Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to experience performance and participation challenges, with early diagnosis being critical for improved outcomes. Children from ethnic minority backgrounds tend to receive their diagnoses later, even when symptomatology is similar. This mixed methods study explored symptom severity, functional difficulties, and age at diagnosis for ASD and to describe the functional challenges encountered by preschool-aged children with ASD of African American descent. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health along with the Model of Human Occupation were the theories used for this study to conceptualize functional challenges and other potential factors. Research questions addressed symptom severity, degree of functional challenges, and age of diagnosis, and to gather family perspectives regarding functional challenges for preschool-aged children of African American descent. Data consisted of subpopulation responses from the 2009-2010 National Survey for Children with Special Healthcare Needs (N = 224) and locally-conducted interviews with parents (N = 3). No significant relationships were found using general linear model between age at diagnosis and symptom severity or degree of functional challenges. Qualitative themes included the diagnosis process, routines and transitions, communication, family and home environment, and school and community environments. Educators and health care providers need to enhance screening for early signs of ASD and consider racial and cultural implications related to performance and participation challenges. Social change implications include the development of effective and targeted awareness campaigns and improved diagnostic and intervention services for children with ASD from minority backgrounds and their families.

Educators involved in the teaching, learning, and assessment of social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies face challenges on how to integrate these competencies into instruction. Limited research has been conducted about how to integrate such SEL competencies into instructional practices, particularly in the context of a summer enrichment program. The purpose of this single case study was to explore how teachers and counselors at a summer enrichment program for preK-4 students integrated SEL competencies into instructional activities. The conceptual framework was based on core competencies and standards for quality program design that the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) developed. Participants included 2 teachers and 2 camp counselors at a summer enrichment program located in a western state. Data were collected from individual interviews with participants, observations of activities that integrated these SEL competencies into instruction, and documents related to the summer program. Data analysis included coding and categorizing of interviews and observations and content analysis of documents to identify themes and discrepant data. Key findings were that the 5 core competencies were intentionally and systematically integrated into the instructional activities of the summer enrichment program as evidenced by program planning, curricular development, implementation of a variety of instructional strategies, and informal teacher and parent assessments. This study contributes to positive social change because students who have mastered these competencies may demonstrate fewer behavioral issues and form more positive interpersonal relationships, which may lead to improved academic achievement.

There is a lack of understanding of how teachers in Early Care and Education (ECE) work to overcome occupational stress and burnout. Many investigators have documented the stress and burnout that often result in high levels of attrition in ECE teachers. The purpose of this study was to determine to what degree a teacher's protective factors help in mitigating the experiences of stress and burnout often associated with working as a teacher in the field of ECE. Guided by Werner's theory of resilience, which highlights the importance of protective factors as a means of overcoming risk factors, the research questions examined strategies that help promote resilience and mitigate stress and burnout among preschool teachers. The methodology was a qualitative, case study research design. Data were collected via in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 16 ECE teachers and analyzed using thematic analysis, which identified 3 categories of protective factors: family supports, workplace supports, and positive individual characteristics. Additionally, the study revealed that teachers did utilize particular protective factor strategies to help mitigate risk, stress, and burnout, such as family and friends serving as a positive support system, faith, prayer, and belief in a higher being. A recommendation is that teachers participate in an eLearning course developed to introduce protective factors teachers can use to increase levels of resilience. Positive social change may result from this study because it advocates for the support, promotion, and attention to the mental health and well-being of teachers in ECE. This eLearning course will promote teacher well-being, which can have a direct positive impact on the care of young children and the effective facilitation of curriculum and instructions within school systems.

Victims of childhood bullying often use passive coping strategies and experience depression, substance abuse use, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine adults' lived experiences of coping methods they used as victims of bullies during adolescence. Lazarus and Folkman's transactional theory of stress and coping provided the framework for the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 young adults who were bullied as adolescents. Coding analysis indicated 7 emerging themes for coping: confrontation, self-controlling, seeking social support, accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, problem-solving, and positive reappraisal. Participants reported that some coping methods were perceived as effective. The results suggested that self-support and the support of friends and family were key factors in overcoming childhood victimization. Findings may be used by parents, teachers, counselors, and community members to assist bullied or at-risk adolescents in developing coping methods to support their ongoing personal development.

