The problem addressed in this study is even though many early childhood educators participate in required professional development, they still lack the ability to transfer their professional development experiences into classroom practices. No program can impact what is learned from professional development if it is not appropriately implemented.…

With mounting calls for the justice system to declare literacy a civil right, and with a growing emphasis on accelerating reading achievement at the federal, state, and local levels, educational leaders are under increased pressure to implement practices that will not only increase reading achievement but will prove sustainable for years to come.…

For more than three decades, the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood education settings has been developing worldwide in educational research, policy, and real-world practice. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a Special Needs Inclusive Practices Credential Program with early educators working in the…

The United States is an inequitable society growing more inequitable in recent decades, and schooling is both part mechanism of oppression and part pathway toward social justice. Improving the extent to which schooling actually contributes to equity, however, depends on efforts to cultivate educator practices that advance social justice. Defining…

Purposeful and considered risk-taking can be an important aspect of early childhood education professional practice. Educator risk-taking can contribute towards the quality of education programs. Recent research shows that educators in high quality early childhood education services take a range of risks in their professional practice; yet we do…

Findings from research syntheses of adult learning and in-service training studies identified the importance of professional development as a factor influencing practitioner use of recommended and evidence-based intervention practices. These relationships were used to test the hypothesis that practice-specific evidence-based capacity-building…

Background: Home-based child care is a widely-used form of child care. However, given its prevalence, there is little research examining the providers' instructional practices and how these may vary by provider characteristics. Objective: The goal of this study is to describe variation in instructional practices among home-based child care…

The primary purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a critical realist approach can add to our understanding of professional recognition of educators in a pre-school setting. Recognition is a function of personal achievement and social arrangement, and is understood through examining those subjective conditions and objective structures as…

The time is now for integrating discussions of inclusive practice with professional development and school leadership, moving away from the normative view of inclusion as situated within special education and teacher preparation programmes. This study describes a triad professional development model that included an integrated professional…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process of integrating cognition, emotion, and behavior in our lives. In school settings, it involves systemic practices to incorporate SEL into leading, teaching, learning such that adults and children build self- and social awareness, learn to manage their own and other's emotions and behavior, make…

This study focused on identifying and describing practices or strategies that emerged in Maine and elsewhere in the US during the pandemic to support teachers' delivery of instruction through remote, online or hybrid modalities. Other types of support, such as mental health supports for educators were also investigated.

This descriptive study investigated the challenges related to implementing gifted education services in preschool centers. Participants completed a researcher-created survey to examine the perceived challenges of providing preschool gifted education services. Ninety-five percent of the centers had no formal policies or practices, and eighty-six…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to discover and interpret the experiences of pre-k teachers in an urban school district located in a Northeastern region of the United States. Using a basic qualitative research design, fifteen participants were recruited by a purposeful sampling method to be interviewed after the implementation…

Professional development (PD) is a critical pathway for promoting the use of evidence-based intervention practices in early childhood (EC) settings. Coaching has been proposed as a type of PD that is especially promising for job-embedded learning. A lack of consensus exists regarding evidence-based EC coaching strategies and what types of support…

The limited implementation of evidence-based classroom practices and ways to provide effective professional development to address this challenge remain enduring concerns in education. Despite these concerns, there exists a well-established research literature on evidence-based practices for effective classroom management and instructional…