<p> Early childhood education (ECE) teachers often lack the experience and skills to provide children with supports necessary to foster academic and social skill development. Professional development can improve ECE teachers&rsquo; skills, but ECE trainers often lack understanding of adult learning principles, known as andragogy. Knowles&rsquo; conceptual framework of andragogy was used to explore the knowledge and use of andragogical principles of 8 ECE trainers selected via criterion-based purposive sampling. The research questions focused on ECE trainers&rsquo; knowledge and use of andragogical principles. Three cases, each consisting of 2 or 3 live professional development trainings for early childhood educators, were used in this study. Data sources included (a) observations of ECE trainings, (b) semi-structured interviews with ECE trainers, and (c) content analysis of ECE training materials. Thematic analysis revealed that although participants were not formally trained in andragogy and were unfamiliar with the associated verbiage, most had a strong grasp of andragogy and used andragogical principles to drive the development and presentation of their training materials. The 3 main themes that emerged were (a) lack of training/background in andragogy, (b) training strategies employed, and (c) training design. Findings from this study provide an original contribution to the limited existing research on the professional development of early childhood educators and expand the existing body of research on andragogy. This study contributes to social change by revealing that trainers may benefit from formal andragogical training, which may then improve the education provided by ECE teachers to young children.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher&rsquo;s roles and children&rsquo;s responses during small group read aloud with fiction and nonfiction literature in one preschool classroom. This instrumental case study draws from three theoretical orientations: sociocultural theory, reader response theory, and the emergent literacy perspective. Two preschool teachers and 19 children were video and audio recorded as they participated in small group read aloud events that occurred during choice time in their classroom twice per day. Transcripts of interviews and small group read aloud sessions were analyzed. Analysis included open coding, axial coding, and constant-comparative techniques to reach data saturation.</p><p> Research findings suggest that teachers employed similar and different scaffolding and modeling strategies when reading fictional and nonfiction literature, differentiated instruction for younger and older children, as well as responded aesthetically to fictional stories and efferently to nonfiction texts. Children utilized a range of meaning making strategies and responded both aesthetically and efferently to both types of text. Older children served as peer models for their younger classmates.</p><p> This study has several implications. Future research should investigate read aloud with fiction and nonfiction literature with different populations of teachers and children, repeated readings of nonfiction literature, and large versus small group read aloud in preschool. Implications for preschool teachers include careful selection of fiction and nonfiction literature, employing additional reading strategies for nonfiction, differentiating instruction for younger and older preschoolers, and reading across the efferent-aesthetic continuum with both types of text. Preschool administrators should make reading instruction with fiction and nonfiction texts a priority. Early childhood teacher education faculty can support preservice teachers&rsquo; capacities to read fiction and nonfiction literature with children.</p><p>

<p> This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of elementary school teachers who were engaged in teacher-coach partnerships to discover the influence of instructional coaching on the teaching practices of elementary school teachers. Data were collected through interviews, classroom observations, and a compilation of documents and artifacts. The findings are discussed through the three main themes that emerged from the analysis of qualitative data and interpretation. The three main themes that described how instructional coaching influences the teaching practices of elementary school teachers were: (a) relationship building, (b) self-reflection and goal setting, and (c) coaching perceived as evaluative rather than individualized professional learning. </p><p> Overall, the factor acknowledged by all participants as being the most influential in making instructional changes to their teaching practices was the importance of building relationships with an instructional coach. This study adds to the body of literature regarding instructional coaching and the influence instructional coaching has on teaching practices.</p><p>

<p> In an age of <i>adultism</i> in which children have been perceived as mere drains on society, schooling often has been viewed as a means to an end. Due to the fact that a capitalistic society requires future workers, children have been socialized in the necessary skills and knowledge required to fulfill their future job requirements. Consequently, schooling often has taken place in the form of the banking model in which students are treated as empty vessels to be filled up by the knowledgeable teachers, and then to regurgitate said knowledge on assessments to prove their understanding. I challenge this antiquated vision of education, especially in relation to what it has meant for young children in preschool through first grade. </p><p> Using critical pedagogy and the Reggio Emilia approach as theoretical frameworks, I conducted a critical narrative study of eight early educators who have had experience working with students in early grades in emancipatory ways. I found that educators&rsquo; own experiences and consciousness greatly affected their beliefs about young children as well as the <i>liberatory </i> practices they engaged. I present a proposal for a shift in thinking about the education of young children, a relational model of education that highlights the intersections of critical pedagogy and the Reggio Emilia approach in grounding the work of teaching in armed love, belief in the capabilities of children, and opportunities for students to work with educators as revolutionary partners and transformative change agents who have an active role in their education and their world.</p><p>

