This paper focuses on science anxiety in undergraduate education and then reviews current theories on how to reduce science anxiety. The exploration of the phenomenon of science anxiety points out that this response results not from a lack of self-confidence, but from a lack of a framework of prior knowledge to help order new knowledge; it also…

This longitudinal study evaluated the effects of a preschool project designed to serve children between 3 and 5 years of age in a disadvantaged inner-city area in Dublin, Ireland. The preschool, established in 1969, emphasized the development of children's cognitive skills and established structures to increase parents' involvement in their…

Technological literacy has become an indispensable part of general culture. Vocational education must simultaneously provide students with the special and general qualifications required to achieve increased productivity and flexibility. The concept of technological capabilities is based on the pillars of general technology, technical systems, and…

Several trends are significantly affecting the early childhood education field, with the major accomplishment of crystallizing the scope of early childhood education as birth through 8 years of age. These trends and innovations include the following: (1) restructuring early childhood education programs, by introducing formal schooling,…

This paper examines the educational philosophy underlying Waldorf Education, focusing on Rudolf Steiner's concept of "vital" or etheric energy and comparing Piaget's and Steiner's stages of cognition. The paper begins with a discussion of school readiness and the trend toward lowering the school entry age, and maintains that this trend…

This book provides research in the area of educational play for early childhood teachers and teacher educators. Following an introduction by the editors, the chapters of the book are: (1) "A Historical Overview of Theories of Play" (Olivia Saracho and Bernard Spodek); (2) "Playing with a Theory of Mind" (Angeline Lillard); (3)…

A Student Literacy Corps was established in 1991 at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The corps provides intervention for at-risk Head Start students in a program designed to enrich literacy skills. The Student Literacy Corps has two components: (1) a tutoring program in which college students tutor 4-year-old Head Start…

This book has a two-fold purpose. First, it was intended as a description of the development and testing of a primary school fraction program, presently in practice. This project seeks to develop a realistic alternative to the teaching and learning of fractions. The second purpose was to produce a theory on the teaching and learning of fractions…

This paper describes the process of structuring a Writing across the Curriculum Workshop for college faculty and reflects on some of the workshop's problems and highlights. Workshop participant selection was based on previous expressions of interest from faculty or from recommendations of department chairs. The workshop itself consisted of six…

The socially constructed beliefs that teachers hold about knowing, teaching, learning, and praxis are likely to have a profound influence on their practice. Too often teachers serve to reproduce traditional authoritarian and didactic patterns of instruction in schools, apparently because they themselves have never been given the opportunity to…

Data from a 20-year longitudinal study of 125 males and 126 females born to Black teenage mothers in a Baltimore hospital between 1966 and 1968 were analyzed to identify early childhood, middle childhood, and early adolescence determinants of functional literacy. All 251 subjects were interviewed in 1987, and 202 of them completed a document…

Noting that the majority of teachers use restrictive rather than responsive language, this paper suggests that teachers consider using questioning techniques as a way of making their language more responsive. The paper notes that restrictive language involves teacher control, includes commands and criticisms, discourages independent thinking, and…

This paper examines the concept of friendship that is displayed by an 8-year-old homeless immigrant Taiwanese-Chinese child. Through the use of interviews with the child as well as observations, the author attempts to interpret the child's understanding of friendship according to the theories of cognitive, emotional, and moral development of…

Designed for teachers, students, caregivers, and health professionals who work with children from birth to age 8, this book provides a review of recent research and theories of development and learning in the early childhood years, with an emphasis on implications for effective teaching. Where appropriate, the book takes an Australian perspective,…

Research has shown contradictory results on the relationship of infant attachment security to play and mastery behavior, at times predicting the cognitive quality of play and at other times predicting the affective quality of play. In order to test the hypotheses that, during play, attachment security would predict only positive affect,…