Research Findings: Evidence suggests that teachers are effective at improving the social and emotional readiness of low-income children. However, few measures are available to assess teachers' use of specific social-emotional practices within their classrooms. This paper compares an observational measure of teachers' social-emotional practices,…

Multi-age classrooms feature the intentional grouping of students from consecutive grade levels for the purpose of fostering a nurturing classroom atmosphere. While an abundance of research on multi-age education has been produced throughout the past 50 years, only recent efforts have seen researchers turn their attention to the experiences of art…

The authors examined an activity-based listening strategy with first- and third-grade children in mixed-grade dyads. On the basis of theories of cognitive development and previous research, the authors predicted the following: (a) children in an activity-based strategy would recall more story events compared with those in a repetition strategy and…

This longitudinal quantitative study compared literacy achievement of students from second through sixth grade based on two organizational systems: graded (traditional) and nongraded (multiage) classrooms. The California Standards Test (CST) scaled and proficiency scores for English-Language Arts (ELA) were used as the study's independent variable…

Teachers and administrators are faced with a basic question when planning for a school year: how should the students be grouped when coming to school? Should students of similar age be together or should students be assigned to multi-age classrooms at the elementary school level? If the multi-age method is chosen, how will academic progress be…

In recent years, interest has increased in preschool programs that promote low-income children's early learning and development. Although research in this area has focused mostly on 4-year-olds, a growing number of 3-year-olds attend publicly funded preschool. In fact, in Head Start--a federally funded early childhood education program--the…

This report presents exploratory impact findings for 3-year-olds from the Head Start CARES demonstration, a large-scale randomized controlled trial implemented in Head Start centers for one academic year across the country. The study was designed primarily to test the effects of the enhancements on 4-year-olds, but it also provides an opportunity…

Preschool has long been viewed as a way to promote low-income children's early learning and development. Some promising classroom-based strategies have been found to enhance preschool children's social, emotional, and behavioral competencies. Most of this research has focused on 4-year-olds, even as a growing number of 3-year-olds attend Head…

The purpose of this study was to explore the differences between Reading/Language achievement gains of students in multi-age classrooms to the Reading/Language achievement gains of their peers in traditional, single-age classrooms. The causal-comparative quantitative approach to exploring cause-and-effect relationships was employed in this study.…

A study examined the effects of multi-age/grade instruction, compared to the traditional single-grade approach, on the reading achievement of fourth graders. Subjects, 22 fourth-graders in a single-grade class, were divided into instructional groups based on chronological age while the instructional grouping for 22 students in a combined fourth…

Examined the effects of two forms of organization of pretend play on children's behavior in the cognitive and affective domains as observed in a mixed-age environment: teacher-directed frontal play, with all children involved, and child-directed small group play. Found a significant increase in cognitive domain behavior during child-directed group…

Investigates impact of a nongraded instructional organization on the reading/language development of 117 kindergarten through second graders--61 in 3 nongraded classrooms, 56 in 3 graded classrooms. Uses a pretest-posttest control group design. Indicates no significant differences between the groups on any measures. Suggests findings are important…

This practicum study examined kindergarten teachers' perspectives regarding mixed-age groupings that included kindergarten students. The study focused on pedagogical reasons for using mixed-age grouping, ingredients necessary for successful implementation of a multiage program that includes kindergartners, and the perceived effects of a multiage…

This article describes the types of nongraded elementary schools that were prevalent from the 1950s through the 1970s, reviews research on the academic achievement effects of nongraded schools, and draws inferences from this research for application of nongraded systems in today's schools. Research in which an objective measure of achievement was…

This article sets out to compare and contrast two different projects, aimed to get primary teachers collaborating online, with respect to advice from research on how to engage participants. The first project tried to encourage teachers in small rural schools to share ideas for the implementation of the National Numeracy Strategy. The second was…