasersfeld’s (1996) description of Radical Constructivism, we agree that any theory “cannot claim to be anything but one approach to the age-old problem of knowing. Only its application in contexts where a theory of knowing makes a difference can show whether or not it can be considered a viable approach.” (von Glasersfeld, 1996, p. 309). In this conceptual piece, we examined the relationship between Radical Constructivism and three distinct, yet sometimes overlapping, theories: 1) Cognitive Constructivism 2) Sociocultural Theory; and 3) Critical Theory. First, we discuss the …


Children, Mathematics, And Videotape: Using Multimodal Analysis To Bring Bodies Into Early Childhood Assessment Interviews, Amy Noelle Parks, Mardi Schmeichel Jun 2014

Children, Mathematics, And Videotape: Using Multimodal Analysis To Bring Bodies Into Early Childhood Assessment Interviews, Amy Noelle Parks, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Despite the increased use of video for data collection, most research using assessment interviews in early childhood education relies solely upon the analysis of linguistic data, ignoring children’s bodies. This trend is particularly troubling in studies of marginalized children because transcripts limited to language can make it difficult to analyze embodied power relations between majority researchers and minority children. This article responds to this problem by outlining a theoretical position on power and bodies, describing multimodal analysis strategies, and using these strategies to analyze the subject positions available during a mathematical assessment interview for three African American preschool child-participants and …


Integrating Universal Design And Response To Intervention In Methods Courses For General Education Mathematics Teachers, Kelley E. Buchheister, Christa Jackson, Cynthia Taylor Jan 2014

Integrating Universal Design And Response To Intervention In Methods Courses For General Education Mathematics Teachers, Kelley E. Buchheister, Christa Jackson, Cynthia Taylor

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

Traditionally, teacher education programs have placed little emphasis on preparing mathematics teachers to work with students who struggle in mathematics. Therefore, it is crucial that mathematics teacher educators explicitly prepare prospective teachers to instruct students who struggle with mathematics by providing strategies and practices that specifically address their needs. In this study, we describe the principles of Universal Design for Learning and Response to Intervention. More specifically, we discuss how one Mathematics Teacher Educator uses these frame works in her mathematics methods course to help prospective teachers become cognizant of early interventions and effective strategies that can be implemented to …