The role of the visual arts in early childhood education has long been recognised and valued as an essential component of the curriculum. The project featured in this writing stems from a collaborative relationship forged between a non-profit, community-based early education centre and community arts centre. As a result of this collaborative…

Preschool experience plays a role in children's development. However, for programs with language and early literacy goals, the question remains whether preschool instructional experiences are sufficiently effective to achieve these goals for all children. In a multisite study, the authors conducted a process-product description of preschool…

This article provides an overview of ECEC services in France for children under three. It reviews research carried out in this area, and shows its genesis, main issues, cultural context and modalities of its production. The French provision for the under threes' is characterized by its increasing diversification. French research shows a diversity…

The backlog in terms of readiness for formal learning structures of children in low-income countries necessitates intervention programmes to alleviate the disadvantage. In these low-income countries, it is unlikely that the state will provide facilities or programmes for preschool children, as resources are just not available. Therefore, as an…

This article gives a general picture of the policy and main structural features of early childhood education services for the younger children in Finland. It also provides an overview of the research on 1 to 3-year-old children in day care centres carried out in Finland during the last 15 years, the focus being on a review of all the eight…

Children's vocabulary development represents a critical foundation for their reading skills. This article describes a curriculum-based vocabulary progress monitoring tool that was used to track the development of Head Start children--and particularly those at highest risk for later reading difficulty--as they learned new words during the school…

Preschool teachers face increasing pressure to ensure that "all" children acquire the competencies they need to start on the path to becoming successful readers in the early grades, including children who may enter preschool with exceptionally weak skills. This article describes efforts to provide individually tailored supports to relatively…

Vivian Gussin Paley, a MacArthur Award-winning author and former kindergarten teacher, has written 12 books that chronicle her work in promoting the fantasy play of young children. A major focus of her books is a process that she developed called "Doing Stories" or "Storytelling/Story Acting" (ST/SA). The ST/SA process requires only that teachers…

This evaluation research compares the first-grade competencies of two cohorts of Bangladesh children who attended "Succeed" preschools, with a control group who did not attend preschool. Testing of these groups occurred in 2006, 2007, and 2005, respectively. The Succeed program aims to improve children's learning and children's school…

This large-scale study describes what children know and can do when they start school in Scotland. The description became possible because a third of Scottish Authorities are involved in a single, broadly based, on-entry baseline assessment of children. The study also looked at variations by home background, sex, age and pre-school experience…

It is essential that preservice teachers have successful experiences with infused technology during teacher preparation. This article describes a project in which collegial interaction among practicing teachers and preservice teachers at four participating institutions of higher education was enhanced by technological innovation. The Recursive,…

An intervention is described which had the twofold aims of increasing the literacy teaching skills of teachers and raising the achievement in Key Stage 1 national tests of selected groups of Year 2 children. The theoretical framework for the intervention is discussed. The training course for and delivery and success of the intervention are…