Education Commons^™

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 …

Best Practices For English Learners With Disabilities In Us Schools – A Systematic Review, Samiratu Bashiru, Jennifer E. Smith

Journal of English Learner Education

This systematic review investigated best practices for enhancing academic achievement among English Learners with Disabilities (ELDs) in US schools. By examining 17 peer-reviewed articles and comparing them to the CEC 2014 Quality Indicators, the study identifies significant practices, including culturally responsive methods, technology integration, evidence-based strategies, addressing service delivery challenges, and improving assessment tools. This review has limitations related to inconsistent terminology and highlights the need for standardized language and continued research. It recommends integrating culturally responsive practices, leveraging technology, and refining inclusive assessment tools. This review provides educators, policymakers, and researchers insights, emphasizing ongoing teacher development and policy alignment …

Asset-Based Teaching; Uncover, Cultivate, And Empower Students’ Uniqueness, Stephanie K. Knight, Marjaneh Gilpatrick, Tracy Vasquez

Journal of English Learner Education

As instructors who are in tune with their learners learning and communication styles as well as their family and cultural backgrounds, it makes sense that they view their students’ skills and abilities from an asset-based lens. This article provides the readers with some tactics on how to develop and nurture that growth mindset.

When we consider the assets students bring to individual classrooms, the teaching becomes more personalized and relevant to their learning needs. By implementing these teaching practices, instructors are uncovering, cultivating, and empowering their students’ unique abilities. Ultimately students are able to apply their knowledge, skills, and abilities …

Triumph Through Tragedy, One Student At At Time, Chanel M. Schwenck

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

The EF-4 tornado that struck Mayfield, Kentucky on the evening of December 10, 2021 caused tremendous destruction to the entire community of Mayfield. Two education professors at a neighboring university sought to help students in the Mayfield Independent School District and were able to do so via funding from a KEEP mini-grant. 81 of their college students were trained in Response to Intervention (RtI) practices and provided individual and small group instruction to students in Mayfield for 2 hours a week for 17 weeks during the 2022-2023 school year. Altogether, struggling students in Mayfield received 1,377 hours of RtI instruction …

Effects Of Screen Time On Children's Brain Development: A Scoping Review, Niloofar Jannesar, Todd E. Davenport, Lindsay Gietzen

Pacific Journal of Health

In this scoping review, the effects of screen time on cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional development in children were studied by examining peer-reviewed articles published between 2018 and 2023. A total of 17 peer-reviewed articles were used in the study. The research reported that screen media provide a learning avenue, though it could be detrimental when children spend their time watching more than appropriate screen media. Furthermore, the study indicated that excessive screen media use may harm children’s executive function, which affects academic performance and language development. Related studies have also shown a correlation between excess screen use and problems like …

Letter From The Editor In Chief, Jeffrey Lee

Transform

The TRANSFORM journal is a space for leaders, mentors, researchers, and practitioners of transformational leadership to be seen, heard, and valued; it is a place for making connections. Relationship-building is central to transformational leadership at all levels of an organization; this fundamental truth is a trending topic in literature. Otherwise, however, leadership can be an isolating experience.

As an ethnographer, I believe the best way to launch an academic, peer-reviewed journal is to do what I do best: storytelling. I want to share my thoughts on transformational leadership through a story in the form of a letter to my younger …

Early Childhood Field Experience Supervision: Negotiating Praxis, Amy L. Kelly

Journal of Educational Supervision

This case examines the complex partnership between the university teacher education program and the host school district. Many factors contribute to the expectations and requirements of both institutions, which can at times, conflict in fundamental ways. The theoretical and research-based methods of early childhood coursework are often different than the reality of those classrooms. Furthermore, the adoption of initiatives like, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading standards by university teacher education programs must translate to the fieldwork. School and district-wide mandates often overrule best pedagogical and developmentally appropriate practices. With these opposing perspectives how can supervisors bridge the gap between the …

Assessment Of The Early Childhood Physical Environments Centers According To (Cpers5) Scale. تقدير خصائص البيئات الفيزيقية لمراكز رعاية الطفولة المبكرة باستخدام مقياس (Cpers5), Zain Douba

