“These pages make clear that the way to foster effective teaching is not with curriculum mandates and pacing guides but with professional learning opportunities that prepare expert educators to take advantage of and create teachable moments.” —From the Foreword by Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University This book brings together a group of extraordinary educators and scholars who offer important insights about what we can do to defend childhood from societal challenges. The authors explain new findings from neuroscience and psychology, as well as emerging knowledge about the impact on child development of cultural and linguistic diversity, poverty, families and communities, and the media. Each chapter presents experiences and suggestions, from the perspectives of different disciplines, about what can be done to ensure that all children gain access to the supports they need for optimal physical, social, intellectual, and emotional development. Defending Childhood features: New knowledge about how children learn from the neurobiological, behavioral, and social sciences. Effective teaching strategies that support learning and provide for the needs of the whole child. Examination of a broad range of issues that affect childhood, including violence, media and technology saturation, and a school culture of endless testing. Suggestions for policies and practices for an equitable educational system. Contributors include: Barbara Bowman, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Delis Cuéllar, Tiziana Filippini, Matia Finn-Stevenson, Eugene García, Howard Gardner, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, James J. Heckman, Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Mara Krechevsky, George Madaus, Ben Mardell, Sonia Nieto, Valerie Polakow, Aisha Ray, Robert L. Selman, Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., Edward Zigler Beverly Falk is professor and director of the Graduate Programs in Early Childhood Education at The School of Education, The City College of New York, and author of Teaching the Way Children Learn.

In this new title, the nation's leading development researchers review the recent progress made in the measurement, collection, dissemination, and use of indicators of child and youth well-being.

FirstSchool is a groundbreaking framework for teaching minority and low-income children. Changing the conversation from improving test scores to improving school experiences, the text features lessons learned from eight elementary schools whose leadership and staff implemented sustainable changes. The authors detail how to use education research and data to provide a rationale for change; how to promote professional learning that is genuinely collaborative and respectful; and how to employ developmentally appropriate teaching strategies that focus on the needs of minority and low-income children.

What are the risks and benefits of non-parental care for young children? What are the short- and long-term effects of academically vs. play-focused environments for learning? How and when should we teach reading? What are the purposes of Education? What is the best way to teach mathematics to children, from preschool and beyond? Contemporary Debates in Childhood Education and Development is a unique resource and reference work that brings together leading international researchers and thinkers, with divergent points of view, to discuss contemporary problems and questions in childhood education and developmental psychology. Through an innovative format whereby leading scholars each offer their own constructive take on the issue in hand, this book aims to inform readers of both sides of a variety of topics and in the process encourage constructive communication and fresh approaches. Spanning a broad spectrum of issues, this book covers: Phonic and whole language reading approaches The developmental effect of non-parental childcare The value of pre-school academic skill acquisition The most effective methods of teaching mathematics Standardized assessment – does it work? The role of electronic media and technology The pedagogical value of homework The value of parents’ reading to children. This book combines breadth of vision with cutting edge research and is a ‘must have’ resource for researchers, students and policy makers in the fields of education and child development.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Americans enjoyed better overall health than at any other time in the nation's history. Rapid advancements in medical technologies, breakthroughs in understanding the genetic underpinnings of health and ill health, improvements in the effectiveness and variety of pharmaceuticals, and other developments in biomedical research have helped develop cures for many illnesses and improve the lives of those with chronic diseases. By itself, however, biomedical research cannot address the most significant challenges to improving public health. Approximately half of all causes of mortality in the United States are linked to social and behavioral factors such as smoking, diet, alcohol use, sedentary lifestyle, and accidents. Yet less than five percent of the money spent annually on U.S. health care is devoted to reducing the risks of these preventable conditions. Behavioral and social interventions offer great promise, but as yet their potential has been relatively poorly tapped. Promoting Health identifies those promising areas of social science and behavioral research that may address public health needs. It includes 12 papersâ€"commissioned from some of the nation's leading expertsâ€"that review these issues in detail, and serves to assess whether the knowledge base of social and behavioral interventions has been useful, or could be useful, in the development of broader public health interventions.

