Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-180). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-180). Also available on the Internet.

This essay examines the role religion plays in kindergarten. Today, the Swedish kindergarten provides child care for a secular and multicultural society where religion is considered a private matter that should not influence government nor the policy documents of kindergarten and elementary school. According to a study by Jenny Berglund, there is a so-called Protestant bias present in the Swedish elementary school. Protestant bias is shaped by a ”marinade” of liberal Protestant Christianity and has an indirect influence on how other religions are described, how religion is defined and how concepts such as religion, tradition or culture are viwed. The study was also based on Ninian Smart’s dimensions of religion, which correlates to Berglund’s theory on Protestant bias. If Berglund’s theory could be applied to the results of this study, some of Smart’s dimensions would probably appear as well, some more prominently than others. The results demonstrated that some dimensions were indeed more prominent than others in the informants’ definitions of religion. This study showed that there is a Protestant bias regarding what feasts are celebrated and how concepts such as religion, tradition and culture are viewed. The study also showed that there might be an additional secular bias present in the results. This was also indicated by some unexpected answers where the explanation could not be attributed to a purely Protestant bias. The secular bias indicates that the view of religion has been modified. The reason for this transformation is analyzed with the help of the examplar view theory.

This four-month-long qualitative case study looks closely at how one kindergarten teacher tried to help young children have more mathematical discussions. To discover and more deeply understand a kindergarten teacher’s ways of thinking about and facilitating mathematical discussion as part of everyday mathematical instruction, data was collected through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and various forms of documentation. Through data analysis in the constant-comparative method, this study found that intensive-discussion mathematics lessons could be accomplished through two pedagogical roles of the teacher. The first was creating a respectful learning environment to motivate children’s participation in mathematical discussion. The second was scaffolding student discussions to construct their own knowledge in the path of their mathematics learning. The analysis detailed here also revealed that successes and failures of discussion-intensive mathematics lessons depend on the teacher’s ability to overcome challenges she encounters while integrating mathematical discussion into her everyday lessons. The presented examples and descriptions in this study offer significant implications for early childhood teachers. This is particularly true for those who care about their young students’ mathematical development, yet either struggle to develop trusting classroom communities or do not know how to facilitate mathematical discussion. This study also provides insights into how teacher educators can help preservice teachers develop a profound understanding of mathematics teaching and learning. This highly influences their moment-by-moment decision-making to appropriately scaffold young children’s talk and learning. It offers implications for administrators about how to support early childhood teachers’ growth, learning, and their practices in teaching mathematics. / text

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

This small scale qualitative case study reports on how ICT (a webpage) could support the involvement of children, their families/whānau and their teachers in assessment for learning. The study investigated whether change occurred in the assessment for learning processes of a kindergarten after establishing a webpage. The study was carried out in a nonprofit state owned kindergarten where children aged 3-5 years attended. The participants were three children and their families and three of the teachers from the kindergarten. The data was collected using narrative observations, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and a field diary. The data was collected over three phases over a six month period. Phase A - before the webpage, Phase B - during the set up of the webpage and Phase C - after the webpage had been in use for three months. The data was analysed during and after each phase and drawn together at the end of the study to present the stories of the participants. Basic content analysis was used to look for reoccurring themes or patterning as well as any contradictions or dissimilar views. The findings suggest that the webpage (ICT) provided some benefits such as a more convenient way of accessing information for some family members and extended family/whānau, extra opportunities for children to revisit their learning and to be active participants in building new collaborative knowledge. The findings identified that the webpage was not as accessible to children as their learning portfolios and that the value of the webpage, as a tool for accessing assessment for learning, was different for each of the families and the teachers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the individual and collective relationships between and among sets of predictor variables obtained from an ecological preschool screening model and criterion variables designed to assess performance in kindergarten. A second purpose of this research was to determine the unique contribution of parental input within the ecological preschool screening model. Fall screening included an individually administered standardized test, the Bracken Basic Concept Scale (BBCS), and a structured parent interview, the Minnesota Preschool Inventory (MPI). The BBCS and the Developmental Scale (DEVEL) of the MPI constituted the set of predictor variables. The criterion set of performance measures included a group administered standardized testing procedure, the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT), and a teacher rating scale, the Teacher Rating Scale-Spring (TRS-S), completed in the spring of the kindergarten year.Canonical correlation analysis was used to examine the interrelationships between the two sets ofvariables and to determine the best possible combinationof variables for predicting kindergarten achievement. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the unique contribution of parental input for predicting kindergarten achievement over and above that information supplied by the standardized test.The results of this study supported the use of an ecological model for predicting kindergarten performance. The information gained from parental input and standardized testing contributed significantly and uniquely to the composite of the predictor set. There was both a statistically significant and a meaningfully significant relationship between the screening procedures completed at the beginning of the school year (the BBCS and the DEVEL) and the assessment procedures done at the end of the school year (the MRT and the TRS-S) when these four variables were considered simultaneously.The use of parental input was supported by the multiple regression analyses. Information gained by structured parent interview had something statistically significant, meaningful, and unique to contribute to the prediction of kindergarten performance over and above that information gained from the individually administered standardized test. / Department of Educational Psychology