Association of Arab Universities Journal for Education and Psychology

The research aims to prepare an arabized version of the scale for assessing the characteristics of physical environments for children in its fifth edition, the children`s physical environments rating scale (cpers5), prepared by moore, shogiyama, and o`donnell (m00re, sug iyama&o`donnell, 2012). The scale was built with the aim of providing a tool for estimating the characteristics of early childhood care center environments that include ages from birth to 6 years of age, on a scientific, accurate, and comprehensive basis, and to cover the shortco mings of previous standards in the field of assessing the quality of early childhood environments. It …

Global Educational Ramifications Of Covid-19 On Minorities And Students Living In Poverty Or Extreme Poverty: A Literature Review, Jessie S. Thacker-King

Journal of Global Education and Research

Public education requires all stakeholders to collaborate as a community and focus on the essential factors that create a path for student progress, growth, and maturity. The result nurtures students from kindergarten to graduation and beyond and affords them opportunities to become efficacious members of their communities. Schools are a business operating on the premise of the service industry, working collectively with and for the communities they serve. Their operational parameters are to work with all stakeholders to successfully facilitate excellence in education for all students regardless of gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Recent COVID-19 school closures have opened dialogues …

Facilitating Effective Mathematical Teaching Practices In Preschool, Funda Gonulates, Jasook Gilbert

Journal of Global Education and Research

Initial seeds for mathematics literacy are planted during early childhood. Children benefit when they are exposed to and provided with opportunities for math experiences that emphasize their holistic development and not just mathematics proficiency in isolation. This way of viewing and presenting mathematics to young children requires teachers who are equipped with strong mathematics teaching skills. This study examined a 21-hour professional development series for public school preschool teachers on early numeracy, geometry, mathematical reasoning, and teaching pedagogies. This professional development series aimed to help preschool teachers incorporate effective mathematical practices and increase their comfort level in teaching mathematics. Participants …

Cooperative Extension Programming For Early Care And Education Professionals During The First Year Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From A National Survey Of Extension Systems, Katherine Speirs, Azriella Friedman, Courtney Luecking, Kyleigh Brown

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

Cooperative Extension Systems (CESs) provide programming to early care and education (ECE) professionals. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the needs of ECE professionals. The purpose of this study was to document how CESs helped ECE professionals respond to the pandemic during its first year and how Extension programming was altered in response to the pandemic. Between March and June 2020, representatives from all 87 CESs in the 50 U.S. states; Washington, DC; and six U.S. territories were invited to complete an online survey that included six questions about the pandemic. We received responses from 43 CESs (49% response rate). The …

Teacher Certification During Multiple Pandemics In The Epicenter Of It All, Deborah Greenblatt 4509457

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

Teacher certification exams were put on hold as New York City became the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in March of 2020. State officials closed testing centers and school buildings, and teacher candidates began to panic as administrators at their student teaching placements worked feverishly to adjust. This changed teacher candidates’ ability to complete the performance assessment required for certification (edTPA). Concurrently, COVID-19 was disproportionally affecting the Black community (Phillips et al., 2020) and areas with limited financial resources. Based on the demographics of students at The City University of New York, there were extensive health challenges for many of …

Singing In Dark Times: Improvisational Singing With Children Amidst Ecological Crisis, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson

Occasional Paper Series

Through this research-creation project -- which is represented by a process-driven ten-minute video -- the author asks what ways of knowing emerge when children and adults, more-than-human, and inhuman engage in improvised singing together in an urban park? This project recognizes our current "dark times" within ecological collapse and operates from a space that hopes to build relationality with sonic ecologies through listening-and-singing experiences, while centering the voices of children and other singers within the ecologies we sing in-and-with.

Painting Our Treescapes: A Visual, Gretel Olson, Ingrid Olson, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson

Occasional Paper Series

Two children (ages 6 and 9) represent an afternoon spent in their urban, wintery treescape through visual art, photo documentation, and written narrative. The first piece, "My Imaginary Forest", considers the seasons, animals, and issues of artistic representation of nature. The second piece describes the relationship between a favourite tree and a child, and considers others -- both present and future -- who also occupy "Our Knotty Tree". All of the words, visual art, and photo selection are those of the children.

Making Kin With Trees: Three Educators And Children Entangled With Treescapes, Stephanie Jones, Lindsey Lush, Sarah Whitaker

Occasional Paper Series

In this article, three educators from one small U.S. city draw on Donna Haraway’s feminist, posthumanist idea of making kin to explore their personal relations with trees and their work as educators to support children’s entanglements with trees. Working in three very different contexts with children: a working-class neighborhood, a public school kindergarten, and a forest kindergarten, the three authors illuminate the “magical” emergences of making kin with trees that fundamentally shifts what becomes possible to do and be. Their writing contributes to the fields of critical childhood geographies, feminist posthumanist pedagogies in early childhood education, and writing in affect …

Our Lives Are Worth Celebrating, Darius M. Phelps, Brian Mooney

New Jersey English Journal

No abstract provided.

