In June 2021, the Department for Education (DfE) announced the Early Years Education Recovery funding, a £180m package of support to help the sector recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It comprised training programmes, qualifications, guidance and targeted whole setting support, delivered through a series of complimentary work programmes. This…

The Lawrence Hall of Science implemented a two-phase project, Building Understanding in Language Diverse Students, to modify school group workshops and drop-in public programs to better support linguistically diverse students and visitors. As we applied language support strategies developed for the school group workshops to additional areas of the…

This article describes the process for alignment of the personnel preparation standards developed by the Council for Exceptional Children and Division for Early Childhood with the standards developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The results identify areas of convergence across the two sets of standards and areas…

Early Head Start (EHS) is a federally-funded, community-based program that provides comprehensive child and family development services to low-income pregnant women and families with children under the age of 3. The mission of EHS is to support healthy prenatal outcomes and enhance the intellectual, social, and emotional development of infants and…

Several sectors and levels of organizations, agencies, and projects are involved in promoting and providing education, care, and intervention services for young children and their families in Illinois. State government entities involved in matters of early care and education include the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the Department of…

This article seeks to examine 2 federally funded early literacy projects, one an Early Reading First demonstration project, the other an Early Childhood Educators Professional Development Research Study. It describes the respective professional development models that include on-site mentoring support to improve teacher quality. The article…

Vivian Gussin Paley, a MacArthur Award-winning author and former kindergarten teacher, has written 12 books that chronicle her work in promoting the fantasy play of young children. A major focus of her books is a process that she developed called "Doing Stories" or "Storytelling/Story Acting" (ST/SA). The ST/SA process requires only that teachers…

In an attempt to meet the growing professional development needs of early childhood practitioners in North Carolina, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) is reaching out to the rural areas of North Carolina by offering programs that will certify North Carolina teachers in birth through kindergarten education (BKE). In this article, the author…

Early childhood program directors must juggle many responsibilities while averting one crisis after another. Although directors have to be experts in multitasking, most often they assume their many responsibilities with little or no specialized training. This article describes how the authors created the Directors of the Midlands Development and…

Educational process reflection (EPR) is a professional development model aimed at supporting preschool teachers reflecting on and changing their practice. A particular focus is on interaction between practitioners and children, and between the children themselves. In this article, I first describe the theoretical frameworks that helped shape EPR,…

This paper explores the range of ways in which school districts are using Title I funds for early education through kindergarten and examines how the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has impacted those investments. It also makes recommendations for local education agencies (LEAs) interested in creating Title I-funded early education…

The unique focus of infant mental health interventions is most often the caregiver-infant relationship, rather than the traditional approach of focusing specifically on the child or caregiver. Because a relationship approach to assessment and treatment is new, the development of evidence-based approaches is still in its own infancy. Furthermore,…