Research Findings: This study examined how characteristics of parents, providers, and children contribute to the quality of parent--provider relationships in infant and toddler classrooms. Parents (n = 192) and providers (n = 95) from 14 child care centers in a large metropolitan area participated by completing questionnaires about the nature of…

To date, there has been little research into the school's practices that influence caregiver involvement in the education of students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that gives voice to both families and teachers, and little research has used a mixed-methods approach. In contrast to those studies that mainly concentrate on qualitative inquiry…

Parental mentalizing, which is the capacity to understand behavior in terms of mental states and to reflect this back to a child through speech, is a key construct in child development. Adults with high mentalization promote children's secure attachment, mentalization and self-regulation. This study describes this competency in a sample of…

Background: With increasing numbers of people with an intellectual disability choosing to become parents, the right support is imperative for effective parenting (Macintyre & Stewart2011]). The aim of this study was to gain insight into the experiences of parents who received support from Doulas during pregnancy, birth and following the birth…

This Q methodological study explores emotional experiences and coping of daycare staff when working with children of divorce and their families. Two main coping strategies among daycare staff were identified: 1) Confident copers, and 2) Non-confident copers. Interviews exemplify the two main experiences. Both groups may struggle with coping in…

Nature-based learning is an increasingly popular type of early childhood education. Despite this, children's experiences--in particular, their form and function within different settings and how they are viewed by practitioners--are relatively unknown. Accordingly, the use of nature as a setting and a resource for learning was researched. A…

Educators, learners and parents/caregivers should be held accountable for instilling learner discipline through clear guidelines and limitations to achieve security at public schools. Two previously identified education challenges are sustaining well-disciplined education systems and ensuring that educators are attentive to legal parameters in…

Boys Town has created a program called In-Home Family Services to deliver help to families in stress. In-home family intervention programs have become widely used to help more families who are at risk and experiencing difficulties with a wide range of problems including domestic violence, child behavior problems, parent-child and family…

In 2007, Sport Wales produced guidance for practitioners delivering the new Foundation Phase curriculum for children aged three to seven years. A focus was on physical development and in 2009 a resource entitled "Play to Learn" was developed supported by a website launched in 2011. The present study addresses (non-)engagement with the…

Factitious disorder by proxy (FDP), historically known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, is a diagnosis applied to parents and other caregivers who intentionally feign, exaggerate, and/or induce illness or injury in a child to get attention from health professionals and others. A review of the recent literature and our experience as consultants…

The purpose of this study was to preliminarily examine family involvement with the primary caregivers of a specific population of New Zealand primary school students through a pilot validation of a New Zealand version of the Family Involvement Questionnaire, Elementary Version (FIQ-E; Manz, Fantuzzo, & Power, 2004). Participants were 285…

This study aimed to explore family day care (FDC) educators' knowledge of child social and emotional wellbeing and mental health problems, the strategies used to promote children's wellbeing, and barriers and opportunities for promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing. Thirteen FDC educators participated in individual semi-structured…

Since 2005, "Better Beginnings", an early intervention, statewide family literacy programme developed by The State Library of Western Australia, has provided thousands of families with strategies and resources to promote and support book-sharing from birth. This paper reports on the key findings of an independent longitudinal evaluation…

Despite the importance of establishing meaningful parent-caregiver relationships, little is known about these dyadic relationships among beginning caregivers, who often feel insufficiently prepared to build successful alliances with parents. The present study examined the congruence between parents' and beginning caregivers' perceptions of their…

Research Findings: Interpersonal relationships among staff caregivers, parents, and children have been recommended as essential aspects of early childhood intervention. This study explored the associations of these relationships with program outcomes for children and parents in 3 Early Head Start programs. A total of 71 children (8-35 months,…