Education Commons^™

Multicultural Picture Books And The Hard Conversations They Invite: Do Minnesota’S Early Childhood Educators Feel Prepared To Talk About Race During Shared Reading Experiences?, Julie Rech

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by the researcher’s own experiences being confronted with young children’s curiosities about race during storytimes, this work investigates educator attitudes, approaches, and abilities as they pertain to broaching race topics in early childhood classrooms. Specifically this work seeks to understand To what degree do early childhood educators in Minnesota feel prepared to engage in discussions of race during shared reading experiences with their students? It reviews existing literature on bias and attitudes towards race topics within early childhood education, multicultural picture books and critical literacy, and anti-bias and anti-racist education. Employing constructivist and transformative paradigms and grounded in the …

To What Extent Do 3- To -6-Year-Olds Demonstrate Connection To Nature At A Montessori School In The Upper Midwest, Natasha Yates

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Yates, N. (2023). To What Extent Do 3- to -6-Year-Olds Demonstrate Connection to Nature at a Montessori School in the Upper Midwest.

Young children are born into a world today with a drastically changing environmental climate. When young people develop an emotional attachment and sense of identity with nature, they may be more likely to behave in less destructive ways towards the planet and possibly live with a sense of responsibility and respect for nature. This mixed method study aimed to measure to what extent 3- to 6-year-olds demonstrated environmental sensitivity, awareness, and preferences at a nature-based Montessori school in …