A revolution in working with difficult students began during the 1980s, with a dramatic shift away from dependence on simply punishing bad behavior to reinforcing desired, positive behaviors of children in the classroom. With its foundation in applied behavior analysis (ABA), positive behavior support (PBS) is a social ecology approach that continues to play an increasingly integral role in public education as well as mental health and social services nationwide. The Handbook of Positive Behavior Support gathers into one concise volume the many elements of this burgeoning field and organizes them into a powerful, dynamic knowledge base – theory, research, and applications. Within its chapters, leading experts, including the primary developers and researchers of PBS: (1) Review the origins, history, and ethical foundations of positive behavior support. (2) Report on applications of PBS in early childhood and family contexts, from Head Start to foster care to mental health settings to autism treatment programs. (3) Examine school-based PBS used to benefit all students regardless of ability or conduct. (4) Relate schoolwide PBS to wraparound mental health services and the RTI (response to intervention) movement. (5) Provide data and discussion on a variety of topics salient to PBS, including parenting issues, personnel training, high school use, poorly functioning schools, and more. This volume is an essential resource for school-based practitioners as well as clinicians and researchers in clinical child, school, and educational psychology.

This book cuts through the powerful mythology surrounding Los Angeles to reveal the causes of inequality in a city that has weathered rapid population change, economic restructuring, and fractious ethnic relations. The sources of disadvantage and the means of getting ahead differ greatly among the city's myriad ethnic groups. The demand for unskilled labor is stronger here than in other cities, allowing Los Angeles's large population of immigrant workers with little education to find work in light manufacturing and low-paid service jobs. A less beneficial result of this trend is the increased marginalization of the city's low-skilled black workers, who do not enjoy the extended ethnic networks of many of the new immigrant groups and who must contend with persistent negative racial stereotypes. Patterns of residential segregation are also more diffuse in Los Angeles, with many once-black neighborhoods now split evenly between blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and other minorities. Inequality in Los Angeles cannot be reduced to a simple black-white divide. Nonetheless, in this thoroughly multicultural city, race remains a crucial factor shaping economic fortunes. A Volume in the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality

How much do children’s early experiences affect their cognitive and social development? How important is the parent’s role in child development? Is it possible to ameliorate or reverse the consequences of early developmental deficits? This vitally important book draws on the latest research from the social sciences and studies on the brain to answer these questions and to explore what they mean for social policy and child and family development. The authors affirm that sound social policy providing for safe and appropriate early care, education, health care, and parent support is critical not only for the optimal development of children, but also for strengthening families, communities, and the nation as a whole. Offering a wealth of advice and recommendations, they explain: • the benefits of family leave, child care, and home visitation programs; • the damage that child abuse inflicts; • the vital importance of nutrition (and breast feeding) for pregnant women and young children; • the adverse effects that occur in misguided efforts to disseminate research too early; • and more. Written by experts in the field of early child development, care, and education, the book is essential reading for parents and policymakers alike.

The essential reference for human development theory, updated and reconceptualized The Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, a four-volume reference, is the field-defining work to which all others are compared. First published in 1946, and now in its Seventh Edition, the Handbook has long been considered the definitive guide to the field of developmental science. Volume 4: Ecological Settings and Processes in Developmental Systems is centrally concerned with the people, conditions, and events outside individuals that affect children and their development. To understand children's development it is both necessary and desirable to embrace all of these social and physical contexts. Guided by the relational developmental systems metatheory, the chapters in the volume are ordered them in a manner that begins with the near proximal contexts in which children find themselves and moving through to distal contexts that influence children in equally compelling, if less immediately manifest, ways. The volume emphasizes that the child's environment is complex, multi-dimensional, and structurally organized into interlinked contexts; children actively contribute to their development; the child and the environment are inextricably linked, and contributions of both child and environment are essential to explain or understand development. Understand the role of parents, other family members, peers, and other adults (teachers, coaches, mentors) in a child's development Discover the key neighborhood/community and institutional settings of human development Examine the role of activities, work, and media in child and adolescent development Learn about the role of medicine, law, government, war and disaster, culture, and history in contributing to the processes of human development The scholarship within this volume and, as well, across the four volumes of this edition, illustrate that developmental science is in the midst of a very exciting period. There is a paradigm shift that involves increasingly greater understanding of how to describe, explain, and optimize the course of human life for diverse individuals living within diverse contexts. This Handbook is the definitive reference for educators, policy-makers, researchers, students, and practitioners in human development, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience.