Today parents are faced with increasing expectations to attend to their young children's learning and cognitive development. South Korea and Singapore are well-known for their competitive education systems and for consistently topping international student assessment tests. They also share an inflated private tuition industry, fuelled by the…

Thanks to urbanization, some developing countries have a large migrant population. Academic performance of migrant children is usually far from satisfactory, much to the concern of educators and legislators. Meanwhile, research has attested to the importance of reading skill development by the end of third grade for later academic achievement.…

Practitioners in play-based learning contexts face the challenge of developing developmentally appropriate practices while meeting rigorous academic curriculum standards. To date, play and academic learning have been predominantly conceptualized from an adult perspective. Considering that children are key agents in classroom play contexts, it is…

While we are seeking new ways to ensure students' academic success, we must ensure that we are not neglecting their need for physical activity. As we innovate to improve academic success, we can also seek ways to overcome the challenges of space, time, and behavior management to reap the benefits of movement, which include increased student…

The Convention on the Rights of the Child calls for children to be treated as human beings with a distinct set of rights, instead of as passive objects of care. They can and should be agents in their own lives. Child-initiated pedagogy recognizes this by respecting children's individual and collective views, interests, and motivations.…

The international comparison and competitive focus on (academic) performance, together with the growing awareness that early years impact children's learning and development in education as well as over a lifetime, has resulted in heightened political interest in the learning of the youngest children. Politicians take action to achieve what they…

The case study aims to provide insights into how a Hungarian EFL teacher used tests, assessed her young learners and gave feedback to them in the classroom. This qualitative, exploratory study was a follow-up to a large-scale project. In this single-case study, data were collected from an EFL teacher and five of her seventh graders on what tasks…

The Foundation Phase is a Welsh Government flagship policy of early years education (for 3-7 year-old children) in Wales. Marking a radical departure from the more formal, competency-based approach associated with the previous Key Stage 1 National Curriculum, it advocates a developmental, experiential, play-based approach to teaching and learning.…

The study buddy is a learning strategy employed in a graduate distance course to promote informal peer reviewing of assignments before submission. This strategy promotes student-student interaction and helps break the social isolation of distance learning. Given the concern by Arum and Roksa (2011) that student-student interaction may be…

Education in Nigeria is an instrument par excellence for affecting national development. In spite of the global efforts to broaden opportunities in many schools all over Nigeria, many are not responding adequately to the needs of their students. A large majority of the learners do not acquire even minimal levels of learning due to such factors as…

Contemporary education theory (and official South African policy) underwrites learner-centredness. I analyse learner-centredness as a possible piece of the puzzle about why it is proving so difficult to improve academic achievement. Learner-centred ideas are grounded in the belief that cognitive abilities develop spontaneously in accordance with a…

Examines the relationship between early childhood education and primary school academic achievement in the Solomon Islands. Notes factors influencing higher performance in reading comprehension and mathematics skills, and use of age appropriate materials. Offers insights for educators, policy planners, communities, and families. (JPB)

With a view to understanding developmental education, this project studied 100 college students at Champlain-Saint Lawrence College (Quebec) to measure their motivations and perceptions of ability and to see how different types of students responded to assistance. Students with a learning orientation (LO), who viewed ability as derived principally…

This issue highlights five distinct studies. The first study looks at achievement and its association to Montessori programs, magnet programs, and traditional schooling programs. The second provides evidence on the efficacy of the Even Start program in comparison to Title I programs. The third examines the effects of full-day and half-day…

The longitudinal "Competent Children" project is intended to discover what impact children's family resources and early childhood education experiences have on the development of children's cognitive, social, communicative, and problem-solving competencies. This report details findings of the first stage of the project. The report…