<p>The current study sought to examine certified child life specialists&rsquo; perspectives on supporting siblings of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The intent of the study was to identify the types of support available, barriers to offering support, the individuals who offers support and the effectiveness of interventions by certified child life specialists with siblings of infants in the NICU. Sixty-eight certified child life specialists were surveyed regarding their work supporting siblings of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit. Results support previous literature suggesting that there are many barriers to offering support to siblings in the hospital, including: staff availability, space constraints, funding, and visitation policies. In addition, results demonstrated that provided supports still vary widely from hospital to hospital and certified child life specialists are the individuals who are most likely to offer support when it is available. Furthermore, the certified child life specialists surveyed view their interventions with siblings of infants in the NICU as effective or very effective. In conclusion, these findings support the need to increase the presence of certified child life specialists in the NICU in order to adequately meet the psychosocial needs of siblings. </p><p> <i>Keywords</i>: certified child life specialists, child life interventions, siblings, neonatal intensive care unit, NICU </p>

<p> Infancy and toddlerhood is an important time for the development of emotion regulation, with interactions between parents and children critical to these processes. Negative parenting behaviors can have a deleterious impact on this development; however, for infants and toddlers in child care, the classroom environment, including teacher-child interactions, provides an important setting for emotional development and may serve as a protective factor when parenting risk at home is high. The aim of the three papers presented in this dissertation was to explore the potential for child care to act as a protective factor for infants and toddlers experiencing different dimensions of parenting risk that threaten emotion regulation development: minimal sensitivity and support, harsh and intrusive behaviors, and physical abuse and neglect. Results confirmed the negative impact of unsupportive, harsh, and intrusive parenting behaviors on emotion regulation, but child care was either insignificant in mitigating these effects or operated as a buffer for certain children only. Additionally, a review of the extant literature suggested that understanding the optimal caregiving experiences in child care that meet the unique regulatory needs of maltreated infants and toddlers is limited. Collectively, implications of these findings include the need to ensure measurement validity when assessing children&rsquo;s experiences within child care, the importance of considering the interactive nature of child, parent, and child care factors, and the pressing need for more research regarding child care teachers&rsquo; roles in facilitating emotional experiences in the classroom that meet the unique regulatory needs infants and toddlers facing risk at home.</p>

My purpose for this qualitative study was to investigate teachers' participation in a collaborative staff development program designed to facilitate reflections about literacy related beliefs and practices. It involved three teachers and a researcher in a four-month Reflective Staff Development Program (RSDP). The RSDP inquiry illustrates the shifts that occur in teachers' reflective language and practice. Three case studies were developed, requiring sorting through the teacher participants' literacy-related beliefs and practices in three research phases: (1) Asking the question: What are the teacher-participants' beliefs and practices in relation to their literacy instruction before, during, and after the RSDP? (2) Conducting the fieldwork using a constant comparative analysis within the RSDP. (3) Analyzing and interpreting the data to find answers to the question. During the RSDP, the teacher-participants revealed literacy-related beliefs and practices within four activities: autobiographies, interviews, group reflective sessions, and literacy lessons. These activities are the data sources, which were analyzed and resulted in the creation of a matrix for each teacher. The matrices showed that, throughout the RSDP, the teachers expressed language or behaviors with new perspectives, termed as "moments of realization." The horizontal matrix dimension is a picture of two extreme perspectives in the teacher-participants' beliefs and practices, the skills, and constructivist models. The perpendicular dimension depicts the teachers' discourse as questioning or not questioning. The plots illustrate their shifts in beliefs and practices. Further analysis of the teachers' interactive discourse demonstrated that their group discussions exhibited common characteristics, which contributed to their shifts: (1) The teacher-participants demonstrated moments of realization that included four types of verbal interactions: discussion of a literacy-related belief and/or practice, discomfort about the belief and/or practice, the moment of realization, and discussions justifying the changed perspective. (2) The teacher-participants' RSDP process demonstrated three periods: "introductory," "breakthrough," and "empowerment." (3) The teacher-participants' shifts moved in a non-linear direction after observing the videotaped literacy lessons. The findings suggest that this inquiry contributed to the teacher-participants' consideration of alternative perspectives and implementation of revised reading instructional practices. These results support the idea that school leaders should implement in-services, such as the RSDP, to improve communication to enhance instructional practice.

