Early Childhood Education Commons^™

Workforce Well-Being: Personal And Workplace Contributions To Early Educators' Depression Across Settings, Amy M. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gallagher, Alexandra Daro, Iheoma Iruka, Susan Sarver

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

Building on research demonstrating the importance of teachers' well-being, this study examined personal and contextual factors related to early childhood educators' (n =1640) depressive symptoms across licensed child care homes, centers, and schools. Aspects of teachers' beliefs, economic status, and work-related stress were explored, and components of each emerged as significant in an OLS regression. After controlling for demographics and setting, teachers with more adult-centered beliefs, lower wages, multiple jobs, no health insurance, more workplace demands, and fewer work-related resources, had more depressive symptoms. Adult-centered beliefs were more closely associated with depression for teachers working in home-based settings compared …

"Why Can’T We All Get Along:" An Analysis Of Baka Education, And The Application Of Picture Books In Baka, Kylie Richmond

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research seeks to understand the implementation of mother tongue language education, specifically within the Baka community. Research was conducted in a Baka village called Mintoum over a three week period. By working with a non profit organization, information was gathered in hopes to improve the education of the Baka. Interviews were conducted to better understand, how these booklets affected not only the child’s education but also the parents’ reaction to books in their language. There was also an observation process conducted to see how the application of these booklets took place within a new Baka run preschool program “Chasing …

Effects Of Upper Elementary Grade Reading Buddies On Literacy Skill Concepts Development In At Risk Preschool Students, Brianna Cleland

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of peer reading buddies on early literacy skill acquisition in preschool students. Data was collected over an eight-week period. Following a four-week period of general classroom instruction, a reading buddy partnership was developed with a fifth-grade class. Peers from fifth grade read with preschool students twice a week over a four-week period for a total of eight sessions. Following the treatment period, quantitative data was collected and analyzed. Analysis suggests that peer reading buddies enhances literacy skills in preschool students—especially in the areas involving the use and appreciation of books.

A Review Of Literature: Project Based Learning In Early Childhood, Danielle Claussen

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This literature review describes how project based learning is initiated in an Early Childhood setting. It gives the reader a detailed description on the processes involved in implementation of project work. On how curriculum is incorporated into learning projects. As well as providing the reader with research and background about Project Based Learning.

Spatial-Temporal Math And Its Effect On Student Achievement, Nicole Dillnger

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The purpose behind this action research was to determine the effect Spatial-Temporal (ST) Math, a web-based mathematics program, has on student achievement at a second grade level. The ST Math program was given to a small group of second grade students on top of the classroom mathematics curriculum while another group of students strictly used the classroom mathematics curriculum. A pre and post assessment were given to these students over an eight week period. This quantitative data was analyzed to determine the correlation between the students’ exposer to ST Math and their achievement on the assessments. After analyzing the data, …

The Importance Of Play In Early Childhood Education, Melissa Irvin

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This literature review stresses the importance of play for all early learners. The review begins by discussing the history of play and its impact on the evolution of family dynamics over time. Studies have shown that playing provides a safe and necessary way for young learners to be able to practice and experience a variety of life skills, including problem solving within a peer group while gaining and enhancing language skills. Through daily play, young children gain valuable life experiences through a variety of roles that will support growth and ultimately translate into adulthood. According to research, play is an …

Nebline, October 2017

NEBLINE Newsletter Archive from Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County

Feature: Floodwater and Stormwater Can Contaminate Water Wells

Food & Health

Farm & Acreage

Pests & Wildlife

Horticulture

Early Childhood

4-H & Youth

and other extension news and events

Can You Improve Phonological Awareness With Skill Boxes Through A Five-Minute Daily Routine?, Lisa Holland

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Phonological awareness is a necessary component in order to learn how to read. These skills have to be taught to children. Children who have deficits in phonological awareness are at risk for a learning disability such as dyslexia. This is why explicit instruction in phonological awareness is crucial for development. Due to this, it is important to start assessing children on these skills in preschool and start interventions if they are needed. The purpose of this action research was to shed light on how crucial phonological awareness skills are for development and how if a child is deficient in this …

The Impact On Inclusion In A Child Care Setting, Amanda Winslow

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The purpose of this action research project was to determine commonly reported barriers impacting inclusion in a child care setting. Data was collected through qualitative survey responses via an electronic survey and a small focus group of child care providers. Analysis of the data collected suggested that low wages in child care, home child care, and other community-based settings made it difficult to recruit qualified personnel to support quality inclusion in child care. Additionally, transportation and limited funding opportunities were challenges for inclusion in child care programs.

The Effect Of Take Home Literacy Bags On Parents’ Feelings Towards School, Lisa Fernstrum

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The purpose of this action research was to determine by what method take home literacy bags have an impact on parents’ feelings towards school. Parents completed a short survey early in the school year, prior to literacy bags being sent home. Literacy bags were sent home weekly for six weeks before parents were asked to complete the same survey for a second time. Analysis of the collected data suggests take home literacy bags have a positive impact on families' feelings towards school.

