Is it the teacher's job to assist children in developing a healthy sexual identity in early childhood? A healthy sexual identity is developed over the course of a lifetime through the "process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs, and values about such important topics as identity, relationships, and intimacy." Teachers may feel…

The author looks at children's play from the perspective of interpretive reproduction, emphasizing the way children create their own unique peer cultures, which he defines as a set of routines, artifacts, values, and concerns that children engage in with their playmates. The article focuses on two types of routines in the peer culture of preschool…

During their theatre project, a group of 6-year-old children tried to pursue the role of active actors, decision-makers and producers. For them their theatrical activity was viewed as work, despite the fact that adults tend to count it as play. Children were also eager to earn from their performance. Money was a sign of appreciation and status,…

After a few years of teaching high school physics to juniors and seniors, the author decided it was time for a new challenge. That was when she serendipitously saw the opening for an elementary "science resource teacher." Teaching elementary school was going to be messy, in every possible sense. The author realized that what worked for the big…

Empirical and theoretical literature on cooperative problem solving in preschool children suggests that integrating features of play into structured, experimental settings should increase the benefits of joint peer interactions and task performance. Four- and five-year-old peer dyads completed a playful, flexible, and child-driven building task or…

The collection of papers contained in this special issue was elicited by a worldwide call for papers to explore settings that provided nature experiences for young children, with attention given to the effects that these initiatives have on the holistic development and environmental awareness of the children, as well as impacts on the teachers and…

Most children are able to successfully develop and use social skills in the context of interactions with peers and significant adults. Moreover, the ability to interact successfully with peers is crucial in establishing and maintaining viable social relationships. For children with disabilities, like pervasive development disorder (PDD),…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) scholars and health professionals worldwide share a common concern about the decline in children's physical development and activity due to lack of access to good quality outdoor environments. Early childhood education and care facilities across the world have been affected by trends that are limiting…

A group of first-semester engineering students participated in a game design course. The aim of the course was to learn how to design computer games and programming skills by creating their own games, thereby applying their game-playing experiences to gain knowledge about game design. The aim was for students to develop a more critically…

Research Findings: Child temperament is an important construct, but its measurement has been marked by a number of weaknesses that have diminished the frequency with which it is assessed in practice. We address this problem by presenting the results of a quantitative construct validation study. We calculated validity indices by hypothesizing the…

Children with profound hearing loss often do not have the same prelinguistic opportunities for social and communication interaction as peers with typical hearing and benefit from structured opportunities to learn these skills. This study examined the effect of two interventions to improve the communicative and social skills of four preschoolers…

The current study evaluated the peer-to-peer interactions of at-risk children enrolled in Head Start who participated in a social pragmatic intervention targeting skills such as initiations, responses, name use, proximity, and turn-taking skills. Eight Head Start classroom teams received two workshops and two coaching sessions and were taught to…

At the start of preschool, four-year-old pupils differ in their development, including in their capacity to self-regulate their playing and learning. In preschool and primary school, educational processes are generally adapted to the mean age of the pupils in the class. The same may apply to pupil-monitoring systems based on information and…

Drawing on the work of Celia Genishi, this article discusses data from an ethnographic case study of young Latina/o children, starting in their four-year-olds classroom in a Head Start Program through their first grade year in a dual-language program in a public school. The children attended a bilingual Head Start program that followed a…

Identifying an intervention that is effective for multiple populations can be a challenge. Given the potential range of students in an inclusive setting, the need to identify common strategies that promote skill development for multiple populations is essential. Professionals need to identify those strategies that promote skill development that…