This volume is a collection of nine papers focusing on different aspects of play. The first section, "Play, Growth, Development, and Learning," contains discussions dealing with make-believe play and learning; an all-in-fun approach to thinking, playing, and language learning for young children; and ways children learn through play. The…

An examination of the journal writing of 14 second graders during one school year reveals the evolution from egocentricity, with the work of one student serving as a model against which similarities and differences in the growth patterns of the other students are measured. The students' drawings and writings reflect their learning about the world…

What parents view as being important for their children to learn and how they believe their children are able to learn are reflected not only in the learning opportunities provided in the home but also in the teaching strategies parents use with their children in every day parent/child interactions. An investigation of the language transactions…

Research on working memory has revealed a developmental trend in memory performance, but a controversy exists as to whether the improved performance is due to a developmental increase in working memory total processing space (M-space), is the result of more efficient processing and storage of material, or is due to the use of "chunking" or other…

One-third of all scheduled pediatric visits are for well child care. The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested that anticipatory guidance, which focuses on health maintenance, accident prevention, nutrition, and normal child development, should be a major part of well child visits. Training in well child counseling will only be accepted in…

Three major national longitudinal studies have been conducted in Great Britain, each based on a week's births in, respectively, 1946, 1958, and 1970. This paper focuses on the implications for educators of the findings of the 1958 study, which examined the development, over 23 years, of approximately 5,000 children born in Britain in one week of…

The goal of the early childhood teacher training program at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County is to develop teachers who are able to integrate their own understandings and feelings of self with appropriate actions in the classroom. The program has four components, within each of which the teacher-in-training's knowledge, understanding…

A study is presented of 67 first-time, low-income fathers' perceptions of their knowledge of the development and care of infants. Pregnant women from a low-risk and a high-risk pregnancy clinic helped to recruit their male partners into a prenatal program. The men were randomly assigned either to a control or experimental group. Interviews and…

This book provides the teacher with a framework for assessing children's potential to learn, taking into account cognitive skills, specifically similarity thinking skills, as well as the emotional status of children, particularly the development of independent security. Complex ideas are introduced through the use of case studies and anecdotes.…

Newly assembled evidence indicates that children attending South Carolina's early childhood programs are better prepared for first grade than those who do not attend kindergarten. Children who attended some type of kindergarten in 1979-80 reached higher levels of achievement by the end of first grade than children who did not attend. These levels…

This study seeks to evaluate if and how undergraduate and graduate students in an early childhood education program applied theories of child development and knowledge of pedagogy in discussing and interpreting young children's behavior in two different contexts.This was assessed by analyzing their discourse as they discussed video tapes: (1) in…

The current study was devised to determine the short-term (1 month) and long-term (4 months) effects of having students generate their own examples of selected concepts. More specifically, focus was on determining how self-generated examples might enhance the learning and retrieval of concepts. Subjects were 55 (54 female and 1 male) undergraduate…

For thousands of years metaphors have been used as a teaching device to help people grow, to understand, to develop ego strength, resilience and a quality of life. Each system of therapy has a set of metaphors in the form of a vocabulary. Fairy tales have messages on different levels and leave the metaphors open for interpretations. The power of…

Certain play situations are very difficult for young visually impaired children. This booklet focuses on three areas of play: exploring toys and materials, making transitions from one activity to another, and playing with other children. Through anecdotal descriptions of common situations encountered by caregivers, the booklet discusses why these…

Discussed are some changes needed in teacher education programs if prospective teachers' training in child development is to be relevant to the ethnically diverse children encountered in the classroom. Particular attention is given to characteristics teachers must have to teach children in large urban areas; the incorporation of human growth and…