The article explores the cultural potential of reading as one of the factors in the development of children's giftedness. The role of the book as the bearer of culture in the process of preserving national identity is revealed. The authors of the article discover the growing importance of family reading in the process of a gifted person…

Understanding the origins of prejudice necessitates exploring the ways in which children participate in the construction of biased representations of social groups. We investigate whether young children actively seek out information that supports and extends their initial intergroup biases. In Studies 1 and 2, we show that children choose to hear…

Persuasion is an essential social skill. Yet its development and underpinnings are poorly understood. In 2 studies, a total of 167 children aged 3 to 12 years took theory of mind (ToM) tests and participated in unscripted, seminaturalistic persuasive conversations. Children were typically developing (TD) or had deafness or autism spectrum disorder…

This article evaluates the concept of infant 'belonging', central to several national curricula for early childhood education and care. Here, the authors focus on Australia's Early Years Learning Framework. Four different meanings attach to 'belonging' in the Early Years Learning Framework, the primary being sociopolitical. However, 'a sense of…

The purpose of this review was to introduce readers of "Child Development" to the meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) technique. Provided are a background to the MASEM approach, a discussion of its utility in the study of child development, and an application of this technique in the study of reading comprehension (RC)…

Forty Italian gay father families formed by surrogacy were compared with 40 Italian lesbian mother families formed by donor insemination, all with a child aged 3 to 9 years. Standardized interview, observational, and questionnaire measures of parenting quality, parent-child relationships, stigmatization, and children's adjustment were administered…

Background: Home-based parenting support within youth care services is one of the key interventions provided to families encountering difficulties with child rearing and child development. However, knowledge on factors contributing to positive outcomes of home-based parenting support is limited. Objective: The current study investigated the…

Today millions of children are trapped in situations of war, conflict, violence and displacement. Science shows that violence has a detrimental effect on the development of young children. It, also, heralds in a new era, with opportunities to contribute to sustaining peace and prevention of violence, through investment in early childhood…

Forced displacement worldwide is at its highest in decades and millions of young children are living in conflict zones, in transitional or enduring refugee contexts, and in demographically diverse marginalized and informal settlements. There is a huge unmet need for delivering early childhood development interventions to ensure the safety and…

This concise and accessible resource provides an overview of the fundamentals of teaching in early childhood settings (pre-K-2), with a focus on what high-quality practices look like. It details the features of developmentally appropriate, linguistically responsive, culturally relevant/sustaining teaching and how this approach can prepare our…

Fathers make important and unique contributions to positive child development. In spite of these findings the research literature has lagged in the study of the role and impact of fathers on child development and in the development of effective approaches and interventions for fathers. Parameters for additional study include the inclusion of…

In mid-2016, two years after 12 leading funders had launched an ambitious early childhood development collaborative, the group still had not settled on any investments. Noting the lack of progress, the group's principal convener, asked the group, "Should we stop meeting?" Posing this question helped prompt the collaborative to alter…

An ever-present achievement gap has been found among students and their peers. Educational research and literature have found that the growing gap is due in part to a lack of parent involvement in their students' education and academic performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate how parent involvement affects student achievement and…

Educators often struggle daily with the issue of how to engage students for learning. Many instructional strategies are devoted to the concept of engagement to keep students interested and on task to enhance learning, but defining the term is difficult. Engagement may involve a combination of terms that relates to the effort of students when they…

Sometimes it's not easy for highly creative children to "comply" with a regular curriculum, even at the preschool age. They are wired to explore, experiment, build, imagine, and create. If forced at a young age into a diet heavy on rote learning and directed work, they may struggle. It's not that these children can't do the work, it's…