When given the opportunity to play with mathematical materials and ideas, children demonstrate their mathematical understanding in innovative ways. The open-ended nature of the "Pattern Blocks" activity provides agency for children to decide how to approach the tasks, ways to differentiate beyond more common pattern-block puzzle choices,…

In this article, we offer theory-grounded narratives of a 4-year participatory design process of a Learning Analytics tool with K-12 educators. We describe how we "design-in-partnership" by leveraging educators' routines, values and cultural representations into the designs of digital dashboards. We make our long-term reasoning visible…

This study investigated how children's social and emotional learning (SEL) might reflect their teachers' social and emotional teaching (SET) by means of social learning. To this end, the research team conducted 20 videotaped observation sessions of four teachers' SET and 71 children's SEL during whole-group instruction in four kindergarten…

Within the dynamic context of inclusive education for children with special needs in Israel, parents play a crucial role in addressing these challenges. The present study focuses on the experiences of parents with children who have special needs in inclusive educational frameworks in Israel. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach,…

In this article, I examine how a sample of principals in Texas and West Virginia made sense of the learning experiences of kindergarteners and how such sensemaking appeared to affect them as instructional leaders. Examining these issues creates the opportunity to consider the types of support school leaders might need to address the changing…

The purpose of this study is to investigate how young children define trust and to find out if there is a relationship between the people whom they trust and the people with whom they share their favorite food and toy. The participants consist of 273 kindergarteners enrolled in five public kindergartens. Research assistants asked the participants…

Teacher self-efficacy is a critical component of school life quality, leading scholars to explore the mechanisms behind it. Most studies have focused on this factor's mediation and moderation functions, with some indicating a strong link between teachers' academic optimism and self-efficacy. However, the roles of teachers' professional development…

Boys' classroom experiences over the past 20 years have shifted to increasingly restrictive and negative messages on a daily basis. Due to increased accountability, curriculum requirements, testing, and intensification of daily classroom experiences, boys are losing interest in their educational experiences in early elementary school. The question…

Computer programming provides a framework for interdisciplinary learning in sciences, arts and languages. However, increasing integration of programming in K--12 shows that the block-based and text-based dichotomy of programming environments does not reflect the spectrum of their affordance. Hence, educators are confronted with a fundamental…

In physical education, policy takes center stage in guiding and holding K-12 and physical education teacher education (PETE) faculty accountable. However, most research, highlighting the policy illiteracy and lack of engagement among physical education and PETE faculty, originates from outside the United States (e.g. Lambert & Penney, 2020).…

When young children evaluate their confidence, their monitoring is often overoptimistic, that is, inaccurate. The present study investigated a potential underlying mechanism for kindergarteners' and second graders' overconfidence within a paired associates learning paradigm. We implemented a pre-monitoring phase motivating children to…

The modeling of a modern preschool curriculum is contextually conditioned and represents a complex process. Each kindergarten has its "own identity," its "DNA," just as children, preschool teachers and other participants in the educational process have their "own individual equations." Contextual learning is at the…

From 2016, all Western Australian schools were mandated to implement the National Quality Standard (NQS) in Kindergarten through to Year 2. Over the first year of implementation, this mandate had varying degrees of success in adoption. This study examined four schools which were identified as having implemented the NQS. A qualitative methodology…

The growing fiscal cost of K-12 teacher pension plans and pension-induced labor market distortions have led to calls for teacher pension reforms. Dynamic structural econometric models are a useful way to analyze the fiscal and staffing consequences of current and alternative retirement plans. This article lays out the benefits of the structural…

This qualitative study examined kindergarten children's responses to their favorite books and their perspectives on reading at home and school. Data included observations, interviews with teachers, parents, and children, and "My Favorite Book" response sheets completed by children. Children's favorite books reflected various genres,…