This brief provides policymakers and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the purpose, characteristics, uses, and types of Kindergarten Entry Assessments (KEAs). It emphasizes the importance of high-quality KEAs in guiding instructional practices and assessing developmental progress in young learners. It highlights that high-quality KEAs…

This study aimed to understand the relationship between reception children's experiences of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and their academic achievement and socio-emotional development during their first year at school in September 2020 to July 2021. This was an exploratory study combining parent and school surveys with children's…

This study adds to the current literature by examining how different developmental areas (language problems or externalizing and internalizing behaviour problems) affect the possibility of a child receiving extra support early in life. The data were drawn from an online survey of 2779 children in Norway conducted in 2015 and included information…

Background: Mother-child mental state talk (MST) supports children's developing social-emotional understanding. In typically developing (TD) children, family conversations about emotion, cognition, and causes have been linked to children's emotion understanding. Specific language impairment (SLI) may compromise developing emotion understanding and…

Research Findings: This study investigated the long-term interrelations among children's language competencies, their home literacy environment (HLE), and 3 aspects of socioemotional development from ages 3 to 8, controlling for characteristics of the child and family. For this sample of 547 typically developing German children, parents and…

The quality of the verbal environment sets the stage for young children's developing perceptions of themselves and others. This document provides hands-on, practical advice for practitioners to support children's self-perception and coping skills by establishing and maintaining a positive verbal environment. Positive verbal environments enhance…

Defines the goals of social constructivism as providing a democratic and critical learning experience for students through the building of knowledge about self, school, everyday experience, and society. Reviews specific implications and practical applications of the philosophy. (TB)

The role that talk plays in socialization, social development, and possibly cognitive development is described. Research on talk is categorized as follows: studies that consider talk as a tool for investigation; studies that focus on development of grammar or language acquisition; and studies that fall between those extremes. (LB)

Social cognition refers to that ability which makes it possible for one to infer another's covert, inner psychological experiences and to interact with that individual accordingly (Shantz 1975; Flavell 1977). Piaget (1926) maintains that the ability to decenter socially and to take into account the perspective of another develops gradually as the…

Records the attempts of a very young child to construct his own understanding of what it means to die and of the social impact of death within his own culture. Includes transcripts in which the child uses narrative to frame his first, tentative ideas about death and responds to literature to further extend his understanding. (JD)

The recognition of linguistic stereotypes based on gender and actual speech production were examined in 10 four-year-old and 10 six-year-old children. Eight linguistic forms were presented to the children in two different contexts in a story. After each sentence containing one of the forms, the children were asked whether a boy or girl had spoken,…

Indicates that (1) children's violations decreased with age; (2) in the dyadic context, fathers assumed a more directive role in response to children's violations than did mothers; (3) there were no between-parent differences between parents regarding reactions to children's violations in the triadic context. (NKA)

Input language may have an effect on child development that goes far beyond language development alone. Language is the medium by which children acquire at least a portion of their sex role and social class or group characteristics, world view, and emotional and psychological well-being. Existing theories of psychological development ignore…

Theoretical correspondences between the language and play development of young children and developmental aspects of play and speech are discussed prior to a report of a study comparing categories of cognitive complexity nested within social categories of solitary play and self speech. Participants were 36 preschool boys and girls approximately…

Language acquisition and other developmental processes in children do not occur haphazardly, but rather follow a sequence that is well-established, and though subject to a moderate variation in detail from child to child, surprisingly uniform. This book provides information to parents concerning their children's development levels and attainments…