<p> The purpose of this dissertation study is to describe, explain, and analyze teachers&rsquo;, supervisors&rsquo;, and educational administrators&rsquo; perspectives, or self-reported opinions, regarding their current practices and policies of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Saudi Arabia (SA), and the challenges and the benefits of adopting the Reggio Emilia approach (REA) into early childhood institutions in SA. ECE faces many challenges in SA, such as: the traditional role of the teachers, a standard curriculum that is planned in advance, lack of collaboration with families, centralized education management, and the image of the child as passive learner (Metwaly, 2007). With these in mind, I argued that implementing the REA in Saudi kindergartens in a way that suits the social, culture, and religious context may help overcome some of the challenges that are confronting ECE in SA today. </p><p> Three theoretical frameworks guided this study: social constructivist theory, the community of collaboration perspective, and the theoretical foundation of ECE in SA. The social constructivist theory and community of collaboration perspective offered a comprehensive understanding of the RE philosophy and its core principles by explaining how children learn and the critical importance of community collaboration. In addition, examining the theoretical foundations of ECE in SA guided my understanding of current Saudi ECE practices and policies. </p><p> This study used in-depth interviews to explore and analyze ECE teachers&rsquo;, supervisors&rsquo;, and educational provincial administrators&rsquo; perspectives in Riyadh about the potential benefits and challenges of implementing the REA into the Saudi ECE context. Audiotapes and transcriptions from individual interviews with participants were used as data sources, along with documents and analytic memos. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative analysis approach; this can provide opportunities to explore the participants&rsquo; opinions about the likelihood of implementing the REA, what it would take to adopt it if possible, and how it could be modified to fit the social, cultural, and religious context in SA. </p><p>

<p> Despite being mandated reporters by law, preschool teachers often fail to report suspicion of child abuse or neglect. Although research has been conducted regarding reasons why teachers do not report, no study has yet examined preschool teachers&rsquo; thinking as decisions are being made. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine the in-the-moment decision-making process of preschool teachers to report or not report cases of suspected child abuse or neglect. Three research questions guided this exploration of teachers&rsquo; responses to cases of possible child abuse or neglect, the reasons teachers give for their responses, and their confidence in the correctness of their decisions to report or not to report child abuse or neglect. The conceptual framework for this study was the ethical decision-making model of Meneghetti and Seel. The research was a phenomenological study using the think aloud protocol of van Someren, Barnard, and Sandberg. Three scenarios of possible child abuse cases were used as the basis for the face-to-face interviews in which 6 lead preschool teachers described their thought processes. The purposeful sample comprised 6 lead teachers in a major city in the United States with children aged 2 through 5. A thematic analysis method and coding strategy were used to answer the research questions. The findings in this study were consistent with the literature in that most of the teachers did not elect to report their suspicion of child abuse or neglect, but were inhibited by lack of clear understanding of what constitutes abuse and neglect, and by a desire for more information. This study contributes to positive social change by indicating a need for more training of preschool teachers in their mandated reporter role, which can result in more confident decision making and greater success in protecting young children.</p><p>

<p> Previous research indicates that burnout leads to issues such as attrition and poor practitioner health in early childhood education and other helping professions. This study examined self-care as a potential buffering factor against burnout in preschool teachers. Maslach&rsquo;s three-dimension construct of burnout, trauma stewardship, and the coping reservoir model formed the theoretical foundations for this research. This study used semi-structured, open-ended interviews to collect qualitative data from four preschool teachers at different points in their careers to understand how early childhood educators conceptualize and practice self-care, experience burnout, and perceive the relationship between self-care and well-being. The findings show that preschool teachers experience multiple levels of work-related stress, that several types of factors can increase resilience to stress and burnout, and that self-care is highly complex and dynamic. These results point to the necessity of promoting self-care at the individual and organizational levels, treating self-care as a professional imperative, providing burnout interventions at the individual, organizational, and societal levels, and encouraging teachers to practice self-care in dynamic, adaptive ways to best support their unique needs and situations. The field would benefit from further studies exploring the relationship between self-care and burnout specifically in early childhood education, ways in which organizations can promote self-care practices in employees, and what characteristics or practices exist among teachers who have demonstrated resilience in the face of chronic work-related stressors. </p><p>

