In 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his commitment to provide free public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) to all of New York City’s four-year-olds. With “Pre-K for All,” New York City has undertaken the most ambitious pre-K expansion in the country. The Division of Early Childhood (DECE) in the New York City Department of Education is responsible for implementing Pre-K for All. Now in its second year of expansion, the DECE has shifted its focus from infrastructure development to quality improvement and sustainability. In my Residency, I worked to develop a quality improvement mechanism called the “Foundational Support Visit” (FSV), a new process for diagnosing need across every Pre-K for All program. The DECE used findings from the FSV to inform the allocation of coaching supports to all pre-K programs. As part of the FSV initiative, I worked closely with the Division’s 125 Early Childhood Social Workers, the DECE’s largest team of school-based support staff and one of two teams responsible for conducting Foundational Support Visits at Pre-K for All programs. In my Capstone, I describe the evolution of the Foundational Support Visit, from design to implementation, and analyze how the process impacted Social Workers’ perception of their evolving role during Pre-K for All’s expansion. I explore the question of how a growing organization can support people on the ground to adapt to be effective during a period of rapid change and argue that the FSV process generated important losses for the DECE’s Social Workers. I describe my efforts, as a developing leader, to restore Social Workers’ confidence in their value through the creation of a feedback mechanism and a monthly working group meeting. In my analysis of my own leadership, I consider my initial struggle to diagnose the losses at stake for the DECE’s Social Workers, and I explore how leaders can approach organizational change in a way that acknowledges loss and helps people adapt to new environments. I conclude with a series of implications for my own leadership, for the DECE, and finally, for the education sector.

The positive relationship between parental education and children’s educational outcomes is one of the most well established connections in the developmental literature. However, nearly all of this research treats parent education as static across a child’s development. Estimates from the 2008-2009 Survey of Income and Program Participation suggest that nearly 2 million low-income parents were engaged in some form of continued education that year. Given this, it is critical to understand parents’ experiences in school, as well as the relationship between child development and parent education, as the latter changes over time. In this two-study dissertation, drawing broadly from ecological theories of development, I used quantitative and qualitative methods with multiple datasets to explore the relationship between mothers’ attainment of additional education and their young children’s development. In Study 1, I used data from a national sample of low-income families with young children to test whether there is a relationship between the development of children’s cognitive skills between the ages of 3 and 7 and mothers’ attainment of additional education. Based on individual growth modeling analyses, I found a positive relationship between maternal educational attainment and children’s early writing and mathematics skills. In addition, children appeared to benefit more when their mothers attained additional education after children had transitioned to elementary school. For children’s mathematics skills only, the positive relationship between children’s growth trajectories and mothers’ attainment of additional education was largest in magnitude for children whose mothers had the lowest levels of education at baseline. In Study 2, I employed grounded-theory methods and longitudinal qualitative interviews from a different sample of low-income mothers (with preschool-aged children) to understand mothers’ motivation for pursuing additional education while raising a young child. I found that women’s motivation to pursue, or not to pursue, additional education was related to their caregiving responsibilities, and their personal goals, in contradictory and complementary ways. Specifically, the need to provide and care for their children simultaneously pushed mothers towards, and pulled them away from, additional schooling. However, women were also motivated to pursue schooling by their desire for intellectual growth and personal fulfillment. The extent to which women articulated these personal motivations may be related to their success in pursuing additional education.

