The EdResearch for Action "Overview Series" summarizes the research on key topics to provide K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students. Authors -- leading experts from across the field of education research -- are charged with highlighting key findings from…

The Finnish education system has garnered significant international interest due to its consistently high rankings for decades. However, the same level of interest has not been extended to the country's early childhood education system. In Finland, early childhood education and care are regarded as the cornerstones of the Finnish education system,…

Discussions of trauma-informed practices tend to focus on student behaviors and strategies for managing those behaviors, rather than the circumstances students are experiencing. Critical educators have expressed concern that a focus on trauma-informed practices lead teachers to view students from marginalized backgrounds with a deficit lens,…

With appropriate education and early intervention, children who have had traumatic experiences can realize a lower level of long-term negative health and behavioral effects.

As I sorted through my Mother's belongings, I reflected on things that shaped my childhood and continue to inform my life experiences, including how I engage with curricular materials and my students. As a former elementary teacher, turned teacher educator, I understand that students' knowledges and experiences shape their academic learning.…

The call to transform education must begin with the youngest children. The world is not on track in meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2 committing countries to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030. There is solid scientific evidence that early…

As the youth mentoring field has expanded since MENTOR's founding in 1990, so have the questions about the scope of mentoring relationships, who is finding the mentoring they need, and who is being left behind. MENTOR began its efforts to answer these questions almost a decade ago with the publication of "The Mentoring Effect…

New technologies that combine digital sensors with automated processing algorithms are now being deployed to study preschool classrooms. This article provides an overview of these new sensing technologies, focusing on automated speaker classification, the analysis of children's and teachers' speech, and the detection and analysis of their…

Drawing on evidence and example legislation, this policy research brief identifies school-based policy options for Texas to prevent and mitigate toxic stress caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The term ACEs refers to the 10 common categories of adversity included in a landmark study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

Failing test scores in reading proficiency have been a blemish on our nation's report card for decades as scores have remained static despite the readily-available information on language and literacy attainment, and the employment of research-based strategies in classrooms. While we continue our quest to efficiently bolster reading skills, a less…

The University of Minnesota's Birth to Three Clinic has adopted a holistic approach to supporting children's needs within an attachment-focused, trauma-informed, and neurodevelopmental framework rooted in the DC:0-5™ classification framework. This clinical framework of infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) assessment has been applied in…

Many students in the United States suffer from mental health issues resulting from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Often, students exhibit negative behavior as a result of these issues and many schools continue to implement punitive approaches to discipline, such as suspensions or expulsions, which serve to further isolate and disconnect…

Child maltreatment is a significant problem in North America. Maltreatment comes in many forms, such as neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, abandonment, and traumatic world events. The maltreatment affects children's neurobiological development, and thus, potentially their future quality of social and psychological health. This article gives a…

The purpose of this paper is to present a reading of child protection and welfare practice in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, with reference to several popular concepts in social work. The focus is on the relevance of these concepts to the contemporary circumstances in which child protection and welfare social workers often now find themselves. The…

This paper contrasts a singular construction of the 'world' as an object, often presented to students through representational objects (such as atlases, maps, globes), with a more expansive orientation toward the idea of 'world' and how it might enter the classroom. By engaging with Hannah Arendt's concept of natality, I consider a view of the…