This innovative and thought-provoking book invites you to move away from strategies of control and toward relationships of trust with young children. This book presents the conceptual foundation for this re-framed relationship as well as pragmatic takeaways for parents and teachers of preschool-aged children. The book offers a concise, critical history of early childhood which is then laid against the author’s ethnographic research into the daily life of one 2-year-old. This unique and refreshing perspective offers intimate insight into the tension between the adult’s desire for control and the child’s capacity for resistance. The author argues that when the adult-child relationship is defined by control, the child is faced with the same choice on repeat: submit, or resist. Taking action in accordance with personal wants and needs typically requires transgressing adult expectations. For the child, in today’s hyper-surveilled childhood, to speak up is to resist. Moving these ideas from research and theory back into preschools and homes, A New Vision for Early Childhood is important reading for any preschool teacher, leader, or parent who wants to reconsider their relationship with children. We can become allies instead of sheriffs, working with children instead of against them.

Eighteen new chapters have been added to the 2000 edition of this valuable Handbook, which serves as a core text for students and experienced professionals who are interested in the health and well being of young children. It serves as a comprehensive reference for graduate students, advanced trainees, service providers, and policy makers in such diverse fields as child care, early childhood education, child health, and early intervention programs for children with developmental disabilities and children in high risk environments. This book will be of interest to a broad range of disciplines including psychology, child development, early childhood education, social work, pediatrics, nursing, child psychiatry, physical and occupational therapy, speech and language pathology, and social policy. A scholarly overview of the underlying knowledge base and practice of early childhood intervention, it is unique in its balance between breadth and depth and its integration of the multiple dimensions of the field.

The first of the National Education Goals states that by the year 2000 all children in America will start school ready to learn. Pressed by demands for greater accountability and enhanced educational performance, states are developing standards and creating new criteria and approaches for assessing achievement. Calls to assess young children are also increasing. This booklet indicates how best to craft such assessments in light of young children's unique development, recent abuses of testing, and the legitimate demands for clear and useful information. Following a look at recent assessment issues and the current assessment climate, the booklet lists general principles that should guide both policies and practices for the assessment of young children; these principles address benefits, reliability and validity, appropriateness to age level and language, and parental role in assessment. The booklet then details important purposes of assessment for young children: (1) promoting children's learning and development; (2) identifying children for health and special services; (3) monitoring trends and evaluating programs and services; and (4) assessing academic achievement to hold individual students, teachers, and schools accountable. For each purpose, the definition, audience, technical requirements and age continuum are listed. Recommendations for policymakers are also presented for each purpose, and a chart outlining appropriate uses and technical accuracy of assessments change across the early childhood age continuum is included. The booklet then considers combinations of these purposes that have most often occurred in practice. Contains 33 references. (HTH)

This volume brings together studies, research syntheses, and critical commentaries that examine play-literacy relationships from cognitive, ecological, and cultural perspectives. The cognitive view focuses on mental processes that appear to link play and literacy activities; the ecological stance examines opportunities to engage in literacy-related play in specific environments; and the social-cultural position stresses the interface between the literacy and play cultures of home, community, and the school. Examining play from these diverse perspectives provides a multidimensional view that deepens understanding and opens up new avenues for research and educational practice. Each set of chapters is followed by a critical review by a distinguished play scholar. These commentaries' focus is to hold research on play and literacy up to scrutiny in terms of scientific significance, methodology, and utility for practice. A Foreword by Margaret Meek situates these studies in the context of current trends in literacy learning and instruction. Earlier studies on the role of play in early literacy acquisition provided considerable information about the types of reading and writing activities that children engage in during play and how this literacy play is affected by variables such as props, peers, and adults. However, they did not deal extensively, as this book does, with the functional significance of play in the literacy development of individual children. This volume pushes the study of play and literacy into new areas. It is indispensable reading for researchers and graduate students in the fields of early childhood education and early literacy development.