This study investigated early childhood teachers' knowledge of the following four components of the professional knowledge base: goals of geometry, child development and geometry, geometry curriculum and curriculum content, and geometric concepts. Eight experienced early childhood teachers in grades kindergarten through two participated in interviews on each of the four knowledge components. Their responses to interview questions and geometric concept activities were electronically recorded and transcribed for analysis of patterns, trends, or themes which emerged for the group. The teachers knew how geometry would benefit students and could elucidate their own goals when teaching geometry. They were more familiar with their district's curriculum and performance objectives for geometry than they were with state or national goals. They had ideas about what constitutes developmentally appropriate practice, both generally and in geometry education. Child development as it relates to geometry was an elusive concept. Their expertise in this area was primarily based on their experiences as teachers and their faith in the district's curriculum. They were somewhat familiar with pedagogical aspects of their grade level curricula, including expectations, materials, and resources, with shape names being their primary focus. They were less familiar with subject matter issues such as the scope and content of the geometry curricula in the grades preceding and following theirs, important geometric concepts for primary students, and the role of spatial visualization in children's development of geometry. When solving geometric problems, they tended to be anxious and uncertain but overall were persistent problem solvers who willingly communicated their thinking. Their problem solving was marked by doubt, self-talk, hand movements, and ambiguity. In general there was evidence of difficulty with class inclusion, deductive reasoning, and conceptual verbalization.

A context-based functional assessment was conducted to identify variables that influenced the problem behaviors of four preschool age children in a childcare center, and the effects of intervention programs which were developed based on the assessment results were evaluated. Generality to non-targeted situations and children was also investigated. In addition, treatment acceptability was assessed to determine the acceptability of the intervention procedures. Structured interviews and observations were employed to develop hypotheses about relevant variables. The hypotheses were tested using a combination of reversal and multielement designs. Antecedent variables (preference, task length, availability of centers, and social skills) and a consequent variable (attention) were manipulated to determine their effects on problem and appropriate behaviors during preacademic and table activities. Preference was a common variable that influenced the problem behaviors of all of the participating children. However, for one child, a complex interaction among variables (preference, social skills, and attention) was demonstrated. A combination of multiple-baseline and multielement designs was used during the intervention phase to evaluate the intervention effects across children and teachers and to compare the two stages of intervention. The assessment-based interventions reduced the problem behaviors of the children and the negative interactions of teachers, and increased positive teacher interaction. In addition, generality was demonstrated to non-targeted activities and children. The results also demonstrated that the intervention procedures could successfully be applied by multiple teachers with multiple children. Finally, the acceptability of the intervention procedures was high across teachers and children.

This qualitative historical research study documents the life of early childhood educator Marie Morrison Hughes (1900-1981) and the evolution and fruition of her model of early childhood education. In-depth interviews with six women educators who worked directly with Dr. Hughes in the implementation of the Tucson Early Education Model (TEEM) provide data for the study. TEEM became a Follow Through Program Sponsor at twenty-two sites all across the United States and served communities from 1968 to 1995. Profiles of each woman educator written in the first-person constitute a large part of the work. A profile of Dr. Hughes gained from transcribed speeches and interviews is included with the Voices of the Women. The model of education founded by Dr. Hughes was based on the definition of teaching as interaction and collaboration. Opening the world to children was the educational goal of Dr. Hughes. Curriculum was built from the lives and experiences of the children in the classroom with an emphasis on 'learning to learn.' Dr. Hughes believed the most important element in the educative process was the relationship between the teacher and the child. An essential part of the model was termed professional response, the rapport between children and the teacher. Children learned from the teacher's flexibility to allow personal response to the ongoing experience and the response was the source of the teacher's constructive and significant influence on children. Dr. Hughes referred to her model as an education program for children in a democratic society. The model's commitment to the whole person and the uniqueness of each person along with the established caring rapport with each individual child exemplifies the ethics of caring and justice in education.

First, a description of the Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) field is developed through: an historical overview, a discussion of the unique features of the ECSE field, and a review of ECSE leadership preparation. Secondly, this study expands the currently limited knowledge base about ECSE leadership preparation. Based on data collected across the United States for the 1995-1996 and 1996-1997 school years, this dissertation identified IHEs that offered doctoral preparation in ECSE, described the characteristics and components of ECSE doctoral preparation, described ECSE faculty and doctoral students, and identified trends. Qualitative data revealed that IHEs characterized their doctoral programs as committed to promoting quality services to infants and young children with disabilities and their families and to producing interdisciplinary leaders. Data was presented to describe program characteristics, required components, curriculum opportunities, and implementation of interdisciplinary focus. Evidence was presented that confirmed strong structural supports for an interdisciplinary focus. Varied interdisciplinary curriculum opportunities included ECSE course work, internships, and research options. IHEs were found to have relatively stable faculties and student enrollments. ECSE leadership preparation appeared to be both established and dynamic in its responsiveness to the rapid changes in the field. A major finding of this study was that there were few descriptions of the standards or competencies used for ECSE leadership preparation. The major recommendations included: establishing a national comprehensive database system, a joint effort to conceptualize ECSE leadership and develop strategies to promote ECSE leadership preparation, and, specific research topics to address the information needs of ECSE leadership preparation. Finally, initial guidelines for developing ECSE leadership preparation programs were presented.

