Early childhood education builds the foundation for students' academic careers, but perhaps more importantly emphasizes developmentally appropriate practices that encourage social and emotional learning and prosocial behaviors. Similarly, humane education addresses students' capacity for empathy, compassion, and perspective-taking through…

Parents want to work with their children's teachers to help them succeed in school. "What Brain Research Says about Student Learning" provides parents and teachers the most recent findings in brain research and learning theory in a very approachable way. The reader will see how the child's brain develops, learns, remembers, and creates…

We develop a unified empirical framework for child development which nests the key features of two previously parallel research programs, the Child Development literature and the Education Production Function literature. Our framework allows for mis-measured cognitive and non-cognitive skills, classroom effects, parental influences, and…

This report summarizes the first year of the prekindergarten partnership between AISD, United Way for Greater Austin, and participating child development centers that served 417 students. Classrooms and students displayed high quality of instruction and academic performance, and teacher professional development opportunities are summarized.

Given the rising efforts to ensure all young children have equitable access to high-quality early childhood settings and systems (Children's Equity Project, 2020; DEC, 2020; NAEYC, 2019), it is essential for early care and education practitioners to examine how their perceptions and implicit biases may impact their teaching and consider how to…

Georgia's Pre-K Longitudinal Study followed a statewide sample of 1,169 children who attended Georgia's Pre-K Program in 2013-14 through their 4th grade year in 2018-19. The study was conducted by researchers at the Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The following summary…

Sufficient space is integral to high-quality music instruction, but what makes our space "sufficient"? This article provides historical and theoretical background about the role of space in learning and the use of movement as a tool for learning music. When their input is sought, children order space as a high priority within a school…

This article provides practitioners with a guide to (1) understand the developmental emergence of play skills in young children to inform developmentally appropriate instructional decisions (e.g., toy choices); (2) set up the play space to support social play; and (3) use key strategies from an evidence-based intervention for young children with…

Homa Sabet Tavangar is the author of "Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World" (Random House, 2009) and "The Global Education Toolkit for Elementary Learners" (Sage/Corwin, 2014). She works with diverse schools, corporations, non-profits, and children's media on optimizing learning, empathy, inclusion,…

Children's emotional and behavioural difficulties are the result of multiple individual, social and contextual factors working in concert. The current paper proposes a theoretical framework to interpret students' emotional and behavioural difficulties in schools, by taking into consideration teacher-student relationships, students'…

Imaginary play activities are not only enjoyable in their own right, but also offer clear intellectual, social, and emotional benefits to children who participate in them. This article describes the nature of imaginary play as observed in some Montessori classrooms and lays the groundwork for developing a position statement on imaginary play for…

Polli Soholt looks at grace and courtesy from the 3-6 classroom perspective with clear theory explanations as they pertain to the larger classroom culture. She discusses the link between older and young children and the presence of the teacher as a model for grace and takes a brief look to neural science for proof of the existence of social…

Cheryl Ferreira vigorously pursues the Montessori principles that are implicit for preparing a classroom where "children find all that is needed to work at self-formation and to maximize their inner potential." The Montessori philosophy is precisely conveyed as Cheryl Ferreira details the specific elements and principles, both physical…

To introduce this special issue, the concept of the teacher as an ''invisible hand'' is presented as a metaphor to describe the potentially influential but relatively understudied contribution that educators are likely to have on children's peer relationships and their broader interpersonal growth. Building from conceptual work distinguishing…

Concentration is a "sine qua non," a hallmark, of a Montessori Casa program. Yet, it happens that some children do not concentrate. They do not engage with the materials in the classic pattern of normalization. They are not challenged by ADD, ADHD, or a variant of sensory integration spectrum disorder. Instead of working alone, they prefer the…