Through its unique integration of curriculum and learning principles, Early Childhood Curriculum: A Constructivist Perspective, 2nd Edition fosters authentic, developmentally appropriate practice for both preschool and early elementary classrooms. The constructivist format of this book encourages active involvement on the part of readers by asking them to observe, question, reflect, research, and analyze, thus allowing readers to create their own knowledge through their responses and actions. Early Childhood Curriculum examines curricular goals such as autonomy, development, and problem solving and links those goals with constructivist principles of learning. It explores ways teachers can create meaningful learning environments and choose curriculum tasks appropriately—in all content areas—that are linked to the learning and development needs of young children. The text provides a wealth of practical detail about implementing constructivist curriculum as the authors discuss classroom climate and management, room design, play, and cooperative learning, among other topics. The book also includes information about how teachers can meet required mandates and national and state standards in appropriate ways as they plan their curriculum, and examines the early childhood educator's role with community agencies, reform and legal mandates, and public relations. Special Features: • “Curriculum Strategies” highlight models for developing curriculum, including projects, curricular alignment, integration of various subject matter areas, and types of knowledge. • “Constructions” promote problem solving by allowing students to explore, revisit, examine, and learn from first-hand experience. • “Multiple Perspectives from the Field” provide interviews with teachers and other early childhood professionals, offering students a realistic look at the profession from a diverse group of educators. • “Teacher Dialogues” explore a wide range of student concerns, including curriculum, learning environments, assessment, and documentation, representing a collaborative support group for pre-service teachers and readers.

This Encyclopedia is a reference work about young children in the USA, designed for use by policy makers, community planners, parents of young children, teacher and early childhood educators, programme and school administrators, among others. The field of early childhood education has been affected by changes taking place in the nation's economy, demographics, schools, communities and families that influence political and professional decisions. The Encyclopedia provides an opportunity to define the field against the background of these influences and relates the field of early childhood education to its diverse contexts and to the cultural and technological resources currently affecting it.

Early childhood is considered a critical but often vulnerable period in a child’s development where early identification and intervention can be crucial for improving children’s developmental outcomes. Systems and family-centred perspectives are vital to support families and build their capacities to lead normalized lives with improved family quality of life. This book explores the family-centred practices and systems factors which influence families’ experiences raising children with complex needs. It also considers the ways in which professionals can work with families to build and support parent and child competence. Conceptual and practical work from Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States present descriptions of and implications for different family system frameworks and early-childhood programs. Contributors in this edited volume bring together contemporary information that bridges the research to practice gap in supporting families of young children with disabilities or delays. Chapters include: Early Intervention for Young Children with Developmental Delays: Contributions of the Developmental Systems Approach Family Composition and Family Needs in Australia: What Makes a Family? Working with Families in Early Childhood Intervention: Family-Centred Practices in an Individualised Funding Landscape Family Systems and Family-Centred Intervention Practices in Portugal and Spain: Iberian Reflections on Early Childhood Intervention This book will attract the attention scholars of Parenting and Families; Child Development and Childcare.

Providing a cornerstone to the global debate on equity and inclusion within education, this handbook explores equity issues pertaining to poverty and social class, race, ethnicity, sociocultural, sociolinguistic exclusion in education and recognises intersectionality and gender across these dimensions. This carefully curated collection of essays written by international experts promotes inclusive systems in education that explicitly recognise the voices of learners who may be at risk of marginalisation, exclusion or underachievement. Developing a multilayered innovative conceptual framework involving spatial, emotional-relational and dialogical 'turns' for education, it emphasises key system points for reform, including building strategic bridges between health and education for vulnerable groups and shifts in focus for initial teacher education and the wider curriculum. The handbook is organised into the following key parts: Theoretical Frameworks Funding Models and Structures for Equity and Inclusive Systems Exclusion and Discrimination Bridging Health and Education Agency and Empowerment Outreach and Engagement The Routledge International Handbook of Equity and Inclusion in Education will be of great value to academics operating in the areas of education, psychology, sociology, social policy, ethnography, cultural studies; researchers in university research centres and in policy institutes pertaining to education, poverty, social inclusion as well as international organisations involved with inclusion in education.