This experimental study investigated three components of the lexical-acquisition process: fast mapping, word learning, and word extension. Thirty preschool-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 age- and gender-matched normal language (NL) controls participated. Two types of low-frequency words were used to name objects: phonologically simple and phonologically complex. Two types of objects were used: semantically familiar and semantically unfamiliar. Comprehension and production were probed across components, with trials to criterion calculated for word learning. During the word-extension task, recognition was also assessed. In addition, norm-referenced receptive and expressive vocabulary tests were administered. On tasks where group differences were found, many children with SLI performed as well as controls. The fast-mapping task revealed no group differences (p On this and the word-learning task, comprehension exceeded production for both groups. On the word-learning task, the SLI group comprehended and produced fewer words than did controls. In contrast to the NL group, the SLI group produced more words for semantically unfamiliar than familiar objects. Overall, the SLI learned more phonologically simple than complex words, but the NL group showed no difference. Although the SLI group required more trials than controls to comprehend words, no group differences were found in trials to production. On the word-extension task, the SLI group scored lower than controls only for production. Vocabulary-test scores did not accurately identify children with SLI or predict number of words learned; but these scores did predict a small amount of variance for fast-mapping and word-extension performance. Fast mapping performance accounted for 25% of word-learning variance; fast-mapping performance and word-learning performance combined accounted for 54% of word-extension variance. Different predictor variables were found for each language group. Findings suggest that some, but not all, children with SLI demonstrate poor word-learning and word-extension performance. Overall, the SLI group had greater difficulty than controls on production measures and required more trials to achieve learning criterion for comprehension of words than the NL group. The semantic familiarity of the target objects affected productive word learning by the NL group but did not appear to have a similar effect on the SLI group.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the early childhood program at the Tucson Jewish Community Center in order to discover the program's role in reproducing or restructuring the social order existing in the wider society. The study examined events in which issues of race, gender, class, and physical or mental disabilities arose in centers, during teacher guided group activities, at lunch, on the playground, and during other special activities among the groups of three and four year old children in the Center's preschool. The research then reviewed how young children develop social cognition and how they construct an understanding of their identity while developing expectations about individual and group behavior. It went on to investigate the manner in which race, gender, class, and disabilities issues were expressed and lived out by the children and staff. The data indicated that all four topics had meaning for the children, but issues involving race and gender arose more frequently than issues involving class and disabilities. The main source of information for this study were vignettes recorded in the three and four year old classrooms. The vignettes revealed the extent of the anti-bias perspective guiding the actions of both the staff and children and provided the data to evaluate the effect of the anti-bias curriculum presently in use at the preschool. The findings indicated that while an anti-bias perspective guided the resolution of many issues, it was not pervasive among all the children and staff. The findings also illustrated when an anti-bias perspective was guiding the formal curriculum. The major focus of the research questions was to determine the need for further staff training in order to develop a pervasive anti-bias perspective among the staff and children. The data indicated that additional staff training would be beneficial. Additional staff training should address the anti- bias perspective of the participants and the children. It should also explore ways to expand this perspective within the formal curriculum so that the curriculum stresses a democratic multicultural perspective.

The present study was an explorative summative program evaluation of the preschool to kindergarten transition process used by a school district in the Denver-metro area. Surveys were provided to parents, preschool staff, and elementary school staff who were involved in the transition process for 57 young children with special needs moving into kindergarten placements for the 1998-99 school year. Respondents were asked to indicate their satisfaction with, and identify the importance of, each specific transition activity within the transition process. Follow-up measures of reported satisfaction with, and importance of, various transition activities, as well as a measure of each child's adjustment to kindergarten was obtained from the respondents two months following the beginning of the school year. All respondents reported high levels of satisfaction with the overall transition process and rated nearly all of the individual transition activities as important to the overall transition process. However, parents were significantly more satisfied with the transition process than were the preschool or elementary school teams. In general, elementary school teams appeared less satisfied with their ability to understand the student's needs and family concerns, while preschool teams were less satisfied with their ability to make systemic decisions for their students. The data suggest that by incorporating a district-wide preschool to kindergarten transition process, parents and educators were able to provide satisfactory transitions for a group of young children with special needs. Limitations of the present study, as well as future directions for research, are also discussed.