Parental involvement during preschool has been linked with stronger pre-literacy skills, acquisition of mathematical skills, well-developed social skills, and positive attitudes toward school (Arnold, Zeljo, Doctoroff, & Ortiff, 2008; Powell, Son, File, & San Juan, 2010). Parents' active involvement in their children's learning is a recommended strategy in engaging families in children's education experiences (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). The purpose of the current study was to measure the impact of parents' active participation in a parent-directed early literacy intervention on parental home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and home-school conferencing among Head Start parents and their preschool-aged children. The study used a quantitative research design, in which preschool children and their parents were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group to assess later levels of parental involvement as a result of the intervention across three time points. This relationship was also examined in the context of parents' prior experience with their children's preschool education. Following implementation of the intervention, average levels of Home-Based Involvement increased among parents in the intervention group. Assigning Head Start parents an active role in developing their preschoolers' pre-literacy skills may be an effective strategy to increase home-based parental involvement activities.

While many research studies have examined the early literacy development and experiences of monolingual children (e.g. Clay 1982, 1991, 2001; Dyson, 1984, 1993, 2003), there are few studies that investigate the early literacy development of young emergent bilingual students (Dworin & Moll, 2006; McCarthey et al., 2004; Moll, Saez, Dworin, 2001). Drawing on sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978), 1995), critical race theory (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Solorzano & Yosso, 2009; Taylor, 2009; Yosso, Villalpando, Delgado Bernal, & Solórzano, 2001) and ethic of care perspectives (Noddings, 1984), this case study examined emergent bilingual students’ writing development during writing workshop in the context of an “English only” official curriculum. Questions guiding the study were: (1) How do emergent bilingual writers participate in writing events? (2) What social, cultural, and linguistic resources do emergent bilingual writers draw upon when engaged in the composing process? and (3) What impact do these resources have on emergent bilingual writers’ understandings of the writing process? Data sources included teacher, student, and parent interviews; field notes and transcripts of focal students' talk and interactions during the whole class mini-lessons and share sessions, individual writing time, and teacher/student writing conferences, and student writing samples. Constant Comparative approach (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1965) was used to analyze the data. Findings from this study indicate that emergent bilingual students draw from rich social, cultural, and linguistic repertoires as they write. Findings also indicate that issues of power and agency play out as student position themselves within the group based on language proficiency. On the basis of this study, teachers can support students as they draw upon their rich resources by supporting talk in multiple languages in the classroom. This study also demonstrates how the politics of language education impact young students as they position themselves in the classroom based on access to linguistic resources. Implications for classroom practice include challenging deficit perspectives that fail to view students’ home language and culture as a resource in learning. Teachers can support students as they draw upon their rich resources by encouraging talk and writing in multiple languages in the classroom. Further questions are reasied about English only policies that deny students opportunities to engage in multilingual practices as they learn to read and write in classroom settings.

The purpose of this study was to implement and assess the efficacy of a novel social skills intervention (First Friends; Graham, 2000, 2006) on improving social cognitive skills, social behaviours, and executive functions in an early childhood population of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Early school years are a critical developmental period to intervene to facilitate social competency and reduce problem behaviours. Children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds are at-risk as many suffer from behavioural problems and begin school without the social maturity and behavioural regulation skills needed to succeed in an academic environment. First Friends is an 8-week preventive intervention designed to promote critical areas of social-emotional development including problem solving, conflict resolution, planning, identification of emotions, empathy, assertiveness, anger management, verbal communication, creativity and cooperation. In addition to examining intervention effects, another goal for this study was to examine the mediational role of improvements in different latent EF components (i.e., working memory, inhibition, set-shifting/mental flexibility) on intervention outcomes. Executive functions (EF) have been linked to social-emotional competence. The First Friends program teaches social skills that are suggested to require EF to learn, as well as implement, during social interactions. The social skills taught and practiced also utilize overlapping brain pathways. Therefore, the First Friends intervention was hypothesized to impact both social-emotional functions and EF, given that 1) EF appears to be required in learning and developing several social and emotional skills, and 2) brain pathways utilized in carrying out these functions overlap. Eighty-seven kindergarten children (41 controls, M = 5.42 years; 46 intervention, M = 5.40 years) from socio-economically disadvantaged areas of the Greater Victoria region in B.C. participated in this study. Children's EF and social-emotional and social-cognitive skills were assessed and their social skills and behaviours were rated by parents, teachers, and observers before and after the intervention. Results provided support for the efficacy of the intervention with children who participated in the intervention demonstrating significantly stronger socio-emotional and social cognitive abilities, more prosocial behaviours, and less negative behaviours compared to a control group. Parent and teacher reports did not reveal significant changes. In addition, significant intervention effects on working memory and set-shifting/mental flexibility were found. Contrary to hypotheses, intervention effects were not revealed for inhibition. In addition, none of the EF latent constructs were found to mediate intervention outcomes. Overall, the First Friends program shows promise with regard to improving both social and executive functioning skills, and continued research and implementation with this program is warranted. These findings highlight the importance of not only assessing for social outcomes, but also examining the development of other cognitive processes that appear to be involved in social development. The results of this study can facilitate understanding of the scope of social intervention outcomes on cognitive processes and guide the selection and implementation of effective prevention programs with early childhood populations in the future. / Graduate