The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of mothers' and teachers' testimonies that conflict with scientific facts and scientific explanations on kindergartners' judgments. The participants consisted of 104 young children in Sanliurfa province in Turkey. Their ages ranged from 48 to 79 months, with a mean age of 61.48 months (SD = 5.58).…

The purpose of this study was to explore how prospective special educators (PSEs) used and experienced different types of consultation skills in consultation sessions they held with general educators. The participants were 17 PSEs in Finland attending a course in which problem-solving stages and communication skills were taught. The PSEs'…

Over the past two decades, the role of school psychologists internationally has shifted from a more narrow focus on assessment to a broader emphasis on problem solving and delivering intervention services via consultation. Defining interventions is important for replication and translation of practice. Further, to make valid, data-based decisions…

By 4 years of age, children have been reinforced repeatedly for searching where they see someone point. In two studies, we asked whether this history of reinforcement could interfere with young children's ability to discriminate between a knowledgeable and an ignorant informant. Children watched as one informant hid a sticker while another turned…

Play is generally identified as a basic tool for effective learning and development in children. This study explores the ways in which amorphous or unstructured play contributes to children's overall development at the pre-primary level, helping to develop cognitive, social, and motor skills. The findings indicate that through unstructured play,…

The objective of this project was to develop and pilot a small-scale professional development program that incorporated substantial group and one-on-one mentoring aimed at preparing rurally based preschool teacher assistants to earn the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential. Using a framework that emphasized the relational, developmental,…

School readiness is an important concern for parents and teachers because it is a multifaceted process which encompasses all the developmental areas and various skills of children rather than only focusing on cognitive and literacy skills. In particular, preschool and first grade teachers experience the positive and negative sides of the process…

We investigated preschoolers' selective learning from models that had previously appeared to be reliable or unreliable. Replicating previous research, children from 4 years selectively learned novel words from reliable over unreliable speakers. Extending previous research, children also selectively learned other kinds of acts--novel games--from…

A wealth of human knowledge is acquired by attending to information provided by other people--but some people are more credible sources than others. In two experiments, we explored whether young children spontaneously keep track of an individual's history of being accurate or inaccurate and use this information to facilitate subsequent learning.…

Sixty-five (38 male and 27 female) preschool children (mean age=5 years 1 month) completed measures of peers' trustworthiness (promise keeping and secret keeping). Teachers rated the preschool children's inhibitory control, trustworthiness, and preschool adjustment. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) yielded support for the hypothesized model. The…

The purpose of the study was to examine whether teacher beliefs would play a role in their actual practices while teaching target language in early phases of primary education, principally, in kindergarten and first grades in a state school. As it is a very broad research area, the researchers exclusively analyzed teaching practices and teaching…