This paper described the emergence of communicative repairs in the prelinguistic, early one word, late one word, and multiword stages of language development. The communicative repair is a necessary skill for successful social and communicative functioning. Previous research has investigated the conversational repairs of children in linguistic stages of development. This study identified the point of emergence of repairs and the rates, patterns and means used by very young communicators. / Videotaped samples of communicative repairs, taken from the administration of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (Wetherby & Prizant, 1993) with 120 typically developing children and 12 children with communicative impairments, were coded to identify the components of their repair behaviors. Data were collected on repair form (gestures and vocalizations), content (words and phrases) and use (interactant and prosodic changes) and to determine whether repair attempts were repetitions or modifications. Modified repair components were further described as changes, additions, reductions or omissions. / The two primary findings from this study were that communicative repairs emerge at the same time that a child develops the ability to communicate intentionally and that gestures are integral to preconversational repairs. Descriptions of repair behaviors revealed several developmental patterns. Repetition as an exclusive strategy for repair was rarely utilized. At all stages, children repeated their gestures to repair to a greater extent than they modified their vocalizations to repair more than they repeated them. Repairs containing words and phrases increased as a reflection of the child's acquisition of words and word combinations. Changing communicative partners and prosodic features as a means of repair appeared to be secondary repair strategies for small numbers of children. / Finally, it was determined that with minor additions the research protocol provided an adequate measure of the repair behaviors of children with pervasive developmental disorder and hearing impairment. The addition of coding categories for manual words separately from spoken words and for gestural prosody was needed to accurately describe their repair behaviors. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-05, Section: B, page: 2590. / Major Professor: Amy M. Wetherby. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 31-09, Section: A, page: 4376. / Thesis (Educat.D.)--The Florida State University, 1970.

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It has long been acknowledged that pre-service Early Childhood teachers enter university with a notable lack of confidence, high levels of anxiety and an aversion to science and mathematics. Unless redressed during their time spent at university, such negative attitudes may ultimately influence the quality of science education these teachers offer to young children. This study considers the affective attitudes to science and science education of those people considered to be central to the education of young children.Specifically the study investigates the attitudes and backgrounds in science/ science education, of academics, pre-service and in-service teachers together with their attitudes towards teaching science to young children. The attitudes to science of a group of young children, aged between 4 and 8 years, were also investigated in the study. The potential links between the attitudes held by each group was of great interest to the researcher who considered the ways that academics promoted the teaching of science to young children, the factors influencing the willingness of pre-service and in-service teachers to present science to young children and the effect that teachers have on the responses of young children to science.The findings suggest that in contrast to the attitudes towards science of pre- and in-service teacher groups in the study, the young children and academics displayed attitudes such as interest, curiosity, confidence and enjoyment towards their experiences in science. There was a strong link between the memory of prior experiences in science and the present attitudes to science of the adult participants. The implications of the study are that science education in the early years will be enhanced if ways can be found to provide more positive science related experiences for pre-service and in-service teachers.

A considerable interest in the concept of emergent curriculum has been generated by the early childhood centres of Reggio Emilia in Italy. This study traces the progress of a science project on spiders in an Australian early childhood centre which purports to have an emergent curriculum. In particular, this study sought to answer the question: What form does a science learning project take in an early childhood class that purports to have an emergent curriculum philosophy? What are the processes involved? What are the roles of the main players? Was this curriculum truly an emergent one? How did it fit with the different perspectives being taken to emergent curriculum in the literature? Did science learning take place? How did this learning fit with current views on science learning in the literature? Using a participant observation approach, this study looks at factors that characterise the processes and the players in this project and considers these in the context of current views on emergent curriculum and early childhood science. Results indicate that while the curriculum in this centre was clearly ‘emergent’, it differed in some minor aspects from both the Reggio Emilia model and the American model of emergent curriculum. The approach used was consistent with the social constructivist approach to science teaching and was clearly conductive to the children's science learning. The study shows that emergent curriculum is a very appropriate approach for science learning.

A considerable interest in the concept of emergent curriculum has been generated by the early childhood centres of Reggio Emilia in Italy. This study traces the progress of a science project on spiders in an Australian early childhood centre which purports to have an emergent curriculum. In particular, this study sought to answer the question: What form does a science learning project take in an early childhood class that purports to have an emergent curriculum philosophy? What are the processes involved? What are the roles of the main players? Was this curriculum truly an emergent one? How did it fit with the different perspectives being taken to emergent curriculum in the literature? Did science learning take place? How did this learning fit with current views on science learning in the literature? Using a participant observation approach, this study looks at factors that characterise the processes and the players in this project and considers these in the context of current views on emergent curriculum and early childhood science. Results indicate that while the curriculum in this centre was clearly ‘emergent’, it differed in some minor aspects from both the Reggio Emilia model and the American model of emergent curriculum. The approach used was consistent with the social constructivist approach to science teaching and was clearly conductive to the children's science learning. The study shows that emergent curriculum is a very appropriate approach for science learning.