An initiative to coordinate early learning programs across a major city in the Midwestern United States was undertaken in 2013. The opinions of teachers regarding effects on instruction and children were not included in the development and implementation of the program. This omission is important because multiple scholars have pointed to the benefits and need of including stakeholders' perspectives in program development. The purpose of this study was to explore preschool teachers' experiences and perspectives of this initiative using a qualitative bounded instrumental case study design. Fullan's theory of educational change served as the framework of this study. Nine preschool teachers, who worked full-time in the Head Start-RTL initiative, volunteered to participate in individual semistructured interviews. Data were analyzed using open coding and thematic analysis. The findings revealed 3 themes: programs and services, initiative administration and processes, and initiative resources. Within each theme, participants identified benefits, challenges, and ideas for improvement, including increased administrative and financial support, streamlined processes, and freedom to individualize curriculum to meet the needs of a diverse student body. It is recommended that teachers' perspectives and their experiences with this initiative be used in planning and implementing changes needed to improve the current program. These endeavors by school district personnel may contribute to positive social change by reducing duplicated administration demands on preschool teachers, who, in turn, could devote more time to instruction and interaction with young children, resulting in improved quality of preschool services and positive outcomes for preschool children and their families.

Researchers have determined that field experience is crucial in education preparation programs, yet little information is available about field experience within online early childhood education (ECE) programs. Educators who work in online ECE programs need to understand how to facilitate field experience effectively. The purpose of this qualitative interview study was to understand the processes, procedures, and experiences of instructors who facilitate preservice teachers' field experience in online ECE programs. A constructivist framework was used to examine facilitation practices. Nine instructors from online ECE programs in the United States participated in 2 semistructured interviews that lasted approximately 1 hour each. A combination of a priori and open coding was used to support inductive analysis. Themes included communication, mentoring, collaboration, parity between online and live facilitation of field experiences, roadblocks, innovations, assessment, and reflection. Participants reported that a constructivist approach was crucial for online facilitation. Four key findings included an intentionality of design for parity between online and live facilitation, active engagement in responding to facilitation challenges, embedded constructivism in curriculum design, and a necessity for online options despite preference for live field supervision. Social change implications for ECE instructors include sharing of best practices to improve facilitation of field experience in online ECE programs and acknowledgement of need for research focused on quality of field experience. Enhancing the quality of field experiences could better prepare teachers, which would benefit young children in ECE classrooms.

Physical education classrooms often have low levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity levels. This is a problem since many young elementary students are not building a foundation of fundamental movement skills necessary to be lifelong participants in physical activities. This study investigated how elementary physical education teachers used auditory modalities in their classrooms. The research question explored the emergence of rhythmic competency in fundamental movement skills to increase overall moderate to vigorous activity levels. This concurrent, mixed-methods, multiple case study used a constructivist paradigm using the schema and dynamic system theories as the underlying motor system theoretical framework. Two research sites were selected: a suburban Maryland public school system and a private liberal arts college located in the same county. The participants included 21 elementary physical education teachers and 6 physical education or exercise science majors from nationally recognized programs. Data were collected from a focus group, interviews, classroom observations, and a 10-item response Likert style survey designed for elementary physical education teachers to recognize current trends in the field of auditory modalities and rhythmic competency. The data were analyzed to identify auditory modality instructional methods for the emergence of rhythmic competencies. The results consisted of a list of best practices for use such as musical rhythms, verbal cues, and sound cues by physical education teachers and specialists. This research promotes positive social change by providing information for successfully planning interventions in the discipline of motor skill and rhythmic development that can lead to overall increased more-vigorous physical activity.

This study addressed the issue of struggling student writers in a K-5 rural elementary school. This phenomenological study, based on social constructivist theory, investigated elementary teachers' experiences to determine effective writing strategies. Six teachers who had taught writing in the elementary grades for 5 consecutive years volunteered to participate in the study. All teachers participated in a focus group, and 2 teachers provided additional data via individual interviews. Member-checking was used to ensure trustworthiness of data. The data were analyzed; emerging themes developed categories and, through horizonalization and triangulation, gaps in writing instruction were revealed. Analysis from the teachers' perspectives led to key factors which contribute to successful writing instruction, incorporate more writing instruction school-wide, promote unity of teachers for planning and discussion of writing instruction, and use curriculum plans in writing instruction that leads to enhanced student success. This study sought to provide teachers with strategies for developing efficient writing instruction for students using a 9-week curriculum writing guide. This study will improve teachers' skills and lead to enhanced writing instruction and student learning by making connections between enriched teacher experiences; this study will also provide insights into the design and delivery of more effective writing instruction that creates local-to-global changes in student writing success.

