By adapting a self-administered assessment of coparenting, we sought to provide a new tool, the Cocaring Relationship Questionnaire, to measure parent-teacher, or cocaring relationships, and provide additional construct validity for the multidimensional concept of cocaring. Next, recognizing the importance of parental involvement for young…

The present study used hierarchical linear modeling to examine predictors of students' emotional and behavioral difficulties in preschool classrooms. Specifically, the study examined (a) the link between teachers' perceptions of their own emotional intelligence and students' emotional and behavioral difficulties, (b) the link between teachers'…

Research Findings: The present study examined the amount of exposure to math activities that children of low socioeconomic status (SES) encounter in private community-based preschool classrooms and whether greater time in these activities predicted higher math skills. Three cohorts of 4- to 5-year-old children were recruited from 30 private…

This study examined social interaction as a mediator between externalized behaviour difficulties and children's engagement in preschool. Data from 663 children (340 boys), aged 18-71 months, were collected at 81 Swedish preschool units in six municipalities to test a path model that included child, teacher, and child groups. The results indicated…

Research Findings: Mental state verbs (MSV), a component of literate and academic language, may facilitate vocabulary growth, as they relate to metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness as well as decontextualized talk, all of which have been associated with vocabulary growth. In this study, we examined teacher MSV use in group content…

Research Findings: This study examines lexical- and sentence-level dimensions of academic language to describe teachers' natural use of academic language and its association with vocabulary growth in 489 at-risk 4-year-olds enrolled in Head Start preschool classrooms. Using transcripts derived from video recordings of book-reading sessions in 52…

Research Findings: This study examined the potential impacts of ongoing participation (twice weekly for 30 weeks) in teacher-child managed whole-group language and literacy instruction on prekindergarten children's social interaction with classmates. Teacher-child managed whole-group instruction that provides children with opportunities to engage…

Research Findings: The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the relationship between classroom age composition and preschoolers' vocabulary gains over an academic year and also to examine whether these relations were moderated by classroom quality. In this study (N = 130 children in 16 classrooms representing a subset of all children…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to describe children's science content knowledge and examine the early predictors of science content knowledge in a sample of 194 typically developing preschool children. Children's science content knowledge was assessed in the fall (Time 1) and spring (Time 2) of the preschool year. Results showed…

The author examined whether mathematics instruction provided by kindergarten teachers is related to children's mathematics learning during the kindergarten year based on the children's socioeconomic status and race. Hierarchical linear modeling was employed using a large sample of kindergarten students to estimate relationships between the…

This study explored unique constructs of fantasy orientation and whether there are developmental benefits for fantasy-oriented children. By age 3, children begin developing executive functions, with some children exhibiting high fantasy orientation in their cognitions and behaviors. Preschoolers ("n" = 106) completed fantasy orientation…

Research Findings: This study examined the contribution of several classroom experience measures (classroom characteristics, teacher characteristics, and teacher-child interactions) to preschoolers' improvement in visuomotor integration. Children (N = 467) ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old and were enrolled in 115 classrooms in 5 U.S. states.…

The present study was designed to explore the association between preschool academic skills and Grade 3 achievement among a sample of ethnically diverse children from low-income families. Data were collected from a sample of 1,442 low-income, ethnically diverse children in preschool and associated with Grade 3 achievement in reading and…

Research Findings: The current article explores the relationship between teachers' perceptions of child behavior problems and preschool teacher job stress, as well as the possibility that teachers' executive functions moderate this relationship. Data came from 69 preschool teachers in 31 early childhood classrooms in 4 Head Start centers and were…

The present study examined the extent to which preschool classroom supports--relational support (RS) and instructional support (IS)--are associated with children's language development and whether these associations vary as a function of children's language ability. The language skills of 360 children within 95 classrooms were assessed using an…