The Power Of Print: Supporting Emergent Readers Vocabulary Growth, Susan J. Chambre

New Jersey English Journal

Vocabulary instructional practices are grounded in oral language development, neglecting the role print plays enhancing student learning. This article offers suggestions for early childhood educators to reconceptualize their thinking of print exposure with supporting vocabulary development. Suggestions of ways to incorporate print exposure into daily classroom routines are provided.

Testing The Knowledge Of Early Childhood Educators, Dianne S. Mccarthy

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

Teacher certification exams are supposed to assess if a student is likely to succeed in teaching. What if an exam seems to be inappropriate? This article is an inquiry of the New York State Content Specialty Test for Early Childhood Candidates, particularly the math section. It raises the issue of whether we are asking the right questions and ascertaining the right data to decide if someone has the appropriate math knowledge and is ready to teach math to young children.

The Challenges Of Supporting Young Children’S Outdoor Play In Early Childhood Education And Care Settings, Ji Hyun Oh

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This study explored preschool teachers’ beliefs about the challenges they have experienced when supporting young children’s outdoor play. Through Charmaz’s (2006) constructivist grounded theory data analysis process, two types of challenges for providing outdoor play were specified including: (1) natural environmental challenges, such as insect bites, allergies, and severe weather issues and (2) physical environmental challenges that include lack of play materials/environments and playground maintenance. The participant teachers perceive that these challenges are related to their preparation and planning for outdoor play including the provision of outdoor play, allotted play time, and a number of outdoor learning activities.

An Alternating Treatment Design Comparing Small Group Reading Interventions Across Early Elementary Readers, Madison Billingsley-Ring, Kayla Bates-Brantley, Hailey Ripple, Mallie Donald, Daniel L. Gadke, Sarah Harry

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Learning how to read accurately and fluently is a critical component for a student’s future academic success. Reading fluency is a skill that many students struggle to master. In addition, many students missed out on key skill development due to the loss of instruction from COVID-19. As schools begin to recover from these educational losses, small group reading interventions offer an efficient solution to service multiple students at once. Small group reading interventions such as Repeated Readings (RR), Listening Passage Preview (LPP) and LPP with RR (LPP+RR) have all been demonstrated to be effective methods for increasing reading fluency. Yet …

Interdisciplinary Collaborative Practice In Early Childhood, Sara Kupzyk, Brenda Bassingthwaite, Adam D. Weaver, Philip D. Nordness Dr.

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Young children often present with challenging behaviors such as tantrums, aggression, and noncompliance. Rates of expulsion for behavior concerns in early childhood are alarming and can have long-term negative implications for children and their families (Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, 2022). Implementation of a systematic multi-tiered system of supports framework can improve behavioral outcomes of young children. To effectively meet child and family needs within these frameworks, it is integral for members of the team to collaborate. Interdisciplinary teams within early childhood might include families, teachers, school psychologists, behavior analysts, speech language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other …

Supporting Intervention Fidelity Of Dialogic Reading To Support Preschool Children’S Early Literacy Skills, Cara Dillon, Daniel Newman

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Early literacy skills are key indicators of later reading success, and early literacy instruction in early childhood education can support both positive academic and behavioral child outcomes. Dialogic reading (DR) is an evidence-based intervention that targets early literacy skills like oral language, vocabulary, and print concepts. Although research suggests DR has the potential to impact the early literacy skills of young children, intervention fidelity must be maintained for the intervention to be effective. Two single case design studies were conducted in an early childhood setting that together examined (a) the effects of intervention supports on the intervention fidelity of educators …

Avoiding The Summer Slide: Tier One And Two Supports Targeting Early Readers, Sarah Harry

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

For more than 100 years, the “summer slide,” or the learning losses by students following a long summer break have been well documented. On average, a typical student loses a little more than one month’s worth of skill across each academic area (e.g., language arts and mathematics) throughout the summer months. Research has also demonstrated that the “summer slide” has a particularly harmful impact on reading achievement of students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of a tiered system of support for oral reading fluency in early elementary school aged …

