Despite a 100-year-old history and the existence of schools in nearly every country in the world, Waldorf education is a little known and poorly understood educational model that was developed in Europe by Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner. For many years it existed in the United States in the form of private schools. Few of their teachers or…

Education reform, including methods to create greater gender equality, is an ongoing process in post-Apartheid South Africa. Using an African feminism theoretical framework and a critical content analysis approach, we examined the representation of female characters in a subset of supplementary reading titles created under an international…

As the population of young dual language learners continues to rise, how can early childhood professionals choose culturally and linguistically appropriate assessments for Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers? They'll get expert guidance in this one-of-a-kind resource, a comprehensive roundup and analysis of 37 developmental assessments…

In the United States education system a large achievement gap between African American and Latino students compared to White American students exists. Various studies have documented the gap, but there has not been much success in closing it. Recognizing that the educational system is growing more, not less, diverse, including due to the rise in…

The use of drawing in the classroom has a contentious history in the U.S. education system. While most instructors and students agree that the activity helps students focus and observe more details, there is a lack of empirical data to support these positions. This study examines the use of three treatments (writing a description, drawing a…

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between pedagogical continuity in literacy education and early literacy development by comparing Chinese children in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Stratified random sampling was used to select 24 preschool and Primary 1 classes in four communities catering to middle-class families in each city. The 24…

The theme for this year's College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa was "Engaged Language Research and Practice," with the plenary speech given by Dr. Kathryn A. Davis. Following a preface from the editors and plenary speaker highlights, contents of these proceedings include: Section I:…

The purpose of this study was to discover and compare perceptions of three different groups of Indiana elementary educators concerning the importance of areas of the principal's literacy knowledge base, as well as responsibility for and use of this knowledge by principals to adequately support effective research-based literacy instruction. The…

Plant growth, development and reproduction are fundamental concepts in biology; yet there is a recorded lack of motivation for young people to grapple with these concepts. Here we present the "DigitalSeed" toy for making investigations around these concepts more accessible to children through hands-on digital interaction. This is part of an…

The specific purpose of education is to "prepare" children so that they are able to maximise their potential and participate in the society or community around them. In order for many Third World nations to access information technology, the provision of language programs, particularly English, has become necessary. However, in the…

The two basic objectives of this five-year study were to investigate a number of variables related to the preparation of effective instructional materials for disadvantaged preschool children, and to determine whether special language instruction would produce improvement in language abilities and thus promote academic progress in the beginning…

A lead teacher in a privately-owned preschool designed and implemented a peace education program. Primary goals of the practicum used were to provide developmentally appropriate experiences for: (1) increasing understanding of being a peacemaker; (2) gaining respect for nature and the environment; (3) showing compassion toward the exceptional…

Several underlying curriculum variables influencing the course of study as it is implemented in the inner city, such as class size and personnel policies, are examined in this investigation, which seeks to determine the relationship between the curriculum variables and standardized academic tests on black and immigrant children in Montreal.…

This discussion of issues that merit investigation in British primary schools focuses on those issues that concern the links between pedagogic positions, the practices these involve, the media education issues that are thus addressed, the consequences for the activities of the learner, and the critical understandings these practices facilitate. It…

This theme issue of "InSEA News" is about several international and local curriculum concerns, building on topics of the previous two issues. The authors, from Taiwan, Brazil, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Portugal, address international cooperation projects or describe local curriculum projects. Some articles are accompanied by…