Choice And Its Effects On Motivation To Read, Kayla Cantu

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The purpose of this action research study was to determine if there is a connection between the implementation of choice in the classroom and students' motivation to read. Research-based literacy framework and a choice model were used over an eight week period of time. Qualitative data was collected at the beginning and the end of the study in the form of surveys. Analysis of the data concluded that kindergarten students when given opportunities for choice in the classroom their motivation to read increased.

Leader-Parent Relationships In The Early Childhood Education Context: An Exploration Of Testimonial And Epistemic Justice, Shirley Eileen Adams

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

In this qualitative study, I examined epistemic justice and testimonial injustice experienced by parents of children enrolled in preschool programs. I used a triadic model arising from the synthesis of Fricker’s (2003) markers of epistemic justice, Hoy and Tschannen Moran’s (1999) Five Facets of Trust and Lea’s (2006) markers of collaboration, and employed modified grounded theory (Charmaz, 2008). Public preschool programs often promise that they can ameliorate cognitive and experiential gaps experienced by children who at risk and allow them to enter kindergarten on an equal footing with their more privileged peers (Hulme, Goetz, Gooch, Adams & Snowling, 2007; Camilli …

Musicalization: Early Childhood Music Access, Discourse, And Praxis In Nyc Charter Schools, 2014-2015, Andrew Aprile

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades, charter schools have become a hallmark of education reform in the United States. Concurrent with this movement is the increasing prominence of high stakes testing. While much research has sought to compare the effectiveness of charter schools and traditional public schools in terms of standardized assessments, scant attention has been paid to the role of arts and music in charter schools, and little has been done to distinguish the distinct strands of the charter school movement. Given what we know about the importance of music education and the growth of charter schools, it was the …

The Kindergarten Environment: Finding Alternatives To Reduce Overcrowded Classrooms, Jay Rodriguez

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

This study will address the difficulties young children have when are placed in overcrowded kindergarten classrooms. Creating an effective and constructive learning environment for the early childhood years must be in a positive learning climate in a school for young children. Motivation, skills and communication amongst teachers, students and parents is a place where children receive guidance and encouragement, security and trust from the responsible adults around them.

A major element that establishes a child’s learning and guides their success is the physical environment where he/she is. When teachers cannot engage their young students in learning activities, then the teaching-learning …

Professional Development As A Process Of Cultural Brokering: Positioning Coaches As Cultural Brokers, Tasha R. Wyatt, E. Brook Chapman De Sousa, Sarah C. Mendenhall

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

Teachers who serve diverse students must navigate two “worlds.” One world is that of standardized curricula and pedagogy and the other is culturally relevant education. To effectively navigate these worlds, teachers need assistance from “cultural brokers” who can help make sense of the tension that emerges when these two educational worlds interact. This study analyzes the work of two Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence coaches who worked as cultural brokers to help teachers integrate multiple pedagogical models. The results indicate the coaches shifted their strategies depending on teacher preferences, and helped teachers overcome constraints within their classrooms …

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’S Historical Representation Within Children’S And Young Adult Literature, John Bickford, Megan Lindsay

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Purpose – Education initiatives require substantive changes for history, social studies, English, andlanguage arts teachers of any grade level. History and social studies teachers are to integrate multiple textsfrom diverse perspectives, which increases teachers’ uses of trade books and primary sources; English andlanguage arts teachers are to spend half their allotted time on non-fiction topics, which enhances the positionof historical content. The compulsory changes are not accompanied with ready-made curricula. Trade booksare a logical starting point for teachers inexperienced with the new expectations, yet, research indicates thathistorical inaccuracies and misrepresentations frequently emerge. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach – …

Comparison Between Mexican And American Parentese: A Qualitative Case Study, Elayna S. Dyke

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This single case study examines possible cultural implications of the current definition of Parentese, also called caretaker speech, based on the personal accounts of a person who is bilingual in both English and Spanish. This case study was conducted in one interview in order to find possible differences in Parentese with the Spanish language in Mexican culture in contrast to Parentese in the English Language in American culture. The purpose of this study was to find if there were differences between parentese between these cultures, and in which ways they were different. According to the subject’s personal experiences within her …

Reflections On A Language Planning Project In Context, Maire Mhic Mhathuna, Cathy Kelleher

Articles

The aim of this paper is to reflect in broad terms on issues which arose in the context of an early years language planning project in Irish-medium preschools (naíonraí) in the Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht) areas of the west of Ireland. Borradh Language Planning Project was commissioned in 2009 to provide guidance and planning templates for early years educators to develop the Irish language competency of children in their early years groups. Due to the changing language ecology of the Gaeltacht areas, many families now raise their children through both Irish and English and children enter the early years services with differing …

Nebline, September 2017

NEBLINE Newsletter Archive from Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County

Feature: Early Childhood Educators Benefit from Mindfulness Reflection

Food & Health

Farm & Acreage

Pests & Wildlife

Horticulture

Early Childhood

4-H & Youth

and other extension news and events

08.01 New England Kindergarten Conference, 1962-2003, Marie Wasnock

Finding Aids

This collection contains New England Kindergarten Conference proceedings from 1962-1978. It also includes programs and pamphlets about the conference from 1980-2003.

