Today the infant mental health field includes a multidisciplinary team of practitioners with very different training and education needs. Implementation research has shown that appropriate training is a key factor for successful outcomes of an intervention and that supervision and coaching are crucial. All professionals who work with young…

This paper describes an environmental education initiative called Starting out Wild (SoW) designed for toddlers and their caretakers. The program, developed by staff and volunteers of a city parks department, engages children ages 1-3 and their parents and caretakers through outdoor learning experiences. We suggest that environmental education…

Instructional tips help educators carry out recommendations contained in IES Educator's Practice Guides. This summary of evidence describes the research evidence that supports the use of the instructional tips in classrooms, and is based on a practice guide authored by Steve Graham, Alisha Bollinger, Carol Booth Olson, Catherine D'Aoust, Charles…

Decades of research demonstrate that a strong curricular approach to preschool education is important for later developmental outcomes. Although these findings have often been used to support the implementation of educational programs based on direct instruction, we argue that "guided play" approaches can be equally effective at delivering content…

Early learning matters and can be strengthened and supported through contexts where children spend much of their time. Strong early learning experiences provide young children with opportunities to enjoy exploring their own interests and growing capabilities. Strong early learning also positively predicts well-being across a range of indicators in…

The New York State Department of Education (NYSED) has been supporting selected districts in the planning and implementation of PreK-3rd Grade systems. NYSED is supporting the use of the Framework for Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating PreK-3rd Grade Approaches developed by Kauerz and Coffman (2013). Recognizing the ultimate goal of PreK-3rd…

The global prioritisation of the inclusion of learners with disabilities, and of vulnerable young people's resilience, means that teachers worldwide require insight into how best to facilitate the resilience of adolescents made vulnerable by intellectual disability (ID). To provide such insight, we conducted a secondary data analysis of a multiple…

The pendulum is shifting from teacher-directed approaches in childhood education towards child-directed learning where developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) inform curriculum and instruction. This study explored the perspectives of teachers and administrators towards the supports and barriers of DAP and play in Transitional Kindergarten (TK)…

Educators at the secondary school level who teach History, or Integrated Social Studies more broadly, may be expected to possess at least some passing knowledge of the Holocaust, the genocide perpetrated against European Jews by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet, when it comes to the Pacific War and Japanese war crimes and atrocities…

Purpose: This study explored visual speech influence in preschoolers using 3 developmentally appropriate tasks that vary in perceptual difficulty and task demands. They also examined developmental differences in the ability to use visually salient speech cues and visual phonological knowledge. Method: Twelve adults and 27 typically developing 3-…

Judi Orion, a Montessori expert on the birth-to-six plane of development, delivers a no-nonsense call to arms about the vital importance of the right beginning to set the stage for all that follows. Although we often hear and read about the period from birth to two-and-a-half years, Orion communicates the urgency of responding to the developmental…

The benefits of play to children's development and academic learning are often discussed in the research. However, inconsistencies in definitions of play and differing perspectives concerning the purpose of play in educational settings make it challenging for teachers to determine how to productively integrate play-based pedagogies into their…

This study examined the influence of early joint attention and play in children with autism on child- and parent-reported friendship quality 5 years later. Initially, children participated in developmental, joint attention, and play measures. At follow-up (age 8-9), parents and children completed the Friendship Qualities Scale (Bukowski et al. in…

In this chapter, we call for onto-epistemological diversity in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Specifically, we discuss the need to center the brilliance of children and communities of color, which we argue, can be facilitated by foregrounding global south perspectives, such as Black and Chicana feminisms. Mainstream…

We investigated direct and indirect effects of component skills on writing (DIEW) using data from 193 children in Grade 1. In this model, working memory was hypothesized to be a foundational cognitive ability for language and cognitive skills as well as transcription skills, which, in turn, contribute to writing. Foundational oral language skills…