The U.S. is calling for expansion of preschool to help close the well-documented income-based achievement gap. Children from low-income families often enter kindergarten academically behind their higher income peers and recent findings indicate gaps in social-emotional aspects of school readiness as well, illustrating how early these gaps emerge and raising questions about cross-domain relationships. Therefore, this two-study dissertation explores the relationship between children’s social competence and their early math development. Study 1 uses longitudinal growth modeling to explore within- and cross-domain relationships between children’s a) interpersonal, social problem-solving skills and b) early math skills during a preschool year. Participants (N=76) were recruited from a MA preschool serving mostly children from low-income and minority families. Results show that children have positive, linear math learning trajectories that vary by age when not accounting for children’s social competence. Children’s development of flexibility in social problem-solving is associated with changes in the rates at which children learn math skills across a preschool year, controlling for baseline child demographics with no evidence of differential learning trajectories by age other than observed differences in math skills at preschool entry. Children’s adaptive social problem-solving strategies show positive non-linear growth trajectories. Importantly, these adaptive problem-solving strategies from the previous time period have the potential (p =.12) to positively predict children’s growth in early math skills during the preschool year. Study 2 draws a subsample (N=3485) from the Head Start Impact Study, (U.S. DHHS, 2010) a large, nationally representative study of Head Start, to investigate the potential mediating role of children’s social competence on early math skills for children randomly assigned to Head Start. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis indicated good model fit for the latent construct with positive social skills and teacher-child relationships as indicators of social competence. Moreover, children’s social competence was positively related to math achievement during the Head Start year. Taken together, results from these studies suggest that children’s social competence may play an important role in promoting children’s early math skills and may warrant more attention in preschool curricula especially as greater attention is paid to increasing implementation of challenging, developmentally-focused math curricula.

Abstract not available.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine, explore, and describe the phenomenon of teaching with a focus on self-esteem, or teaching with a focus on the affective or psychological domain of development. This phenomenon is called humanistic education which is rooted in humanistic psychology, an American school of psychology that evolved in the middle of this century. Humanistic education is on the rise in educational institutions across the country because of a positive relationship between self-esteem and constructive learning and because of the growing self-esteem needs of our nation's children. This study sought to gain a grounded understanding of the experience and significance assigned to the experience of teaching with a focus on self-esteem by learning from fifteen teachers who actually do teach with such a focus. The qualitative method of in-depth phenomenological interviewing was employed. The data is presented in the form of narrated profiles of selected participants and in the form of key themes that comprise the phenomenon.

The purpose of the study was to examine beginning preschool teachers' conceptions of teaching young children and their perceptions of the origins of these ideas. The participants were six preschool teachers employed during their first two years after graduating with A.S. degrees in early childhood education from five different two-year colleges. This qualitative multi-case study used observations, videotapes, and in-depth interviews to collect data about the experiences of the six teachers. The Ethnograph (Seidel, 1988) software program was employed to manage the data. An adapted model of pedagogical content knowledge, as described in the literature on teacher knowledge (Shulman, 1986; Grossman 1990), was used to organize the data along a learning-to-teach continuum, as described in the teacher socialization literature (Feiman-Nemser, 1983; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). This continuum begins with early experiences, progresses through formal teacher education, and continues throughout a teacher's career. The major findings of the study indicate earlier experiences provided the teachers with predispositions toward particular curriculum content and interactional styles. Their conceptualization of what and how to teach to young children was developed and enriched during formal teacher education with coursework contributing primarily to curricular knowledge. Practicum experiences, including opportunities to bring on-campus learnings into settings for young children, were a major source of the development of instructional strategies. A combination of coursework and direct experiences with children of varying ages and in various contexts contributed to the teachers' overall understanding of children. The teachers reported learning from colleagues, trying things out, and "just being with children" as rich sources of practical knowledge (Elbaz, 1981) during their early years of professional experience. Both explicit and implicit connections were made between how knowledge was gained during these induction years and the content and process of their formal teacher education programs, as well as with their prior experiences. This study, in contrast to previous studies of preschool teachers, provides descriptive data of the substance and process of five early childhood teacher education programs from the perspectives of their graduates. Insights were thus gained into the aspects of the teacher preparation experiences the teachers found have made valuable contributions to their present work.

