Early Childhood Education Commons^™

“Reading Is Everywhere:” A Case Study Situating Children's Book Distribution Within The Literacy Practices Of Somali New Mainers, Rachel C H Groenhout

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Somalia has a long and rich oral literacy tradition of poetry, proverbs, and songs, while Somalia’s print literacy history has been significantly disrupted by colonization and then the Somali Civil War. Many Somalis have fled the country since the start of the civil war in 1991, and an estimated 10,000 Somalis have made a new home in Maine. When Somali citizens relocated to Maine, they were exposed to Maine’s Raising Readers children’s book distribution program. Raising Readers distributes high-quality, age-appropriate, English-language children’s books during pediatric well-child visits to foster family literacy interactions and children’s emergent literacy skills.

This study explores …

Children's Center_Updated Protocol For Close Contacts-Chapel, Kimberly Dodge-Cummings

Children's Center

Email from Kimberly Dodge-Cummings, University of Maine: Children's Center Director regarding changes to protocols put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early Childhood Supervision: Tensions In The Advancement Of Developmentally Appropriate And Social-Justice Oriented Practice, Sarah Jean Baker, Sascha C. Mowrey, Denise Cunningham

Journal of Educational Supervision

This case examines the complex interactions among university faculty, teacher candidates, and school-based mentor teachers during supervision. In early childhood, among other skills and dispositions, the use of developmentally appropriate practice and an equity focus are important to the overall advancement of teacher candidates’ practice. However, supervisors do not have oversight of the classrooms in which early childhood candidates are placed for field experiences. In some cases, teacher candidates may be expected to conform to or demonstrate practices themselves which are not developmentally appropriate, or which are inequitable. What is the role of the supervising faculty member in these cases, …

Children's Center_Chapel Covid-19 Testing, Kimberly Dodge-Cummings

Children's Center

Email from Kimberly Dodge-Cummings, University of Maine: Children's Center Director regarding the Children's Center no longer participating in test-to-stay for the Preschool and Chapel programs which was out in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Document Analysis Of Behavior Expectations And Disciplinary Action Policies Of Public Preschools In Maine, Kristin Davies

Honors College

Student handbooks from public preschools in the state of Maine were collected to analyze what behavior expectations, disciplinary actions, suspension policies, expulsion policies were included, and to what degree of detail these policies were explained in student handbooks. A document analysis framework was utilized to collect and interpret the data. The document analysis framework has two different content analysis techniques, and a content analysis technique was utilized to determine the number of times specific words or phrases were utilized in each of the 72 student handbooks. Key terms were chosen in order to quantify the frequency of words used in …

Reliability Evidence For The Nc Teacher Evaluation Process Using A Variety Of Indicators Of Inter-Rater Agreement, T. Scott Holcomb, Richard Lambert, Bryndle L. Bottoms

Journal of Educational Supervision

In this study, various statistical indexes of agreement were calculated using empirical data from a group of evaluators (n = 45) of early childhood teachers. The group of evaluators rated ten fictitious teacher profiles using the North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process (NCTEP) rubric. The exact and adjacent agreement percentages were calculated for the group of evaluators. Kappa, weighted Kappa, Gwet’s AC1, Gwet’s AC2, and ICCs were used to interpret the level of agreement between the group of raters and a panel of expert raters. Similar to previous studies, Kappa statistics were low in the presence of high levels of …

Children's Center_Covid Update, Kimberly Dodge-Cummings

Children's Center

Letter from Kimberly Dodge-Cummings, University of Maine: Children's Center Director regarding changes to protocols put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the fact that face covering will be in optional in all of the Children's Center programs.