The transition to kindergarten is a critical developmental marker for young children. While the early childhood literature includes several established best practices to ensure a smooth and positive transition for both children and their families, less is known about transitional experiences of Mexican immigrants. Using a qualitative approach,…

The Office of Early Learning and School Readiness provides technical assistance and resources for our partners working with families, preschool staff and communities to meet the individual needs of preschool children with disabilities. The goal of this manual is to offer information to preschool programs and school districts that are responsible…

Educators and families frequently use children's picture books to introduce young children to unfamiliar experiences, including the start of school. In this study, we examine 52 U.S. picture books portraying the transition to kindergarten. Specifically, this content analysis explores the depiction of kindergarten teachers, including the…

A child's readiness for school can impact their trajectory in subsequent grades and later in life. Therefore, children must be prepared when transitioning to kindergarten. As a kindergarten teacher at a Title I elementary school, I noticed a lack of readiness and conducted this qualitative action research study to create a readiness plan for my…

This ethnographic study aimed to investigate children's transition from home to preschool education in a traditional village in Turkey. The data were collected through participant observation, interviews, document analysis and researcher diary. Descriptive and content analyses were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that physical…

In this study, we explore parent and teacher perceptions of school readiness (SR) among 4-year-olds learning English as a second language (ESL) and native English-speaking 4-year-olds and compare these perceptions to child scores. Child assessments focused on letter and numeral knowledge. These data were collected from 387 children (52% boys),…

In this preregistered study, we used latent change score models to address two research aims: (1) whether preschool-aged children's language gains, over a year of early childhood education, were associated with later performance on state-mandated, literacy-focused kindergarten readiness and Grade 3 reading achievement assessments; and (2) whether…

The call to transform education must begin with the youngest children. The world is not on track in meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2 committing countries to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030. There is solid scientific evidence that early…

Considerable interest is directed to promoting children's success as they transition to kindergarten. It is generally proposed that children who experience lower levels of transition difficulties at kindergarten entry achieve higher academic and social-emotional gains, although this premise has seldom been explicitly evaluated in tandem with…

We investigated whether child temperament (negative emotionality, 5 months) moderated the association between maternal stimulation (5 months--2½ years) and academic readiness and achievement (vocabulary, mathematics, and reading). We applied structural equation modeling to the data from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (N =…

Income-based childcare programs provide children access to developmentally appropriate and vocabulary-rich literacy experiences. For this study, participating U.S. Head Start Centers requested families complete a weekly home literacy log to encourage vocabulary-rich shared book reading activities in the home. Using participant characteristics,…

This case study explores effective practices within a district's early care and education model. Interviews were conducted with eight parents of high-performing students and seven district ECE partners from Promise City. The results of this case study lead to the development of a model that comprises best practices within the (a) informal ECE…

America's reckoning with racial injustice and the pursuit of equity have led some public school systems to reduce or terminate (or at least question) special programs for high achievers, such as "gifted" education, honors courses, and selective high schools. Historically, such programs have served disproportionately few Black, Hispanic,…

A significant academic achievement gap has existed for many decades between high- and low-income students in America's schools (Reardon & Portilla, 2016). Of the many solutions proposed to eliminate the poverty gap, early education has shown promising results (Connors, Morris, & Friedman-Krauss, 2015). Eliminating the achievement gap…

While child development is well-recognized as a complex process which could hardly be decomposed into separate lines or domains in contemporary psychological theories, the decomposition approach is widely used in empirical studies. Based on the cultural-historical theory, this study argues for adopting the unit of analysis as a way to bridge this…