The far-reaching impacts of the teacher-child relationship, including academic achievement and social/behavioral adjustment, have been well-documented. At the same time, literature also suggests that teacher perceptions of teacher-child relationships are impacted by the race/ethnicity match or mismatch between teacher and child, with matching…

Children from low-income households are at risk for entering school behind their more economically advantaged peers across major domains of school readiness. The Head Start program represents the federal government's response to these achievement gaps by mandating the use of scientifically based assessments and curricula to provide children with…

Based on the emotion socialization and bioecological models, the present study examined the contributions of teacher emotion socialization (i.e., teacher reactions to child emotions) on children's social-emotional behaviors, and the moderating effect of child temperamental surgency on these relations in the preschool context. A total of 337…

This longitudinal study examined the influence of prekindergarten teacher characteristics and classroom instructional processes during mathematical activities on the growth of mathematics learning scores in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade. Participants attended state-funded and Head Start prekindergarten programs. Mathematical…

This study investigated the relationship of kindergarten teachers' ratings of their students' 21st century skills (college readiness skills) with students' behavioral and academic performance. Teachers rated the frequency that their students (n = 579) demonstrated persistence, curiosity, affective, and cognitive (e.g., critical thinking) behaviors…

There is considerable variation in state policies related to the certification required for teachers in kindergarten and first grade, and relatively little is known about these policies' effects on student learning. This study considers whether children who have kindergarten and first-grade teachers with certification in early childhood education…

By adapting a self-administered assessment of coparenting, we sought to provide a new tool, the Cocaring Relationship Questionnaire, to measure parent-teacher, or cocaring relationships, and provide additional construct validity for the multidimensional concept of cocaring. Next, recognizing the importance of parental involvement for young…

Young children are able to benefit from early science teaching but many preschool teachers have not had opportunities to deepen their own understanding of science or to develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in relation to specific science topics and concepts. This study presents the results of efficacy research on Foundations of…

The focus of the present work was to examine teachers' use of dynamic processes when implementing static language lesson plans that explicitly required teachers to employ scaffolding strategies so as to differentiate instruction. Participants were 37 preschool teachers and 177 children in their classrooms. Videotaped classroom observations were…

The present study used hierarchical linear modeling to examine predictors of students' emotional and behavioral difficulties in preschool classrooms. Specifically, the study examined (a) the link between teachers' perceptions of their own emotional intelligence and students' emotional and behavioral difficulties, (b) the link between teachers'…

Background: Fundamental motor skill (FMS) interventions when delivered by an expert can significantly improve the FMS of young children with and without developmental delays. However, there is a gap in the literature as few early childhood centers employ experts with the professional background to deliver FMS intervention. Purpose: The primary…

Research Findings: Mental state verbs (MSV), a component of literate and academic language, may facilitate vocabulary growth, as they relate to metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness as well as decontextualized talk, all of which have been associated with vocabulary growth. In this study, we examined teacher MSV use in group content…

Research Findings: This study examines lexical- and sentence-level dimensions of academic language to describe teachers' natural use of academic language and its association with vocabulary growth in 489 at-risk 4-year-olds enrolled in Head Start preschool classrooms. Using transcripts derived from video recordings of book-reading sessions in 52…

Data about processes and outcomes of preschool teacher education is scarce. This paper examines the opportunities to learn (OTL) of prospective preschool teachers (N = 1,851) at different types and stages of preschool teacher education and their relation to general pedagogical knowledge (GPK), mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK), and…

Research Findings: This study examined the potential impacts of ongoing participation (twice weekly for 30 weeks) in teacher-child managed whole-group language and literacy instruction on prekindergarten children's social interaction with classmates. Teacher-child managed whole-group instruction that provides children with opportunities to engage…