Background: Comprehension is critical for classroom learning and educational success. Inferences are integral to good comprehension: successful comprehension requires the listener to generate local coherence inferences, which involve integrating information between clauses, and global coherence inferences, which involve integrating textual…

Our concern is to offer support to the entire spectrum of staff wishing to nurture the development of early years science, from unqualified personnel through to early years professionals who may hold any one of the plethora of relevant qualifications. We reflect on what form that science might take, bearing in mind criticisms of science education…

Author Howard Gardner offers his reflections on his book, "Artful Scribbles" which he wrote in 1980 and ponders the ways "Artful Scribble" if written today, might resemble or differ from the 1980 model.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to listen to the voices of youth ages 9-12 about environmental contributors or resources that influence their positive youth development. An adapted version of this Clark and Moss (2011) participatory research method, the mosaic approach provided youth an opportunity to use their voice to provide insight…

In order to achieve the goal of observation, preparation of the adult, the observer, is necessary. This preparation, says Hilla Patell, requires us to "have an appreciation of the significance of the child's spontaneous activities and a more thorough understanding of the child's needs." She discusses the growth of both the desire to…

In reflecting on categories of childhood, youth and adolescence, this article challenges the emphasis on linearity that often emerges within and between these representations of different life stages. It is argued that the focus on the linear dimension of children's lives can act to hide some of the more vital, nonlinear and situated aspects of…

Research Findings: Conversing abstract concepts boost children's language learning. Despite the numerous studies on the linguistic environment of early childhood education settings (ECE), most of this work disregards contextual factors that may influence abstract conversations and omits characteristics of children's verbal participation in these…

Using a large sample of longitudinal assessment data from children in publicly funded infant/toddler care, preschool, and kindergarten (analytic N = 453,468), this study modeled language and literacy trajectories from early infancy through kindergarten for dual language learners (DLLs) from homes representing many different languages and their…

Prediction from early development to later achievement has the potential to improve clinical and educational service delivery as well as to inform developmental theory. In this longitudinal study, we asked how well can educational achievement measured in the final year (Grade 9, age 15) of compulsory education--both overall and for outcomes in the…

We assessed the psychometric properties of the Social Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ), a 30-item questionnaire evaluating social (e.g., disruptive behaviors, bullying) and emotional problems (e.g., anxiety, depression) among children aged 3.5-12 years. Children (n = 1,950, 50.21% boys) were drawn from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child…

Many children in developing countries do not acquire functional literacy skills despite being in school. We apply a cumulative risk (aggregate over a range of risk) and protection framework to assess Ghanaian kindergarteners' early academic skills (N = 1,852, M(age) = 5.3 years; 50.2% female), considering how family-level risk factors and…

The Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being focused on identifying and nurturing promising doctoral students from multiple disciplines to address intractable challenges in the child well-being field. With the support of a national advisory board comprised of child well-being research experts, the program engaged 120 fellows,…

In recent years, schools have begun Social Emotional Learning (SEL) instruction. In 1994, the term Social Emotional Learning was coined by CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; originally named the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning). SEL instruction is critical in schools because communities and…

Super Parents is a group-based, Extension-led parenting program developed to enhance the parent-child relationship. Implemented by trained Head Start staff using the train-the-trainer model, this effort is achieved by teaching positive parenting practices, increasing parents' knowledge of child development, instructing parents in activities and…

Parents in California encounter a complex landscape of early care and education (ECE) options for their young children (King et al., 2019). Not only must they seek out opportunities that fit their budget and their schedule, but they also strive to find a safe, loving environment in which their children will grow and learn. For some families,…