Regardless of age, background, or socioeconomic status, children must learn to read in order to be successful in school and in their future careers. Reading is an essential skill necessary to be successful in all other academic content areas. Despite the importance of this skill, American Indian children consistently score below the national average on tests of reading ability and reading comprehension. During recent years, many schools in the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) system requested funding through the Reading First initiative. Schools used the funding and support provided by the BIE Reading First grant to attempt system-wide change at the school level in order to refocus efforts on increasing reading achievement. The current study investigated the impact of the Reading First Initiative on American Indian students in kindergarten through third grade. Results suggest that the models and methods employed using funding from the Reading First grant had a positive impact on certain aspects of reading achievement in students. Instructional Leadership Changes had a negative impact on student achievement while certain reading programs were found to have a more positive impact on some students than others. Furthermore, regardless of beginning of year reading level, all students showed increased gain in end-of-year outcome scores over time. Same grade cohort groups of students in kindergarten, second, and third grades demonstrated increased average scores over time as schools continued to implement Reading First models. Finally, while the gap between students with intensive needs and their peers was not erased, it also did not widen. Based on research indicating gain for these students is often below that of their peers, this is an important finding. Thus, it appears that the impact of Reading First in relation to teaching younger students the basic building blocks needed to read with fluency in the later grades was positive in the current sample.

The importance of mother tongue-based bilingual medium of instruction in bilingual and multilingual classrooms has been evidenced in ample studies in different parts of the world including Ghana. However, studies on how bilingualism is carried out with respect to classroom displays in bilingual education is very scant and even none, as far as I know, in Ghana. Also, there is emerging research on teachers’ translanguaging practices in other parts of the world including South Africa but research on instructional use of translanguaging is yet to be conducted in Ghana. Therefore, this study examined kindergarten teachers’ bilingual practices with regard to classroom displays as well as their translanguaging practices at morning assembly in some selected schools in the Cape Coast Metropolis in the Central Region of Ghana. The study used the Ghanaian part of a secondary data that was sponsored by the New Civics Grants from the Spencer Foundation in the USA. Joint research team from the USA and Ghana collected these data in six kindergarten classrooms in each of the two countries. Even though the initial purpose of the study was to examine how classroom wall displays connected with young children's roles as apprentice citizens, repurposing it for this study was suitable because all the classrooms photographed are public schools that use the NALAP in their ECE classrooms. However, four schools participated because they used the local languages that I can read and write. Guided by the purpose, two research questions and two different data (photographs of classroom wall displays and video of morning assembly) were used. I used qualitative design through visual research method and Barbara Rogoff’s (1990, 2003) socio-cultural theory as my theoretical lens. The photo data was analyzed semiotically (Chandler, 2007, Semetsky, 2010, 2017) and used discourse analysis with the big “D” for the analysis of the video data (Gee, 2014, Gee & Handford, 2012). The findings indicated that all the schools except one had bilingually labeled displays among their classroom displays (though bilingual labeling was given less attention) with the major language pair for the bilingual labeling being English and Mfantse languages. It also came out that most of the bilingually labeled displays were posted within the eye level of the students. More so, with regard to the sign type, most of the bilingually labeled displays were iconic. Regarding the teachers’ translanguaging practices at morning assembly, the findings indicated that all the participating schools and teachers translanguaged during the conduct of their respective morning assembly. It was revealed that aside from using translanguaging as comprehension enhancer, it was also used as a downtoner as well as alienation tool linguistically. However, the findings showed that English only displays far dominated both the bilingual labeling and translanguaging practices of the teachers. Based on the findings, the study recommended that ECE colleges of education in Ghana should include knowledge and skills for bilingual labeling in their pre-service preparation since the nation is a multilingual state. Also, pedagogical use of translanguaging should be included in teacher education curriculum so that teachers would be intentional about its usage in instruction delivery. In addition, higher education like University of Cape Coast (UCC) and University of Education, Winneba (UEW) which are the main trainers of teacher educators in the country need to develop curriculum for bilingual teaching with attention to effective design and use of bilingual labeling and training manuals for ECE teachers on the effective use of bilingual labeling and pedagogical use of translanguaging in Ghanaian ECE education. More so, there should professional development on the effective use of bilingual classroom display as well as translanguaging for in-service teachers in Ghana so to promote the academic achievement of the bi/multilingual students Ghanaian schools serve.