<p> This qualitative multiple case study sought to discover third-grade teacher perspectives of the strategies used when effectively implementing Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI). Five exemplar third-grade teachers were purposefully selected based on recommendations from their principal and instructional coach. The purpose of the study was to learn how the implementation of the essential elements of CGI affected planning of mathematics lessons and how those elements were implemented into mathematics instructional practices. </p><p> The study utilized triangulation of data sources, including semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis. Based on the results from the first research question, planning for CGI lessons was found to be more difficult compared to planning for traditional mathematics lessons. The teachers spent more time developing word problems due to the lack of resources, because CGI is to be customized to meet the needs of the students. For the second research question, five themes emerged as strategies the teacher used for implementing CGI during class: 1) conceptualizing, 2) articulating, 3) using multiple strategies, 4) questioning, and 5) scaffolding. These strategies were employed by all teachers, but were differentiated by each teacher to best meet the needs of the students.</p>

<p> The present mixed-methods quasi-experimental study (embedding a case study and a mixed factorial within-between ANOVA test), conducted in a private English school in Limassol, Cyprus, investigated how the use of the schematic learning aids (researcher-made color-coded flash-cards and grids) influence year-2 children's ability to read, write and represent Hindu-Arabic numerals and how these number representations affect their arithmetic competency. This was achieved by comparing an intervention group (n=16) and a control group (n=17) before and after the 2-week intervention. </p><p> It is concluded that the use of the place-value learning aids facilitates numeration system conceptual understanding , reading, writing and representing numbers (in canonical and non-canonical form) by thinking in terms of "100s", "10s" and "1s" (or in terms of color-coded cards). Students visually relate the face-value of the digits (e.g. "3" and "5") of the number (e.g. "35") with the number of flash-cards to be used for the canonical representation (three orange cards and five blue cards). Children also understand how "53" differs from "35" or "503". It is further concluded that the use of the learning aids facilitates addition and subtraction performance in terms of "hundreds", "tens" and "ones" (rather than just "ones") either mentally or by constructing canonical and non-canonical representations with the use of the flash-cards and grids or by constructing abstract representations on paper. Students realize that ten cards of one color can be exchanged with one card of another color (or vice versa). Students further understand how "35-2" differs from "35-20" and how "51-32" differs from "52-31". </p><p> Quantitative data are in agreement with qualitative data, suggesting that children's arithmetic competency is enhanced when taught how to represent numbers, additions and subtractions with the use of the learning aids. The control group mean score increase from before to after intervention was 1,24 marks, compared to an increase of 11,06 marks for the intervention class. The medium to large Cohen's d effect sizes of 0,51 (comparing the intervention group score increase to the control group score increase) or 0,57 (comparing the intervention group score from before to after) indicate strong practical significance.</p>

<p> Multiple-baseline across participants design was used to examine the effects of professional development (PD) and coaching on preschool teachers&rsquo; implementation of embedded-explicit literacy instruction to increase children&rsquo;s opportunities to engage in meaningful, intentional, and contextualized literacy behaviors, as measured by Complete Learning Trials (CLTs). Three teachers were videotaped weekly during free-play and observations were coded for CLT accuracy. After professional development, coaching was provided weekly via email. An immediate effect of PD was observed, with considerable variability once remote feedback was provided. Students&rsquo; early literacy skills were measured prior to and at the end of the study to provide a snapshot of children&rsquo;s literacy-related skills. Compared to pre-intervention scores, children&rsquo;s picture naming, rhyming, sound identification and comprehension skills had significantly increased, however, due to the research design these changes cannot be attributed to teachers&rsquo; implementation or non-implementation of explicit-embedded activities alone.</p>

In this pilot study, generalizability theory was used as an exploratory analysis of the various sources of error in the scoring of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales. The different score conversions, raters, and growth of participants were the facets used in a fully crossed, random effects design. The results indicated that the score conversions effectively controlled for the variability in typically developing children in the same age range. The results showed that the raters accounted for small amounts of the estimated variance. In addition, the results indicated that the CSBS was sensitive to the different rates of development in the participants in the study. The results suggested that the CSBS successfully controls for the variability in the development of communicative behaviors without sacrificing sensitivity to different rates of growth and uses cluster scores to effectively differentiate strengths and weaknesses in individual children. The findings and their implications for futures studies are discussed.