A team of first-grade teachers began to question their literacy/phonics program, which used a whole-class format for instruction. The teachers felt that teaching the whole class did not allow them to meet the diverse needs of all their students. One of the teachers introduced the rest of the team to developmental-spelling research (i.e., research…

Drawing on the notion of linked lives, this study examined the effects of stability and change in maternal circumstance on developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior in children 4 to 7 years of age. Using data from a national sample of young mothers and growth curve analysis, the study demonstrated that early maternal circumstances…

More than 200 New Zealand men and women studied repeatedly since age 3 were videotaped interacting with their own 3-year-old children to determine (a) whether childrearing and family climate experienced in 3 distinct developmental periods while growing up (i.e., early childhood, middle childhood, early adolescence) predicted parenting and (b)…

This article provides an overview of recent texts devoted to childhood anxiety disorders. The focus is on books that have been published since 2000 that are designed for professionals desiring to gain knowledge of childhood anxiety and for parents to help them understand and assist children with anxiety problems. The books for professionals are…

The study investigated the perceived roles of African rural parents in child education and development. It examined among other things, some selected personal and socio-economic characteristics of parents and their level of role performance in the education and development of their children, and recommendations were made for enhancing adequate…

Educators want and need specific preparation about the knowledge, attitudes, and skills it takes to enhance the involvement of diverse families in their children's education. The importance of preparing educators to work together with diverse families cannot be overstated. A parent is a child's first teacher and the only teacher who remains with a…

Visual perception may be a developmental prerequisite to some types of social understanding. The ability to perceive social information given visual motion appears to develop early. However, children with autism have profound deficits in social cognitive function and may fail to see social motion in the same way that typically developing children…

This article examines elementary music curricula. It presents an overview of research on childhood mental development; the importance of the early experiences of children on childhood development; the impact of environmental factors on language development; children's acquisition of music ability; enhancing elementary music curriculum; and…

The areas considered in this chapter have to do with the aims of family socialization, the nature of influence, linking multiple sources of influence, and the range of families and contexts used as a basis for accounts of socialization. In each area, moving beyond restrictive assumptions opens up new ways of thinking and new research questions.

Professionals in early intervention and early childhood special education often do not feel that they are adequately prepared to provide indirect services in the form of consultation to general early childhood educators. In this article, the authors propose a framework for the practice of consultation in early education and intervention. Although…

Babies are active participants in their learning and need to explore a variety of objects. Nurturing relationships support these explorations. Objects are more clearly remembered and understood. Thus, one activity this article suggests doing with a 12-month-old to encourage abstract thinking, is talking about how squeezing the bottle of ketchup…

In this article, the authors discuss how children develop their motor skills at different age levels. Newborn's movements are jerky and uncoordinated. Spending lots of floor time with a baby lying on her back or stomach helps her develop coordination, balance, and muscle strength during her earliest months. As locomotion enters a baby's life, she…

Educators of young children know how important children's social and emotional development is, not only in terms of developing empathy, compassion, friendships, confidence and the like, but also as an essential component of cognitive growth. As children gain skills in the social/emotional domain, they build language and problem-solving skills, as…

This article emphasizes the importance for parents and caregivers in recognizing and responding to a child's sounds and vocalizations as such are a child's initial attempts at speech and language production. The article presents important factors to consider in determining the presence of a child's speech, language, communication, and learning…

This article reports on a series of 5 analyses of spontaneous production of verbal inflection (tense and person-number agreement) by 2-year-olds acquiring French as a native language. A formal analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results is developed using the unique resources of Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky, 2004). It is…