This training guide is intended to help Head Start staff promote mental health for all members of the Head Start Community, by means of activities that build skills in creating responsive, respectful relationships with co-workers, parents, and children. The guide has five working sections, the first three of which are training modules. Each of the…

An evaluation was conducted to examine the structure and design of the Continuous Progress Report (CPR), an observation scale used to measure students' early developmental skills in the District of Columbia public schools. Item construction and the relative consistency of measurement constructs in the CPR were the specific focus of the evaluation.…

An integral part of The Developing Child video modules from the same producer, this workbook provides a very useful clearly formatted modular presentation, 30 modules in all, of information on all areas of child development. The workbook can be used with the videos, without them as a stand alone tutorial or review source, or as the outline for a…

Prior research concerning young children's moral development has been conducted primarily in same-age environments. This study investigated whether preschool children's moral (helping) behaviors are related to younger peer-directed internal state language (talking about younger peer's feelings, wants, and abilities), perspective-taking skills, and…

Goal 1 of the 6 national education goals established by President Bush and the nation's governors states that by the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn. This document provides schools and communities with information about what children need to be able to start school ready to learn and gives examples of…

A study evaluated the Early Childhood Resources Teacher Training Project (TTP). The purpose of the TTP is to train preschool and early primary grade teachers in developmentally appropriate practices. The evaluation sought to: (1) determine the extent to which teachers undergoing training were able to understand and implement the content of the…

This Spanish-language publication reflects the philosophy and support of the Bernard van Leer Foundation for early childhood care and development. It highlights different approaches to early childhood care and development and explains why the foundation believes that investing in early childhood is one of the best ways of building a brighter,…

The diagnostic framework presented in this manual seeks to address the need for a systematic, multidisciplinary, developmentally based approach to the classification of mental health and developmental difficulties in the first 4 years of life. An introduction discusses clinical approaches to assessment and diagnosis, gives an overview of the…

Using information from four national surveys and a decade of research, this book demonstrates the connection between family structure and a child's prospects for success. It shows how divorce, particularly with often-attendant drops in income, parental involvement, and access to community resources, diminishes children's chances for wellbeing. It…

Noting that most home-schooling materials adhere to conventional schooling at the cost of creativity, this handbook provides guidelines for building a successful home school curriculum, one that avoids student resentment and parent burnout, targets children's interest and motivation, and understands how a child's developmental stages contribute to…

This paper presents Developmentally and Culturally Appropriate Practice (DCAP) as an extension of Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) which combines the goals of multicultural and anti-bias education with those of early childhood education (ECE). The paper presents characteristics of multicultural pedagogical strategies, with the root of…

In contrast to standardized tests, which do not accurately reflect the achievement of young students, portfolio assessment is a valuable tool for documenting a student's development. Portfolio assessment can be conducted formally or informally through observation or by interview. Documentation of observations can take the form of checklists,…

This practicum report describes the development of a systematic method whereby students would be able to select internship sites that demonstrate developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood education. Students in a child development internship program were provided guidelines for selecting an appropriate field placement; students were…

This monograph presents the proceedings of the first National Institute on Drug Abuse technical review related to the conduct of controlled studies on prenatal exposure to drugs of abuse. Papers in the monograph are categorized by session. The first session (two papers) focused on the detection and quantification of prenatal drug exposure in…

This paper presents data documenting gender differences in preschool exceptional education placement for a large metropolitan school district (Tampa, Florida). Research is reviewed in the areas of biological and physiological gender differences, psychological gender development, and sociological influences on gender based developmental outcomes.…