<p> Currently, there is a gap in the literature highlighting the need for professional development in the form of mentoring support for first-year directors in Early Childhood Education (ECE). </p><p> The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of first-year ECE directors who took part in the California Early Childhood Mentor Program (CECMP) during the 2015&ndash;2016 school year. Participants came from the northern and northeast regions of the CECMP. Using a narrative approach guided by personalized stories, along with in-depth one-on-one interviews, this study focused on the experiences of four prot&eacute;g&eacute; directors who engaged in a mentoring relationship with an experienced director mentor. By situating the prot&eacute;g&eacute;s&rsquo; experiences within a 4-path framework of Analyzing, Advancing, Acting and Accelerating, this study investigated the impact of the mentoring relationship on addressing challenges and leadership development in an ECE program. </p><p> Findings from this study revealed that when the elements of supportive guidance, supportive resources, self-reflection and supportive relationships are in place, first-year directors can become equipped to address challenges and develop the capacity for leadership. The ECE field must continue to promote the provision of systemic and relevant leadership training and mentoring in order to grow leaders and to sustain leadership capacity. Implications of this study reveal the need to incorporate a professional development system for emerging and future first-year directors that recognizes effective leadership as a vital component to the success of children, staff and families. </p><p> Recommendations for policy include increasing federal funding for mentoring and leadership training programs and the provision of options for an ECE director credential similar to the Clear Induction Tier 2 Standards put forth in K-12 for first-year principals. Recommendations for practice highlight the need for mandated mentoring hours as well as prolonged engagement in quality leadership development programs leading up to the first-year directorship. Recommendations for future research include the use of quantitative survey instruments to determine if first-year directors with mentors identify this study&rsquo;s findings as significant in a mentoring relationship.</p><p>

The social ecology of a classroom—comprising settling-level features that emerge from the characteristics and interactions of the people in the classroom—shapes the opportunities a child has for forming relationships, as well as the way children experience these relationships (Bierman, 2004). In this dissertation, I examined how two aspects of the preschool classroom’s social ecology influenced children’s subsequent experience of peer rejection and subsequent development of social competence during elementary school. Unlike the majority of research published about social competence, peer rejection, or preschool classroom characteristics, in this dissertation I took a longitudinal approach and examined the independent and joint contributions of two aspects of the preschool classroom social ecology—the classroom composition of child externalizing behaviors and the quality of the emotional and relational climate of the classroom—to the subsequent development of my outcomes of interest. I found that, on average children’s trajectories of peer rejection did not demonstrate change over time (estimated IRR = 1.00, p = 0.76). I also found that, on average, children’s social competence grew from age four to age five (β = 0.32, p < 0.001). In addition, the preschool classroom composition of externalizing behavior was related to the elevation of children’s subsequent developmental trajectories of social competence from age 4 to age 5 such that children in preschool classrooms with relatively lower proportions of children with externalizing behaviors displayed subsequent developmental trajectories of social competence with higher elevations than did children in preschool classrooms with relatively higher proportions of children with these behaviors. This relationship, in turn, was moderated by the preschool classroom emotional quality such that children had subsequent trajectories of social competence that were higher in elevation when they had attended preschool classrooms with more positive emotional climate compared to children taught in preschool classrooms with less positive emotional climate, providing the level of the preschool classroom composition of externalizing behaviors was held constant. I discuss these findings and their implications in the following thesis.

This study examines effects of early childhood education (ECE) programs on children’s language, literacy, and math skills using a meta-analytic database that includes information about evaluations conducted between 1960 and 2007 for children between birth and 5 years of age. The study extends upon prior syntheses by examining treatment effects separately on language, literacy, and math outcomes. Findings indicate that ECE attendance has small-to-moderate impacts of between 1/10th to 1/3rd of a standard deviation on children’s language, literacy, and math skills. An additional boost of about 1/2 of a standard deviation is provided by programs that have explicit instructional focus on language, literacy, and math skills relative to “business as usual” ECE. ECE programs confer larger impacts on Black and White children’s language skills. Policy suggestions include the provision of a uniform ECE experience for all children; having a more differentiated instruction in elementary school suitable for children with a varied knowledge base in language, literacy and math skills; and providing teachers with curricula focused on the development of language, literacy, and math skills.

