Chinese kindergartens' over 110 years of adaptation of foreign models is a vivid example of how globalization comes into direct contact with Chinese culture and creates cultural hybridities. Learning Stories as a narrative assessment tool to children's development from New Zealand, has swept China with the endorsement from the professional…

Expanded with timely new content and consistent with DEC Recommended Practices, the third edition of this bestselling book will fully prepare a new generation of early childhood educators to teach and include every child. Like the groundbreaking previous editions, this updated "Building Blocks" guide gives pre- and inservice teachers…

The Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) initiative aims to improve early childhood education worldwide through measurement of children's development and learning and the quality of learning environments. Led by UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, MELQO comprises an…

This article considers the role of constructions of creativity in the classroom and their consequences for learning and, in particular, for the assessment of creativity. Definitions of creativity are examined to identify key implications for supporting the development of children's creativity within the classroom. The implications of assessing…

Early childhood education has received attention from philosophers, educationists and psycho-analysts such as Plato, Avicenna, Locke, Pestalozzi, Whitehead, Carl Jung, Binet, Piaget, Montessori, Sigmund Freund, Howard Gardner, among others. In Africa, the backdrop of poverty, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in strife-torn countries, among…

The Council of Australian Governments released the National Early Childhood Development Strategy, Investing in the Early Years in July 2009 (COAG 2009). One of the key reform priorities in the strategy is to build better information and a solid evidence base, and establishing national outcome measures for early childhood development has been…

This project offers a close look into the meaning-making practices of the Bulgarian socialist state with regard to the conception and enactment of childhood. Held for the first time in 1979, on occasion of the UN declared "International Year of the Child", the International Children's Assembly "Banner of Peace" emerges as a…

Article details issues of the character education movement and provides a theoretical perspective to understand its development. It offers recommendations in how to restore a balance in education by focusing on character through child development theories. (Author/JDM)

Describes research done at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk on the development and evaluation of the Talent Development model, which asserts that all students can learn in demanding, high-expectation academic settings. Focuses on maximizing every child's potential. (SLD)

Family-school partnerships are increasingly touted as a means of improving both student and school improvement. This recognition has led to an increase in policies and initiatives that offer the following benefits: improved communication between parents and educators; home and school goals that are mutually supportive and shared; better…

Development and use of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) and its instruments in the Netherlands, Flanders (Belgium), and the United Kingdom are reviewed, with emphasis on the validity of the developmental theory behind it. The CBAM appears to make it possible to offer schools assistance in dealing with change. (SLD)

The articles of this special issue are summarized. A new model for schooling is calling for a change in which adults in schools can inquire into and reflect on their own and their students' skills and on dispositions that need to be developed as well as on adult development. (SLD)

Discusses the need for comprehensive reforms in school organization, curriculum and instruction, and professional development to address the problems of large urban high schools. Describes the Talent Development High School with Career Academies model being developed to meet the needs of such schools. (SLD)

Project Quest offers a strong approach to the problem of developing programs aimed at educational leadership in New Jersey. The primary goal of the project is to enhance in this leadership their knowledge of child growth and development, and their feel for, and sensitivity to, appropriate modes of education for young children, as well as pervasive…

Schools are the only universally accessible institutions where there are enough adults to provide continuous support for children's growth, development, and success in life. Using the process pioneered by renowned child psychiatrist Dr. James P. Comer and his colleagues at the Yale School Development Program (SDP), this unique field guide offers…