Research shows responsive caregiving enhances children's brain development, with parental knowledge predicting positive behaviors and outcomes. However, knowledge varies widely across educational levels, highlighting the need for targeted interventions. Despite evidence that this knowledge can be improved, no comprehensive metric exists for…

Today's classrooms call for a delicate balance of policy and practice. Early childhood educators are tasked with developing the social, emotional, and academic wellbeing of the children they serve, while also following school, district, and government expectations. Many teachers struggle to effectively teach academic content, given their students'…

Current conversations about children's literacy have focused on the need for more phonics and decoding instruction and have sidelined the importance of children's language development, argues George Hruby. Language development involves more than the ability to decode written language. The ability to understand the meaning of those words is also…

This article unfurls in the aftermath of an event where three first grade children at a reputable progressive elementary school were found playing slavery during school recess. As word caught on, parents ignited into a frenzy: some railed against the teacher, others demanded an answer, while still others believed this was precisely the meaning of…

Australia is the only country in the world that regularly collects comprehensive information about the holistic development of children entering their first year of school. Known as the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), the data gathered from this work guides national and state policy. These types of measurements are useful for the…

Based on Laura Colker, Derry Koralek, and Diane Trister Dodge's classic book, originally published by NAEYC in 1993, High-Quality Early Childhood Programs offers detailed descriptions of what one should see in high-quality programs (and why) to provide a strong foundation of child development knowledge and principles translated into practice.…

This guidance document is designed to support state and local technical assistance (TA) providers in implementing effective professional development (PD) on the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) process with early intervention and early childhood special education practitioners. This document provides an overview of national resources and materials…

Hachey's (2013) article celebrates a revolution that is taking place in early childhood mathematics education, fueled in part by developmental research demonstrating the mathematical capabilities of young children. At the same time, Hachey notes that the mathematics revolution she describes is not yet complete. In this commentary, the author…

This article represents an amazing reversal of linguistic analysis. Usually Montessori language is translated into "state" terminology. In this case, Sarah Werner Andrews puts state quality assessment terms into Montessori language. For example, domains for school readiness include 1) physical wellbeing and motor development, 2) social…

Cognitive development is a cultural process. More experienced cultural members and the practices, institutions, and artifacts of the culture provide support and guidance for children as they develop knowledge and thinking skills. In this article, the authors describe the value that is added to our understanding of cognitive development when…

Children with significantly advanced development are not a tiny minority. Although some 8-15 percent of young children fall into this category, teachers in the early grades identified only 2 percent of such children. Characteristics of preschoolers who learn at an accelerated pace and guidance in supporting them are readily available in the…

As knowledge production, interpretation, and representation in educational settings rolls along Guttenberg's (text-based) track, the twenty-first-century world outside the doors of the schools and universities is exploding with visual ways of knowing and being. As visual text is silenced in education, it is simultaneously exploited in the…

Social and economic changes affect children indirectly, through the modifications they engender in parental behavior. No-fault divorce laws, for example, made divorce easier and led to a substantial increase in the number of separated families. In contrast to social and economic change, technological change can impact children directly without…

Robots and humans receive partial, fragmentary hints about the world's state through their respective sensors. These hints--tiny patches of light intensity, frequency components of sound, etc.--are far removed from the world of objects which we feel and perceive so effortlessly around us. The study of infant development and the construction of…

This paper makes a fundamentally simple line of empirically supported argumentation. The increasing demands for high level student learning can best be achieved by the use of the substantive research evidence of the past decade demonstrating that developmentally oriented instruction facilitates academic, behavioral, and social performance. Most…