As Western schooling continues to expand and reach remote communities, it is imperative to understand rural parents’ beliefs about formal education and the ways in which they can support their children’s schooling. Sociodemographic changes in rural communities have been connected to shifts in parents’ cultural values and practices (Greenfield, 2009), and parental participation in the institution of Western schooling has been identified as an important influence in these changes (Chavajay, 2006; LeVine et al, 2003; 2012, Rogoff & Chavajay, 2002; Rogoff et al., 1993). This dissertation contributes to this knowledge base by exploring both schooled and unschooled parents’ beliefs and commitments towards formal education and their participation in a book-sharing interaction in four rural Mayan communities. In the first study, I used grounded-theory methods to characterize and compare schooled and unschooled parents’ beliefs on the benefits of formal education for their children’s futures and the commitments that they make to support their children’s schooling, paying particular attention to interactions around written language. In the second study, I used cluster analysis to characterize Mayan parents’ book-sharing styles on the basis of the degree to which parents engaged their children as interlocutors in the interaction and of the type of content they emphasized, and to examine differences between schooled and unschooled parents’ book-sharing styles. Both studies were conducted with 30 parents from four Mayan communities in which Western schooling was introduced over the last decades but where there is still wide variation in parents’ schooling levels –making them ideal sites to study the influence of schooling on parental beliefs and practices. Taken together, the two studies provide evidence on cultural change and continuity, and identify parents’ participation in Western school as an important influence on parent-child interactions while also calling attention to the role of other parental experiences in shaping their beliefs and practices.

Abstract not available.

Using the framework of critical ethnography, one that offers an insider's view to understanding processes, I entered my own kindergarten classroom and tried to place my own storytelling pedagogy under critical scrutiny. I tried to find answers to such questions as: (1) what impact my storytelling praxis had on the identity of the children, (2) how my teacher belief about storytelling and literacy learning of young children informed my classroom praxis and (3) how the children responded to this praxis. This research was conducted over ten weeks in 1994 in a small English speaking school in a mid-sized city in central Canada. Forty-two children took part in the study; twenty-five were five years old and seventeen were four years old. Twenty-six of the children were English speaking. Sixteen children were from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Each week I told the children one story, taken from my annual "Fairy Tale and Nursery Rhyme" theme. I taperecorded these tellings and demonstrated the use of the taperecorder for the children. The taperecorder was then made available to the children and they were encouraged to go and tell their own stories into it. During this time I also collected field notes and kept a reflective journal. An analysis of the data revealed a storytelling praxis rife with problems. The themes of the teacher-told stories offered a very narrow Eurocentric world view. Most child storytellers were five years old and had strong English skills. Four year old children or children with weak English skills tended to stay away from the taperecorder. Finally, while acting as both a teacher and a researcher is a creative means of bringing the classroom teacher's voice into the literature, it proved to be full of tension. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether parents and guardians understand the specific benefits of a music-based early intervention program for their child's development, when given data documented through observational methods. Participants (N=15) for this study were parents or guardians of children 2 to 4 years of age who attended "Music Play" in Tallahassee, Florida. On-task behavior data was coded from the 4 video recordings of the children who attended with their parents/guardians. After receiving the documentation, the parents were asked to complete the post-survey measure. Data was obtained from 8 parents out of the original 15 who consented to participate. Results from this study confirm that children benefit from music-based instruction for early intervention and that parental perceptions are altered when documented group on-task behaviors are presented. Further research needs to be conducted to affirm these responses with a larger sample size. Overall, parents and guardians have a good understand of the benefits of music-based instruction for their young children. / A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music. / Fall Semester, 2014. / August 5, 2014. / early intervention, music therapy, parental awareness / Includes bibliographical references. / Jayne M. Standley, Professor Directing Thesis; Kimberly VanWheelden, Committee Member; Dianne Gregory, Committee Member.