Notes that educators familiar with factors that support resiliency can shore up protective mechanisms in young children. Defines resilience in children, discussing 11 protective strategies that teachers can employ to fortify resilience in children in areas of personal characteristics and traits, and family and community factors. Suggests that…

Examines the literature on child-adult relationships in early childhood with respect to the role of social processes linking child-adult relationships with early school outcomes. Presents implications for a developmental perspective on schooling and addresses processes and mechanisms involved in relationships that may prove fruitful in future…

Studied effects of mainstreaming on the roles of professionals in 16 inclusive preschool programs, using interviews, observation, and document analysis. Found that a sense of shared philosophy or joint ownership of children, when reached jointly rather than being lopsided or imposed from outside, produced more positive experiences, and that key…

Examined whether the characteristics in perception of speech sounds found in preverbal hearing infants might extend to the perception of signed language in infants with congenital deafness. Seventeen Japanese mother-infant dyads participated in the study. Found that infants with deafness showed greater attentional and affective responsiveness to…

As part of the National Eldercare Campaign, a Minnesota project replicated a paraprofessional home care worker curriculum for training American Indians to serve the frail elderly. It addressed the need to incorporate minority aging knowledge into caregiver training, provided better community-based home care, and gave employment opportunities to…

This article provides examples from early childhood classrooms to illustrate the four defining features of supportive social learning, an alternative approach to discipline: teachers appreciate all perspectives and include everyone in creating a sense of community, relationships-in-community take precedence over other agendas, teacher sees…

This workshop presents information on mentoring relationships within child care settings. Articles are: (1) "Mentoring Teachers...A Partnership in Learning" (Patricia Scallan-Berl); (2) "The Potential Gains of Peer Mentoring among Children" (Leslie Moguil); (3) "Mentoring Advocates in the Context of Early Childhood…

Asserts that child care providers must collaborate with children's families in order to better understand their culture and their child, and to successfully deal with challenging behavior issues. Addresses: (1) culture definition; (2) culture and identity; (3) cultural differences; (4) seeing culture; (5) child care and school culture; (6) moving…

Examined parent, teacher, and child care staff views on coordination between part-day school and child care. Found some key differences among the groups in priorities for programs for kindergarten-age children. Devised arguments in favor of small-scale demonstration programs to expand provision of child care services and for rigorous evaluation of…

A study investigated care staff (n=12) perceptions of the language comprehension levels of adults with learning disabilities. Differences between estimates and actual scores increased with sentence difficulty. At the highest level of difficulty, staff consistently over estimated the clients' ability, while both under and over estimation occurred…

This article explains how educators can use the ecological congruence assessment process for identifying functional goals for young children with disabilities. Process steps include: teacher collects information about functioning in usual classroom activities, routines, and transitions; summarizes the collected information; and shares the…

Data from the Family Child Care and Relative Care Study were used to construct a budget for paid family child caregivers and to examine financial incentives. Results indicated that income was low compared to female-dominated occupations for providers without their own children in care, but not much lower if providers cared for several and/or for…

Examines ways to use effectively the technology involved in teaching and learning online as they pertain to training child caregivers. Provides guidelines for early childhood administrators to prepare themselves to teach an online or web-enhanced course or training program. Identifies challenges and barriers confronting online learners. Lists…

This article explores research on the use of touch with people with mental retardation and learning disabilities for the purpose of developing a staff training package. The review indicates the therapeutic role of touch and its use in behavior management and discusses the need for increasing staff awareness of the practice with this group of…

Naturalistic mother-child speech between autistic, Down's syndrome, or normal children and their mothers was studied to determine whether imitation facilitates grammar acquisition. Spontaneous utterances were longer and contained more advanced grammar than imitation utterances, indicating that imitation does not play a significant role in grammar…