Overcoming challenges to quality early education in developing nations, TEACH Rwanda, one high-performing education system, offers a model of childhood learning through sensitive teacher dispositions, child-centred play, and culturally relevant materials. This manuscript provides a unique window into the practices of a quality early childhood…

The Sustainable Development Goals highlight the critical importance of pre-primary education and set the broad ambition that by 2030 all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. Today, the world is facing a learning crisis: While millions of…

Engaging teachers of young children in effective in-service professional development is a critical component of establishing high quality early childhood education. However, not all professional development offerings are effective in imparting new knowledge, enhancing teacher practice, or improving child outcomes, making it difficult for teachers…

Family engagement is essential to high quality services for all children in early childhood care and education. From the beginning of life, families nurture their children and the capacities they will need to be ready for school. The Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (PFCE) Framework for Early Childhood Systems is a guide to understanding…

Case studies provide numerous opportunities for professional development and can be particularly helpful in transdiciplinary training. This article offers suggestions for how to use the "Zero to Three" Journal's "Stories From the Field" series of articles across a variety of settings and roles such as clinical practice, program…

Early education leaders--inside and outside of government--are looking for new ways to improve quality, accountability, and efficiency across many different programs serving young children and their families, and they see investment in data systems as a pivotal part of that effort. However, it can be challenging to develop and implement effective…

Communities of practice (COPs) are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better through interacting with one another (Wenger 1998). Communities of practice have enormous potential to support and sustain quality care and education within a community and, in fact, are doing so. Businesses and…

The environment, from our bodies to our homes and school, is explored in April's early ed guide. (Editor)

Intended for administrators of First Chance projects, a federal network established to operate model preschool and early education programs for handicapped children, the guidelines present ways to encourage the replication of the model programs by local community agencies, in order to provide services for many more handicapped children. Discussed…

Prepared to assist principals, teachers, and volunteers who wish to be part of a district-wide school volunteer program, this booklet lists six steps for planning, organizing, implementing, and evaluating a program for school volunteers. Included in these steps is information on (1) starting such a program (i.e., creating a coordinating committee…

The experience of the New York Association of Child Care Workers (ACCW) in implementing and further developing over a 4-year period a statewide program for certifying child caregivers is described in this paper. The certification program is discussed in three sections. After the first section's brief introductory statement, the second section,…

Offers seven research-based guidelines to reduce the risk for at-risk learners and help schools implement early childhood programs with a literacy-enriched focus that fosters greater understanding of written language. (SR)

An anti-bias, multicultural approach to family day care is presented in this book. Part A provides a rationale for such an approach; Part B outlines ideas for children's anti-bias, multicultural projects; Part C describes children's books and adult resources, and lists sources of hard-to-find items such as multicultural dolls and puppets.…

Guidelines for implementing a family day care conference are provided in this document. Contents range from the problem of selecting the conference location (including the city and the facility), to setting conference fees, promoting attendance, developing a conference program, and evaluating the conference. (Author/RH)

This study attempts to provide some general guidelines for the development of preschool bilingual-multicultural (BL-MC) curricula in a number of diverse Spanish-speaking environments and cultural enclaves, including Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Mexican American communities. Significant factors in the development of a BL-MC curriculum are identified…