Child-directed speech (CDS), which can help children learn new words, has been rigorously studied among infants and parents in home settings. Yet, far less is known about the CDS that teachers use in classrooms with toddlers and children's responses, an important question because many toddlers, particularly in high-need communities, attend…

Education laws and policies have moved toward promoting socio-emotional (SEL) skills, adopting numerous terminologies in their standards. However, the incremental change has left compensatory education practitioners who are committed to promoting SEL opportunities with little guidance when the programs' governing policies do not include language…

An increasing amount of attention and public funding has been dedicated in recent years to the field of Early Childhood Education and the expansion of early childhood programs in the United States. Program quality in early childhood is evaluated based on program-level structural features and instructional support (e.g. problem solving, feedback,…

Background: Preschool children who are at risk have been shown to demonstrate developmental delays in their fundamental motor skills. The body of research on motor skill development of children indicates that these children, when provided with motor skill instruction, significantly improved their locomotor and object control (OC) skill…

Participation in preschool programs has been associated with a number of positive outcomes. Evaluating data from the 40-year follow-up to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program Study, Belfield and his colleagues show how preschool participation by low income children relates to significant economic benefits both to the children by the time they…

Coaching is one of several professional development approaches being used in early childhood to facilitate improved teacher instruction to promote child outcomes. Despite its use, little is known about how coaching promotes teacher knowledge and skills (Sheridan, Edwards, Marvin, & Knoche, 2009). We reviewed the early childhood coaching literature…

This study describes a Head Start teacher professional development program conducted by a well-respected theatre-in-education organization. The professional development program provided teachers with opportunities to observe and participate in classroom drama sessions, introduced them to drama strategies and techniques, and guided them through a…

We examined whether a theoretically based number board game could be translated into a practical classroom activity that improves Head Start children's numerical knowledge. Playing the number board game as a small group learning activity promoted low-income children's number line estimation, magnitude comparison, numeral identification, and…

To add to the emerging early intervention research on universal supports for children, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an intervention designed to increase teachers' use of two universal behavioral supports on target children's behavior. The children targeted for this study were at elevated risk for problem…

This article discusses the kinds of instructional activities that young children need to develop basic language and literacy skills based on recent research and program evaluations. This includes approaches to develop alphabetic understanding, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and oral language. Activities and materials from the Pre-kindergarten…

This dissertation study employed quantitative methods to investigate the impact of adult questioning styles on children's novel vocabulary acquisition during shared storybook reading. In an effort to examine adult qualitative variations in shared storybook readings, two experiments were conducted to assess the effect of noneliciting questions…

This research brief summarizes a report by Laura E. Hill and Joseph M. Hayes, "Out-of-School Immigrant Youth" (2007, 134 pp.) [ED496282]. In that report, the authors paint a detailed portrait of a little-noticed immigrant population group, mainly from Mexico and Central America, who are not receiving any kind of education or schooling.…

This collection of reprinted speeches delivered at the 1967 Ohio Conference on Disadvantaged Children covers the following topics: learning as the discovery of personal meaning, occupational and vocational training, characteristics of successful Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title I Programs, the inherent difficulties of cultural…

Evaluation data from Title I compensatory education projects under the Hawaii State Department of Education were collected to examine the effects of different instructional settings and approaches on the achievement of Title I students who received remedial reading and mathematics instruction from 1978 to 1981. Based on the descriptive statistics,…