The keynote speaker will invite participants to reflect on the conference theme: Engaging ALL Learners through Quality Early Childhood Teacher Education. Poster and Round Table Presentations will engage participants in discussion of scholarly work focused around the NAECTE conference theme.

Designed for those who work in the field of early childhood teacher education, this session serves as the spring conference for NAECTE. Explore the theme of leadership and global perspectives for early childhood teacher educators through a keynote presentation, paper and poster presentations, and dialogue among participants.

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The question of Marx's Early Works over the past ten years has been invested with a renewed significance by a debate over the theoretical --and ultimately political -conclusions to be drawn from them. At the center of this debate is the problem of determining the point at which Marx formed his oistinctive position vis-a-vis the major philosophies which he had to traverse, namely those of Feuerbach and Hegel. A great number of works dedicated to the interpretation of Marx's theoretical formation, by recourse to a residual concept of 'transition', do not, it is true, raise this question, nor pose it as a problem. Over the past ten years, however, the problem has taken on a new urgency in the light of serious attempts to accomodate Marx to various avant garde philosophies such as Phenomenology and various forms of 'critical' sociology. Supported by a re-reading of Marx's Early Works, these attempts to 'resuscitate' Marx and Marxism via a return to its philosophical roots, have sharply raised the very question of Marx's 'philosophy'. The way that this question has been raised has posed in clear terms the problem of establishing the 'specific difference' between Marx's thought and that of his predecessors and contemporaries in theory, a problem that takes the form of locating the point at which a distinctive Marxist position emerged. The answer to the question that underlies this problem has taken various forms, each associated with a distinctive type of interpretation (historicism, humanism, structuralism). The 'break' between Marx and his predecessors in theory has been located variously in 1843, at the level of the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right; in 1844, at the level of either the Jahrbucher articles or the Paris Manuscripts; and in 1845, at the level of The German Ideolog. Addressing myself to the problem which underlies these diverse and mutually conflicting interpretations, and to settle the questions of principle associated with it, I argue for the thesis that Marx's Early Works are all governed by a philosophy shaped by Feuerbach's revision of Hegel, and thus not distinctly his own, but that he forms the basis of his own theoretical position in 1845, ,at the level of The German Ideology. To argue for this thesis it is incumbent on me to demonstrate, first of all, that Marx's Early Works are all unified by the same philosophy, governed by its theoretical problematic and schemata. To set up a centre of reference for this philosophic problematic I reconstruct the opposed solutions of Kant and Hegel to the 'problem of knowledge', and firmly establish Marx's essential dependence on Feuerbach, whose philosophy is inversely-related to and bound by the principles of Hegel's dialectic. In order to trace out this dependence I reconstruct the path of Marx's intellectual development, re-assessing the theoretical and political meaning of his texts. In the process it becomes the central burden of my study to show that there is no fundamental Break' in Marx's thought either in 1843, and that, in effect, the texts in question are not theoretically distinct vis-a-vis the 'philosophy of praxis' shared by the Left-Hegelian Movement in general. I also subject the renowned Jahrbiicher essays to a re-reading which radically revises the meaning assigned to them. The Paris Manuscripts are similarly read in the light of a previously unsettled ....; problem of Feuerbach's relation to Hegel, and of their en-counter within Marx's thought. A short, not too well known text is invested with a special significance in terms of my vcentral thesis viz Marx's dependence on Feuerbach's humanist problematic. Several points of original interpretation are thus introduced. Finally, I show how in The German Ideology . Marx breaks with the 'philosophy' that had to date governed lthe mode of his theoretical reflection, the structure of his critique. Although in The German Ideology Marx does no more than indicate the minimal conditions of his distinctive approach, we trace out the epistemological and methodological dimensions of his 'break' with Feuerbach and Hegel. ,From a phenomenological reduction of phenomena to their inner essence based on the principles of Hegel's dialectic, Marx shifts towards a class analysis based on the principles of Historical Materialism. The-·dissertation on our thesis not only settles the central problem of interpretation with which it is concerned, but it gives a coherent reading of Marx's Early Works within the framework of their underlying premises,-and it establishes as a point of principle that the search for Marx's philosophy should be directed at his later and not his early works. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of this research was to identify the impact of process changes that have been made to the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential, which is a beginning early childhood teacher credential that focuses on competency based standards widely seen as necessary for early childhood teachers to possess. The process in which early childhood teachers receive their credential changed in 2013 with the implementation of CDA credential 2.0. Changes included taking a computerized exam and the implementation of a professional development specialist conducting an on-site classroom observation. In order to determine the impact that CDA 2.0 had on teacher credentialing success rates, a mixed-method sequential design was employed. First, existing data sets of success rates from a national scholarship program were reviewed. Following, interviews with CDA credential seekers were conducted. Findings revealed that while candidate success rates increased for those receiving CDA credentials under the 2.0 system, the actual number of candidates receiving scholarships to pursue the CDA credential through the national scholarship program decreased. Qualitative analysis of the semi-structured interviews indicated that three areas that impacted CDA 2.0 candidate success rates were the professional education programs and instructors, the CDA Exam, and Professional Development Specialists. This is the first research study to examine the CDA credential process. The findings demonstrate that the 2.0 system provides candidates with necessary supports to be successful. A significant question arising out of the data is how a determination is made to issue a credential. Before QRIS and public policy initiatives employ more efforts to professionalize the field of early childhood – primarily through the CDA credential – the process by which one obtains a credential should be more thoroughly examined.

