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…

Positive education is the teaching of both traditional school skills and skills for enhancing well-being. This study examines teachers' (N = 72) experiences with training in positive education.Qualitative content analysis was used to provide an in-depth understanding of the experiences, and quantitative measures investigated teachers' well-being.…

The focus of this study is preschool teachers' perspectives on their experiences during a Pre-K expansion in New York City. The expansion brought on neoliberal approaches to curriculum, child assessment, quality improvement, and instructional support in classrooms, and these changes in turn heightened expectations for accountability. This has…

In this study, based on responses to a modified version of Harrelson's School Improvement Survey, the researcher examined the differences, if any, in the perceived support available to PK-8 teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, paraprofessionals, and support staff in a new PK-8 turnaround school in a southern state during the second…

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…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions K-12 principals and teachers have of inclusive education in a school district in western Pennsylvania school district. The dependent variables are the teachers' and principals' perceptions of inclusion and the independent variables are years of educational experience, extent of special…

Teacher educators recognize that teacher candidates must have authentic, scaffolded opportunities to transform knowledge into practice. This study explores teacher candidates' engagement with teacher inquiry as a method for supporting professional development. Findings suggest teacher candidates differ tremendously in their responses to the…

Research Findings: This exploratory study identified preschool teacher quality profiles in early childhood education settings using 9 indicators across teachers' professional background, observed process quality, and job attitudes toward teaching (e.g., job-related stress, satisfaction, and intention to leave the job). The sample consisted of 96…

This study investigated the influence of professional development on 20 preschool teachers' use of instructional conversations in classrooms for 2- to 5-year-old children. Instructional conversation is a small group discussion that builds on children's prior knowledge to assess and assist conceptual understanding. Over a 3-year period, the…

There are two separate but related issues that have challenged advocates, researchers and practitioners in the field of early education and care work for decades: improving the quality of children's programs and increasing the wages and benefits of the workers. The solution has been framed as a need for professionalizing the…

The purpose of this study is to describe the developmental benefits emerging from the theoretical approach variation theory of learning, and the implementation of learning study in preschool. An educator specialized in educating children with special needs participates in a project aiming to enhance mathematics teaching. The analysis of the…

In this study, the investigators surveyed 215 early childhood educators throughout New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania to determine teacher knowledge and training in early literacy instruction, with a focus on The 5 Big Ideas in Reading as identified by the National Reading Panel: phonological awareness, accuracy and fluency, alphabetic principle,…

Professional development was conducted to assess the effects of dialogic reading (DR) on child outcomes related to vocabulary development in English and Spanish. Six teachers and 72 children enrolled in a state-funded public universal prekindergarten program, partnering with higher education, participated in the study. The content of the…