Background/Context: The early school years are an important time for building family-school relationships (Sibley & Dearing, 2014). As such, family engagement is a top priority of organizations that serve young children, such as Head Start. Children whose parents report being involved in their school demonstrate greater social competence and…

In the 2016 General Session, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 101, High Quality School Readiness Program Expansion, which expanded access to high quality school readiness programs for eligible students. This program was funded with $120,000 ongoing from the Education Fund for program administration and $9.0 million in Temporary Assistance for…

Learners from underserved backgrounds tend to show lower levels of college readiness (ACT, 2016a; ACT, 2018). In part to address these disparities, the authors investigated growth in social and emotional (SE) skills in a cohort of largely Hispanic, high-poverty students who participated in GEAR UP. GEAR UP is a discretionary federal grant program…

Program administrators and policy makers have placed a priority on expanding access to inclusive, center-based early care and education (ECE) for low-income children with special needs, a "doubly vulnerable" population characterized by academic and social-emotional achievement gaps at kindergarten entry. Yet, no research has documented…

Two hundred ninety-four children from low-income families (58% White, 17% Latinx, 25% Black; 54% girls; M[subscript age] = 4.49 years old at study entry) were recruited from Head Start classrooms to participate in a randomized-controlled trial of the project Research-based, Developmentally Informed (REDI) preschool intervention and then followed…

Joaquin, a 15-year-old Latino high school student, was arrested and removed from the Upward Bound (UB) program following a student-on-student sexual assault allegation. UB adopted a student-centered discipline approach that promoted socioemotional learning opportunities. However, the staff was regulated by complex state and federal policies and…

Education laws and policies have moved toward promoting socio-emotional (SEL) skills, adopting numerous terminologies in their standards. However, the incremental change has left compensatory education practitioners who are committed to promoting SEL opportunities with little guidance when the programs' governing policies do not include language…

Two hundred ninety-four children from low-income families (58% White, 17% Latinx, 25% Black; 54% girls; M[subscript age] = 4.49 years old at study entry) were recruited from Head Start classrooms to participate in a randomized-controlled trial of the project REDI (Research-based, Developmentally Informed) preschool intervention and then followed…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) began to take form when dozens of educators from across the country were led by governors and chief state school officers in gathering and reviewing the academic standards of states that had the best outcomes. Their goal was to determine what the current best academic standards were in the country and then…

Children's Approaches to Learning (AtL) represents how children seek learning opportunities in their classrooms. It can include children's persistence, attention, and initiative. It has often been studied using a composite of a teacher-rated scale. However, person-centered approaches may account for heterogeneity in children's learning approaches,…

Research Findings: This study examined associations between observed emotion-focused teaching practices and preschool children's emotion expression, emotion-related behaviors, and learning behaviors. Four centers located in large midwestern and mid-Atlantic metropolitan areas participated in the study. Of these, one center was a Head Start…

Early childhood is a critical period to intervene for obesity, developmental and behavioural problems. Data from 1065 children in 14 Northeast Iowa Community Action Head Starts (HS) were collected between 2011 and 2018. Body mass index (BMI) and developmental scores were assessed at the beginning of each school year and compared after the first…

Urie Bronfenbrenner is almost certainly best known for his theoretical writings about the ecology of human development. His interest in theory was not, however, separate from his practical concerns, particularly those related to early education and care of children and the families and teachers who interact with them. From the role that he played…

"Head Start" is a national, federally funded program that provides services to promote school readiness for children from birth to age 5 from predominantly low-income families. Based on a review of the research, the WWC found "Head Start" to have potentially positive effects on general reading achievement and no discernible…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of occupational therapy group intervention using Trust Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) Nurture Groups© on preschool children's social, emotional, and behavioral development in a Head Start program. This study used a retrospective mixed method, quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent…