Decades of research and clinical observations have demonstrated the harmful effects of parent-child separation on children's short- and long-term well-being (Society for Research in Child Development, 2018). Young children may be separated from their parents due to a variety of circumstances. This article provides recommendations for the…

Children of incarcerated parents may face an increased risk for developmental and behavioral problems. Early care and education can play a positive role in addressing these risks and providing positive support. However, these children are largely hidden when it comes to formal early care and education policy and program initiatives. This article…

In this essay, I offer relationship-building as central to teaching and learning in early-childhood contexts. With a distinct focus on historically marginalized students in United States education, particularly Black boys during childhood, I draw on personal experiences and my own position as teacher-researcher to center Black boys' humanity and…

Most accountability policies monitor Head Start quality at the center level by selecting a subset of classrooms within a center to represent quality. This study explores variation in classroom quality in Head Start and implications for accountability systems and children's well-being. We find that one third to one half of the variation in quality…

This practical resource explains brain development from prenatal to age 8 with suggestions for activities educators and caregivers can use to foster children's cognitive growth. The authors begin with the basics of brain development, and the issues that affect it, and then provide information specific to infant, toddler, preschool, and…

Providing the support that children need to build cognitive skills (i.e. working memory and processing speed) has come to the forefront for special educators today. This study investigated how fourth-grade students within an experimental classroom (N=14) and special education students within a small group setting (N=9) improved their working…

Early care and education (ECE) programs provide nurturing environments for young children--and the learning environments of children simultaneously serve as the working environments of early educators. In Sonoma County, approximately 140 child care centers serve children from birth through age five, along with more than 330 family child care…

Conversation analysis (CA) can be a useful tool for research when investigating toddlers' social interactions, because it can showcase their capabilities and agency through in-depth analysis of their verbal and non-verbal actions. This article argues that by using CA to analyse the details of toddler conversations within the peer group, we can not…

Research supporting social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools demonstrates numerous benefits for students, including increased academic achievement and social and emotional competencies. However, research supporting the adoption of SEL lacks a clear conception of "ethical competence." This lack of clarity is problematic for two…

This paper explores the concept of miniature students to interrogate the ways in which early childhood care and education systems in East Asian countries are being constructed. Experiences drawn from working in the Hong Kong education system and observations of teaching and researching in Hong Kong have enabled an analysis about the ways in which…

The purpose of this article is to examine the nature of appropriate social studies education in the Kindergarten and Pre-Kindergarten years. The importance of social competence development as a basic foundation of the social studies in the early years of schooling is examined, with particular attention to the commonalities shared between goals and…

In a rapidly shifting twenty-first century context, early childhood education and care (ECEC) must consider contextual, scientific, and policy realities in order to realize its social obligations to young children. The current status of ECEC globally bears both good and bad news; many countries are paying attention to the importance of the early…

Nearly a century of psychological research and recent advances in neuropsychology suggest that there is a "learning to learn" stage in early childhood, during which children need to create the foundations of human cognition, which relies upon the ability to logically categorise incoming information. Mid-twentieth-century psychologists…

Preschool education is now firmly linked to two aspirational purposes: as the first step on a trajectory of academic and life success for all children and as wise economic policy for the nation. Both purposes are grounded in an assumption that the early developmental boost children receive from preschool will produce lasting impacts. However,…

Purpose: This study tested proposals that maternal verbal responses shape infant vocal development, proposals based in part on evidence that infants modified their vocalizations to match mothers' experimentally manipulated vowel or consonant-vowel responses to most (i.e., 70%-80%) infant vocalizations. We tested the proposal in ordinary rather…