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Early Childhood Education Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Early Childhood Education

A Playful Context Enhances Bilingual And Monolingual Preschoolers’ Mastery Motivation And Private Speech, Jeremy Sawyer Sep 2017

A Playful Context Enhances Bilingual And Monolingual Preschoolers’ Mastery Motivation And Private Speech, Jeremy Sawyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children’s private speech (audible self-talk) has been studied primarily as a cognitive tool for thinking, planning and self-regulation. This study investigated whether private speech may also function as a tool for motivation. Vygotskian and self-determination theory suggest that children can develop to become agentic and inspired, or conversely disengaged and alienated, based largely on their social conditions of development. Thus, it is important to investigate children’s motivational processes in social and educational contexts that are central to child development. U.S. preschool enrollment is expanding, accompanied by a decline in play-based pedagogy and growth of didactic, teacher-centered approaches. To illuminate the …


A Retro Development In Education: Evaluating The Feasibility Of Integrating Place-Based Education Into Mississippi Curriculum Standards, Colby K. Mcclain May 2017

A Retro Development In Education: Evaluating The Feasibility Of Integrating Place-Based Education Into Mississippi Curriculum Standards, Colby K. Mcclain

Honors Theses

This thesis evaluates the feasibility of integrating place-based environmental education activities from Think Green, Take Action: Books and Activities for Kids into the Mississippi Department of Education’s (MDE) Frameworks for Science and Social Studies for K-5. As children develop and experience the world, their ability to understand and interpret the surrounding environments expand; however, Mississippi schools are not focused on experiential environmental education, even though experiencing and understanding the surrounding environment is vital in fostering eagerness to learn. Due to a growing disconnect between humans and the natural world, this thesis examined 37 place- and environment-based activities for children, sixteen …


Development Of Authoring And Agency In Early Childhood Through Play, Pi-Chun Grace Ho Feb 2017

Development Of Authoring And Agency In Early Childhood Through Play, Pi-Chun Grace Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent national focus on universal early childhood education programs has drawn attention to the challenges of organizing learning contexts and practices in which children can thrive as learners and community members. Preparing children for school and improving the quality of early childhood education face limits, however, when the role of play is dismissed or reduced to merely instrumental activity. Framed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, and Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I reframe play as a process of authoring that fuels children’s passion for being agentive actors in the world and their own lives. This approach addresses how …


Infants, Toddlers And Mobile Technology: Examining Parental Choices And The Impact Of Early Technology Introduction On Cognitive And Motor Development, Karin Archer Jan 2017

Infants, Toddlers And Mobile Technology: Examining Parental Choices And The Impact Of Early Technology Introduction On Cognitive And Motor Development, Karin Archer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Despite recommendations of no screen time for children under the age of 2, parents are introducing mobile technology to their children at very young ages (Rideout, 2013). While research on television use has found negative impacts in all areas of development (Barr, Lauricella, Zack & Clavert, 2010), research has yet to investigate the impact of mobile technology use with very young children. The current set of 3 studies included interviews, a survey, and direct observations of parents using mobile technology with children 1 to 2 years of age. The main finding across all studies was that parents introduce mobile technology …