Background: This study tested a preschool-home partnership intervention, in which early childhood teachers encouraged the parents/caregivers of preschoolers to engage in dialogic reading at home. This was an experimental test of Bronfenbrenner's hypothesis that parental involvement in early care and education programs should promote child…

This paper revisits the longstanding observation that children produce modal verbs (e.g., must, could) with their root meanings (e.g., abilities, obligations) by age 2, typically a year or more earlier than with their epistemic meanings (e.g., inferences). Established explanations for this "Epistemic Gap" argue that epistemic language…

Developmental scholars, parents, and policymakers alike have long heralded the opening years of life as disproportionately influential. Recent work on adolescence has revealed, however, greater influence of these later years--but without considering how experience during these two periods interact. We address this issue by studying adverse…

Twenty-five percent of U.S. schoolchildren attend a rural school. Yet, rural school issues are typically subsumed by debates focused on urban problems and the misguided notion of ample resources available for their remediation. These assumptions belie the reality of the spatial mismatch that exists for rural schools, especially around mental…

An individual is born with millions of neurons and the quality of the experiences he/she will have at the early years can potentially determine the future life of that person. This makes quality early childhood education pivotal. However, the perception people have about this influence how they prepare themselves to provide that quality early…

Children are members of families and communities, and the languages learnt within these contexts contribute to a child's sense of "belonging, being and becoming" throughout life (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009). Encouraging children to bring their home languages into early childhood education and care…

Over 5 million American children under the age of 18 years, a disproportionate number of whom are Black or Latino, have had a residential parent jailed or incarcerated. While a number of existing studies identify parental incarceration as a key risk factor for poor child and family outcomes, there is more limited information describing programs…

The aim of this study is to run a longitudinal, ten year experimental study studying the effects of preschool attendance on long-term academic performance throughout elementary school. This study will sample 500 students from the Kalamazoo, Michigan community and observe their standardized test scores as well as their behavioral and social…

Despite evidence that young children are sensitive to differences in angle measure, older students frequently struggle to grasp this important mathematical concept. When making judgments about the size of angles, children often rely on erroneous dimensions such as the length of the angles' sides. The present study tested the possibility that…

This paper offers a critical examination of the problematics of childhood and adolescent sexuality and sex education in an Islamic context. By exploring conceptions of (pre-marital) sexuality, childhood, and maturity/adulthood, it is suggested that: (i) "childhood" and "sexuality" do not coexist harmoniously in Islamic…

The authors argue that childhood played a special role in the cultural-historical theory of human culture and biosocial development made famous by Soviet psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky and his circle. Th?ey discuss how this school of thought has, in turn, influenced contemporary play studies. Vygotsky used early childhood to test and refi?ne his…

What is the developmental course of children's gender constancy? Do other cognitive abilities such as time comprehension and false-belief understanding foster gender constancy and the subcomponents gender stability and gender consistency? We examined the development of gender constancy and its relation to time comprehension and false-belief…

Considering that most educators think it is essential to help children attain meaningful, emotionally satisfying lives, teaching should start with developing ways of being that lead to healthy personal development. Teaching mindfulness--practices that focus and calm one's mind--is a key foundation of such development, according to the authors, who…

The rise in personal ownership of touch-screen technology such as iPads and smartphones in the UK in recent years has led to the increasing use of such technology by babies and very young children. This article explores this practice via an online parental survey with 226 UK parents of children aged 0-3 years within the context of the current…

Favourable home learning environments (HLEs) support children's literacy, numeracy and social development. In large-scale research, HLE is typically measured by self-report survey, but there is little consistency between studies and many different items and latent constructs are observed. Little is known about the stability of these items and…