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State and federal guidelines for implementing programs for the gifted have required that placement into such programs being as early as kindergarten. In order to help determine whether a child was functioning significantly above age level on certain tasks through multiple sources, a checklist for parents was developed and validated.;The parent checklist was analyzed for reliability and validity. Analysis of pre-school scores on the instrument was also conducted to determine whether or not placement into programs for the gifted could be predicted from the results. Parental responses were also investigated in an effort to determine the reliability of parents as a source of information about their children. Correlational studies were conducted on group test data which consisted of the Metropolitan Readiness Test, the second grade administration of the SRA Achievement Series, and the third grade administration of the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test. Additionally, correlational studies were conducted on a small sample of the students as first graders utilizing the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Figural Form A) and the Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students.;Statistical analysis included the use of multiple regression analyses and the determination of correlation coefficients (Cronbach's Alpha and Pearson Product Moment).

This study has been designed to describe how aspects of the behavior setting influence literacy events in kindergartens. A systematic investigation of literacy events in and across all areas of four kindergarten classrooms was undertaken to describe the conditions under which children had opportunities to become engaged in reading and writing activities through transactions with the environment. The framework for the study was the human ecological approach to early childhood education (Day, 1983). Quantitative data were collected using two instruments. A modification of The Behavior Checklist of Child-Environment Interaction (Day et al., 1982) was used in four neighboring inner-city kindergartens in the Western Massachusetts to simultaneously record literacy events, activity/areas, teachers' roles, teacher- or child-choice of activities, group size, materials use, and other behaviors. Precautions were taken to provide a sample which was internally consistent in terms of sites, subjects, and teachers. Children's naturally occurring behavior was recorded by two observers over a four-week period using a time-sampling-by-child methodology. High interobserver reliability was achieved on five days of simultaneous observations. A second instrument, The Survey of Displayed Literacy Stimuli (Loughlin and Cole, 1986), was used to measure the amount of literacy-related materials in each classroom. Qualitative data were collected in fieldnotes when literacy events were observed. Relationships were described between children's reading and writing activities and these three factors: design of physical space, amount and presentation of materials, and teacher-child interactions. Variation was found in the types and frequencies of literacy events in and across classrooms that were related to these environmental factors. The interaction of these factors explained the conditions in kindergartens under which children had opportunities to engage in reading and writing activities through transactions with the environment.

The purpose of this study was to learn how children between the ages of five and nine construct their understanding of conflict and how to resolve it, how their cognitive development both reflects and shapes this understanding, and how their ideas about conflict develop over time. Open-ended interviews were conducted with two children from each of four grades (K-3) in a Boston Public School in order to elicit the children's ideas about conflict, solutions to conflict, and negotiation. Two drawings of conflicts were used, one in each of two separate interviews, one depicting a conflict over an object, the other an interpersonal conflict. Five cognitive dimensions were used to analyze the interview data. Children's understanding of conflict, solutions to conflict, and negotiation, and the gradual changes in children's thinking over time were analyzed. The five dimensions were: concrete to abstract; from one idea to coordination of multiple ideas; static to dynamic thinking; transductive to logical causal reasoning; and, from one to more than one point of view. The results of this analysis show that with age there was a general progression of the eight children's understanding of conflict, solutions to conflict, and negotiation as they advanced along the five cognitive dimensions. Children's understanding of conflict progressed from more concrete to abstract, and from more discrete and momentary to increasingly embedded in a context of time and other events, ideas and feelings. Children's understanding of solutions to conflict also progressed from concrete to more abstract. In addition, there was an increasing capacity to think of greater numbers of possible solutions to conflict, especially positive solutions, as children moved along the cognitive dimensions. Children's understanding of negotiation progressed from concrete to more abstract, including increasingly complex psychological processes. Children showed a progression in their ability to understand negotiation as a complex process related to both conflicts and solutions. Gender and individual differences among children emerged from the data in addition to developmental differences.