An education agency's early childhood resource developer implemented and evaluated a practicum intervention designed to increase administrators' and teachers' awareness of questionable trends and practices in kindergarten education. Most of the kindergartens in the agency's area had a highly academic, lock-step curriculum; used standardized…

The primary goal of this practicum study was to provide opportunities for Head Start teachers to become knowledgeable of community resources that would encourage their aesthetic awareness and enhance their creative growth. A total of 16 teachers and teacher aides visited a local Dali Museum, a fine arts museum, a planetarium, a historical museum,…

A Child Development Associate (CDA) training project director in north New Jersey initiated a practicum to create in-service training conditions and supervisory teacher attitudes that supported the teaching efforts of assistant teachers who were working toward CDA certification in a college-based program. Specific goals of the 3-month intervention…

This report describes an in-service education program offered to teachers at a rural northeastern Head Start program to help them assess children's overall development by looking at their level of language development. The program focused on the case conference, a forum in which coordinators, teachers, home visitors, and sometimes parents meet to…

A Head Start training program director designed a practicum to provide a short-term, cost-effective training program for community child care providers interested in earning the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential. In addition, a training-of-trainers component was developed for program supervisors interested in serving as advisors to…

This practicum report describes a 12-week intervention designed to help parent volunteers in six kindergarten classrooms better perform their volunteer work, which included such tasks as grading papers, decorating bulletin boards, and listening to children read. Objectives of the intervention were that: (1) a total of 90 percent of volunteers…

A practicum project was designed to retrain preschool personnel on the importance of indoor play and on their role during play sessions. Workshops and training sessions were developed to examine the physical environment of the classroom, discuss play theories, and review skills that children can develop during play sessions. Pre- and posttests,…

This practicum was designed to heighten preschool teachers' awareness of gender bias in the classroom and provide information on gender equity issues and the pursuit of the study of mathematics by girls. Its goal was to enable 20 preschool teachers in 3 preschool programs to increase their knowledge of gender equity and to use this knowledge in…

This practicum report describes the development and implementation of an inservice program for four teachers who, in order to meet Federal integration guidelines, were given kindergarten assignments for which they were not certified. Comparison of test scores of disadvantaged kindergarten children taught by trained and untrained teachers revealed…

This practicum was designed to retrain preschool personnel on the importance of cultural diversity and the teacher's role in developing and implementing a multicultural curriculum. Faculty meetings and workshops were organized to present a cultural awareness curriculum to preschool staff and discuss the teacher's role in executing the curriculum.…

Implemented in an urban community college's child development teacher training program, this practicum project addressed the problem of discrepancies between training and work environments. General goals of the practicum were: (1) to design a learning styles training format for preschool teachers; (2) to provide teachers with factual information…

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…

The goals of this practicum were to improve kindergarten music instruction by providing the classroom teacher with (1) kindergarten music instructional objectives; (2) a kindergarten skills development sequence; (3) tested sample unit study plans for an interdisciplinary approach to music instruction; and (4) an orientation class in music…

Behavioral criteria for (1) determining child development associate (CDA) trainee competency, (2) awarding college credit, and (3) designing individualized learning programs in CDA competency areas 1, 3, and 5 are provided in this report of an applied research project. Designed to interrelate CDA and Cooperative Assessment of Experiential Learning…

Behavioral criteria for (1) determining child development associate (CDA) trainee competency, (2) awarding college credit, and (3) designing individualized learning programs in CDA competency areas 2, 4, and 6 are provided in this report of an applied research project. Designed to interrelate CDA and Cooperative Assessment of Experiential Learning…