This issue of the Coordinator's Notebook focuses on the quality of Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) programs. The bulk of the issue is devoted to an article "Quality in ECCD: Everyone's Concern" (Judith Evans), which reviews the need for a definition of high quality in ECCD programs and discusses how diverse stakeholders…

The School Development Program (SDP), initiated 25 years ago by Dr. James Comer, is described, with focus on the need for knowledge about its child development component and the implications of this lack for program implementation and impact. The SDP program is recognized for its primary focus on child development and human relationships as its…

Extending the work of behavioral scientist Urie Bronfenbrenner on the social and contextual factors influencing human development, this collection of essays, from scholars in a range of disciplines, shows how Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory and research have transformed the way many social and behavioral scientists approach, think about, and…

This report is a summary of a December, 1994 research briefing presented by the Board on Children and Families of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, and the Family and Child Well-Being Research Network of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This…

Despite U.S. world leadership in research in child healthcare and development, in all the statistical indicators of children's well-being the United States lags well behind most advanced industrialized societies. This book discusses U.S. public policy issues concerning the healthcare and development of children under age three. Studies are cited…

New research on brain development has profound implications in the areas of child development and education. This review of the research describes how the brain develops to shape children's growing intelligence, addressing such questions as: (1) What are the brain's functions? (2) What are the critical or sensitive periods in brain development?…

Effective discipline methods help children become considerate and responsible human beings. This book describes a way to discipline children without using force, fear, or punishment. Following an introduction, the book's seven chapters are: (1) "Learning How To Be Parents," which discusses the difficulties of parenting and the lack of…

An individualized infant screening/parent education program using the Kent Infant Development (KID) Scale to identify infants at risk for developmental delay and to provide parent education and counseling about infant behavioral development is examined here. The screening was integrated into established community agencies, utilizing current agency…

This paper examines mastery motivation in infants from birth to 3 years of age and outlines critical areas for parent and teacher involvement in the development of motivation, including recommended activities at each level. It asserts that from birth, children have an innate desire to learn about their world, quickly learning that they can control…

Emotion scripts provide children with culturally meaningful emotional experiences and plans of action for managing feelings and the circumstances surrounding emotional experiences. In an effort to understand how developing children acquire these emotion scripts, two studies described here investigated how children deploy emotion scripts to manage…

Intended for use in Florida training programs for caregivers of infants and toddlers with disabilities, this guide presents an overview of the Model of Interdisciplinary Training for Children with Handicaps (MITCH); provides a user's guide to the series of MITCH modules; and presents specific information for presenting Module 1, which focuses on…

Chapter 1 of this document on learner outcomes in early childhood education (ECE) discusses the values, educational philosophy, mission, and goals of the Minnesota State Board of Education. Chapter 2 describes components of an effective early childhood program, the role and purpose of ECE, and emerging issues in ECE. An overview of learner…

This guide offers Spanish-speaking parents ways in which they can help their children learn about science at home and in the community. Science is a way of looking at the world. It uses everyday techniques such as observation and classification to give us information about things and how they work. Advice to parents that want to support their…

This study examined parent-child relationships during intervention with 25 preschoolers having developmental disabilities. Both parent and child performances were analyzed on a series of behavioral attributes reflecting developmentally appropriate child goals, adult strategies, partnership goals, and potential interactive problems. Videotaped…

This set of checklists in separate English- and Spanish-language versions, is designed to help parents and childcare providers determine through observations a child's developmental progress from birth to age 5. The checklists are excerpted from the "Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready" guidebook, written by a retired kindergarten teacher with 25 years…