Although children's school success is a parental goal in most cultures, there is wide cultural variation in the qualities that parents most wish their children to develop for that purpose. A questionnaire contained forty-one child qualities was administered to 757 parents in seven cultural communities in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland,…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a topic of increased policy interest in the Slovak Republic where improving quality in the ECEC sector is a subject of growing importance. The OECD has identified five effective policy levers to encourage quality in the sector: 1) quality goals and regulations; 2) curriculum and guidelines; 3)…

The aim of this article is to present findings from a study (Alexandersson, 2007) about how one student--called Sofia--with intellectual disability interacts and communicates with her classmates and her teachers in an inclusive setting. Furthermore, the aim is also to analyse in what way the interaction contributes to Sofia's social participation…

A group of 119 children in Sweden were followed from infancy to age 8 to determine the relationship between type of child care children received and their later development. At the age of 8, children were given aptitude tests and were rated by teachers on school performance and social and personal development. A number of background variables were…

Investigated effects of program auspice (nonprofit versus profit child care), adult-to-child ratios, and class age span on teaching and on preschoolers' social and cognitive development. Found that age, gender, social background, and age span were significant predictors of children's social and cognitive development; adult-to-child ratio and…

Data were collected on the type of day care experienced by 119 Swedish children who were followed from their first year of life to age 8. Types of day care included: (1) center care continuing from the first or second year; (2) center care begun at a later age; (3) mixed care, or, transition from family day care to center care; (4) day mother…

This pamphlet presents a description of two interrelated Swedish research projects both of which studied the effects of preschool programs on young children. The first project, a traditional preschool curriculum, is examined in terms of Weikart's scheme for preschool curriculum models. The evaluation procedure involved a comparison of 130…