The project studied videotaped unstructured play sessions between 16 Downs Syndrome (DS) infants (aged 6 months and 12 months) and their mothers, to investigate the relationship between maternal attention-directing strategies and the infants' response to toys. A comparison group consisted of 16 high-risk premature infants matched by mental and…

Intended to encourage teachers to examine their assumptions about teaching writing, this document containing a mixture of theory and practice deals with many aspects of writing. The chapters discuss (1) an examination of children's writing and some questions arising from the examination; (2) reasons for failure to write well, including the home…

The nine brief articles composing this report focus on several aspects of overpopulation and related problems. The first article discusses needs of third-world children in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The second discusses the importance of "childspacing," major health risks of excessive births, breastfeeding for birth…

Practical information is supplied that can be directly applied to early childhood projects and used for staff inservice in data collection procedures. This information assists in documenting the overall effectiveness of an approach and aids in making the frequent educational decisions to ensure the child is benefiting from instruction. Separate…

Social and cognitive theories indicate that conflict plays an important role in an individual's psychological development. Research findings bearing on this conundrum provide initial hints about what social conflict in children is like and how it relates to characteristics of the child, but the short and long term positive and negative effects of…

The focus of this study was to explore the relationship between culture and children's development, and to suggest that inquiry into narratives is a way of understanding how children live and develop in a cultural sense. The article begins by inquiring into the nature of culture in the Hong Kong context and explaining the ways in which it might…

This article examines the implications of a "problem of the present". It explores the potential conflicts and fragmentation that may arise as a result of divisions in the interpretation of the metanarrative of child development within the two disciplines of education and human services. Childcare in Australia is strongly driven by this…

Discusses the need for child advocacy in education and other social services for children. Points to school psychology as providing an ideal opportunity for many child advocacy concepts to be implemented. Describes how child advocacy can be built into the school psychology training program. (Author/PC)

The family is the basic physical and emotional support system in American society. Dysfunction of a family member may reflect family dysfunction and certainly affects the well-being of other family members. Disturbances in the mother can have profound effects on family functioning and child development, as mothers bear most of the responsibility…

Presents most effective teaching techniques used by Elk Grove High School, California, in interdisciplinary courses on family-life education and child development. (ND)

This paper reviewed research that sheds light on the relation between motor and ideational learning and suggested a cognitively oriented role for physical education in the early years. (Author/RK)