11.001 Lesley College Schools For Children, 1909-2002, Alyssa Pacy

Finding Aids

The Lesley College Schools for Children collection contains catalogs produced annually and other records from the schools (the Carroll-Hall School, the Lesley-Dearborn School, and the Lesley-Ellis School) that the former Lesley College acquired. Each catalog contains a history of the school, information about faculty, admission, buildings, course descriptions, academic calendars, school policy, and tuition and expenses. The collection also contains a book of published poems from students in Lesley-Ellis Schools' creative writing class from 1958 - 1964.

Investing In Residencies, Improving Schools: How Principals Can Fund Better Teaching And Learning, Brigid Fallon, Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Investing in Residencies, Improving Schools: How Principals Can Fund Better Teaching and Learning, examines the feasibility for school-level funding for resident stipends including a description of a financial model that enables schools to fund co-teaching positions for novice teachers.

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 …

Looking For The X-Factors: Contextualised Learning And Young Indigenous Australian Children, Karen L. Martin, Stuart Fuller

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

This presentation outlines a research project into early childhood education funded by Queensland Department of Education and Training’s Education Horizon research grant scheme. The project will run from July 2016 to June 2017. This project involved two main research activities: an online survey of early childhood educators of young Indigenous Australians and a small case study of early childhood and early years education programs in Logan, Darling Downs and Far North Queensland regions. The pilot case study sought to identify ‘X-factors’ regarding the contextualisation of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for young Indigenous Australian learners. This presentation will outline the case …

Leading Age-Appropriate Pedagogies In The Early Years Of School, Beverley R. Fluckiger, Julie Dunn, Madonna Stinson, Elizabeth Wheeley

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

There is increasing pressure on leaders and teachers to improve the academic achievement of children in the early years of school. Alongside this is recognition that social and emotional development are the important drivers of children’s school and lifetime success. This paper reports on the design and leadership of the pilot phase of the Age Appropriate Pedagogies program commissioned by the Queensland Department of Education and Training to refocus pedagogical practices in the early years of school. This refocus was deemed to be necessary in order to achieve strong academic outcomes while ensuring that children’s holistic development remained a key …

Discovering The Leader Within: An Autoethnophenomenographic Study Of Mindfulness In Educational Leadership, Alyssa Fraser

Educational Studies Dissertations

This qualitative study combined autoethnographic and phenomenological methods to examine a researcher-leader’s attempt to cultivate cognitive, relational, and emotional capacities through regular mindfulness practice, and how the cultivation of such capacities aligns with the enactment of leadership. The interrogation of lived experience and self-analysis was entered with the intention to better understand the promise of mindfulness as a resource for the development of educational leaders. This study explored the perceived connections between mindfulness practice and the enactment of educational leadership by examining internal and external perspectives of an individual leader’s practice. Methods of self-observation, including both interval and occurrence recording …

The Impact Of Preschool Philosophies On Children’S Language And Literacy Acquisition: A Synthesis Of The Literature, Vanessa Coste

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

"Preschool is essential to child development including areas such as language and literacy development. There are two overall teaching methods in preschool, which are playbased and academic-based learning. This research examines a synthesis of the literatu"

Depressive Symptoms In Mexican-Origin Adolescents: Interrelations Between School And Family Contexts, Prerna G. Arora, Lorey Wheeler

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

This study, as guided by cultural-ecological frameworks, examined multiple contextual stressors, including subjective economic hardship, acculturation, discrimination, and negative perceptions of school safety, as simultaneously linked to adolescents’ depressive symptoms, as well as the role of gender, familism values, family cohesion, and school connectedness on these associations. Data come from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (Portes and Rumbaut 2012) that included second-generation 8th- and 9th-grade children of foreign-born parents from the Mexican-origin subsample (n = 755; 52% male; time 1 M age = 14.20 years). Adolescents were either born in (60%) or immigrated prior to age 5 to …

A Study Of The Effects Of Metacognitive Instruction On Reading Comprehension In The Primary Classroom, Sara Wing

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine if a relationship existed between metacognitive instruction and students’ growth rate for fluency, accuracy, self-correction rates, and comprehension in reading. The research question that guided this study was: To what extent is there a relationship between metacognitive instruction using Reciprocal Teaching method and increasing student success for first-grade emergent readers as evidenced by Curriculum-based Measurements and STAR Accelerated Reader tests. Constructivism theory was used to develop an understanding of learning that asserts student learning happens when students make meaning for themselves. The sample for this study was a convenient of 16 first-grade …

Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Evidence Based Practices, Michaela Creighton

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Each child that has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is different. However, they have similar characteristics in that they lack communication, social, and adaptive skills. As well as reduced cognitive functioning and gross motor skills. This literature review will look at some of the evidence-based practices for teaching children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. It provides information on how to implement them in the early childhood classroom, and focuses on how each practice allows the teacher to adapt it to the student with ASD in one's classroom. It is important that trainings are offered for …