Aligning Classroom Management Strategies With A Social Emotional Learning Curriculum In Early Childhood, Jessica Kemp, Sara Whitcomb

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Traditionally, school-based preventative frameworks have been implemented in isolation with little consideration of alignment and integration of practices throughout the school day. The present study aims to address this gap by increasing school psychologists’ preventative involvement with consultation in early childhood school settings. Using an integrated approach through a multiple baseline design, four Head Start educators were trained in classroom management practices, to increase opportunities throughout the day for teaching, prompting, and reinforcing key skills taught through the Second Step Early Learning (SSEL) social emotional learning curriculum. Findings suggest that a brief professional development session (1-hour) followed by weekly performance …

Introduction To Part 2 Of The Special Issue: Helping Relevant Stakeholders Promote Behavioral Outcomes In Early Childhood, Kayla Bates-Brantley, Zachary Charles Labrot 7947921, Sarah Harry

Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education

Early childhood is often referred to as a sensitive period of development due to the critical nature of skills a young child is expected to acquire across a short period of time. It is a time when foundational social-emotional and academic skills can set the trajectory for later successful outcomes. It is also a time when the lack of critical skill development can increase a child’s risk for future mental health and other long-term negative outcomes. Therefore, it is always pressing that early childhood institutions and stakeholders are abreast of evidence-based practices that promote the healthy development of a child’s …

Evaluating Children's Menus In Theme Park Restaurants, Maria Fusté Forné

Journal of Sustainability and Resilience

Children who travel with their families eat in restaurants that usually offer special kid’s menus. The quality of those menus is often questioned and in the present context where children’s obesity and overweight are increasing, it is relevant to pay attention to the different environments where children eat. The present paper wants to analyse if specific restaurants menus in one of the most relevant theme park are healthy or unhealthy. Using a validated instrument to evaluate kids’ menu, restaurants in Disney Village (Disneyland Paris) are analysed. Results show that half of them are unhealthy and none of them are completely …

Exploring Science And Engineering Practices In Children’S Picture Books, Derrick A. Nero, Kathleen Everts Danielson

Michigan Reading Journal

This article features an annotated bibliography of children’s books that illustrate engineering concepts tied to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Science and Engineering Practices for K-2 students (National Science Teaching Association -NSTA, n.d., see Appendix A) and NGSS K-2 Engineering Design performance expectations (NSTA, n.d., see Appendix B). The selected children’s books encourage discussion and model the process of inquiry and problem solving that may inspire young children to explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) questions of their own.

Children’S Imagining And Understanding Of Time: A Montessori Perspective

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

The scientific understanding of natural processes is underscored by ideas of relative temporality, timing, abstracted time, and inferred time. Gruber’s, Block’s, and Montemayor’s (2022 and in this issue) distinction, explication, and final synthesis between the veridical and an illusory nature of time is pertinent to philosophical and cognitive distinctions between objective and subjective time. These distinctions, when understood and applied to curriculum development, make the difference between effective and extemporaneous, off-the-cuff approaches where in the latter little thought is given to the importance of children’s understanding of time—how it develops. Verily, nervous systems exhibit intrinsic temporality. Irrevocably, time engulfs us, …

Dot Card Number Talks: Illustrating Counting Strategies With Preservice Elementary Teachers, Robert Knurek

Colorado Mathematics Teacher

A dot card number talk was implemented in a mathematics content course with preservice elementary teachers (PsETs) to highlight counting strategies that are commonly seen in elementary school mathematics. PsETs' sketches on the dot cards showcase many different strategies, such as counting-all, counting-on, matching, and subitizing. While their illustrations demonstrated these different strategies, their answers were ultimately the same. The dot card number talk sparked meaningful conversations and helped PsETs distinguish between the counting strategies.

Examining Guided Reading Practices In Kindergarten Classrooms, Erica Barnes, Kimberly L. Anderson, Thea Yurkewecz

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This study investigated how 15 kindergarten teachers from one school district implemented small-group Guided Reading (GR). Analysis of video recordings indicates substantial differences in how GR was conducted, with none of the teachers fully implementing GR as conceptualized by Fountas and Pinnell (2012). Consistency across teachers was limited to reading a new book and using a picture walk as part of the book introduction. Differences were observed in how the books were read (choral, round robin, or independent reading) and in instructional activities before and after reading the new book, with word solving being the most prevalent focus of instruction. …