Over two-thirds of youth participate in a structured sport, making it a vital context in which transactional relations with cognitive development can occur. Yet, little is known about how these constructs inform one another across childhood. Most previous studies have focused on health benefits of sport participation, or on demographic and family…

While the study of family literacy in Latino communities has grown in the U.S. since the 1990s, this is a nascent research area in Latin America, with Chile being no exception. Limited information is available about the impact of parents' literacy practice on child literacy outcomes at different developmental stages, the shared reading practices…

The inconsistent implementation of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child framework within one school district has been a problem. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of 17 participants (nine teachers, three school counselors, two librarians, two administrators, and one instructional coach) in a school…

The purpose of this demonstration project was to create a school-based professional development workshop to educate teachers on the impact of complex trauma on student school functioning as one element in becoming a trauma-informed school. A review of literature published on the topics of early childhood development, brain development, the impact…

Children are spending less time in nature, leading to a multitude of ramifications in all areas of development. Research has indicated that teachers play a key role in increasing time children spend in nature. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand elementary teachers' perceptions of skills, benefits, and challenges of…

Many American preschool children enter kindergarten without the emergent literacy skills needed to learn to read. To address this problem, this multicase qualitative study investigated the emergent literacy practices at Steiner Waldorf-inspired and Reggio Emilia-inspired schools. The research questions focused on how alternative preschool…

Self-regulation is a significant predictor of student academic performance, over those traditional measures of intelligence and socioeconomic status. The failure to develop these skills may produce students who are at a four-times greater risk of behavioral issues, school dropout, and poor academic performance. This multiple qualitative case study…

Head Start is a federally funded program providing comprehensive social and early education services to children from low-income households and their families. Seeking to boost outcomes of Head Start students, in 1998 Congress amended Head Start's statement of purpose, specifying school readiness as the program's top priority. This mission change…

The purpose of this study is to measure the effect of a standard of care embedded language strategies program utilized in combination with direct language strategy instruction on the measured expressive language, cognitive development, social emotional development, and language development of prekindergarten students attending three neighborhood…

In a rural Alabama school district, 38.46% of the students failed the reading portion of the high school graduation examination. While the teachers in the school district were trained to differentiate instruction according to ability and gender, the impact of gender-differentiated reading instruction was unknown. The purpose of this case study was…

Children with learning disabilities represent the largest category of students served within special education systems in schools, and are at increased risk for academic and psychosocial problems in comparison to peers without learning disabilities. While much of clinical practice and research focus has been on academic interventions,…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the Gearing Up for Kindergarten program created a significant impact on parent understanding of children's development and aspects of school readiness. Parent perceptions of their child's readiness to make the transition to school were also assessed. The study also measured the Gearing Up for…

How do we Christian educators help children live their lives holistically? The purpose of this study is to address this question and to examine a method for children and Christian families in Korea to form Christian faith through daily rituals at home. Using participant observation and focus group interviews, I examined what the children and…

This dissertation examines the relationship between teacher educational background, teacher experience, and student achievement in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. The first essay of this dissertation, "Effects of Teacher Degree Level, Coursework, and Certification on Student Achievement in Math and Reading in Kindergarten,"…

Relational aggression (RA) involves either indirect, verbal, or covert acts with the intent to humiliate, exclude peers from groups, and/or damage a peer's reputation and social status. RA is believed to be particularly devastating psychologically for adolescent girls, as they tend to form smaller and more intimate social groups. Unfortunately, RA…