Emergent literacy skills develop from a child's experiences with spoken language in social interactions, written words through storybook reading, and opportunities to interact with print in the environment. These emergent literacy experiences provide a foundation for conventional literacy skills. A congenital visual impairment (that is, blindness…

Purpose: This article was intended to share and reflect on experiences concerning the education for sustainable development (ESD) project at Hongqiao Kindergarten in Shanghai. The project aimed to explore how ESD could be implemented in a current curriculum and to provide useful examples of educational activities and experiences.…

In this study we investigated the effects of two naturalistic 2- to 4-year-old children's intervention programs aimed at promoting children's Spontaneous Focusing On Numerosity (SFON) and early numerical skills. The study consisted of a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design with a delayed posttest and an active control group participating in…

Printed educational materials such as teacher's handbook may affect the quality of education as much as teachers, curriculum, educational environment, and the other course materials. Perspectives of eighty-two pre-service elementary teachers regarding the activities and songs included in the teacher's handbook for music course were examined by…

This cross-national study involved 56 toddler classrooms in Poland and the Netherlands. A cluster analysis was conducted to identify classroom profiles based on observed quality and these were compared regarding structural (group size and children-to-teacher ratio) and curriculum (e.g. pre-academics and pretend play) characteristics. In total, 224…

To be digitally literate, an individual must be able to effectively make and share meaning in different modes and formats, effectively create, collaborate, and communicate in digital environments, and understand how and when technology can support these processes. However, K-5 teachers lack resources that adequately support their digital literacy…

Matter is an essential science topic that is often challenging to teach at the early elementary levels. Learning about matter helps students develop a solid foundation for more complex concepts that are taught in later years. Make this abstract concept developmentally appropriate for children by engaging them in investigations that focus on…

Peace education has been offered to children for decades, but those curricula have been only minimally guided by children's developmental stages and needs. In this article, the authors apply their research on children's developmental understanding of peace along with peace education principles and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory to present…

Through an examination of the reflective comments of 42 pre-service Early Childhood Education Teachers (PS-ECETs), this study describes how an infancy course within an Early Childhood Education program used four different ways of organizing learning to unravel details of infant pedagogy, focusing on the role of the teacher. It is vital to theorize…

This study investigated the variations of perspectives of junior high school students who had participated in Smartphone Summit for appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones. Smartphone Summit is an educational project designed to empower junior high school students to advocate appropriate usage of the Internet and smartphones among older,…

Children of every culture love to hear stories about their heritage. Storytelling creates shared experiences through the combination of time and space (Langellier, 2011). Educators and parents often use storytelling to explore characters, plot, setting, conflict, and resolution or other key elements of a story. From a more holistic view,…

Energy is one of the most complex yet central concepts taught in schools and is featured in the Australian Science Curriculum, as one of the six key organising ideas (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2015). The literature portrays a multitude of complications associated with teaching energy (see Millar, 2005 for a…

We examined changes in teachers' beliefs regarding developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) in 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2009 using data from the Head Start Family and Child Experience Survey. In addition, we examined how teacher education, credentials, and professional experience relate to beliefs about DAP and explored how these relationships…

Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievements of intended instructional outcomes. Formative assessment means assessment embedded in instruction. That definition was adopted in 2006 by the Council of Chief State…

This article features a conversation between Usha Mukunda, who identifies herself as a librarian, and Vivek Vellanki, who is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in education. Mukunda has been successful in challenging the stereotypical image of the librarian as being serious, angry, and detached. Shortly after meeting her, one would likely be…