Creating a Climate of Self-Awareness in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Programs

This article discusses the importance of helping preservice teachers develop a sense of self-awareness. This involves, in part, helping preservice teachers develop an ability to examine and identify the personal characteristics, beliefs and attitudes that make them who they are and influence the way they think about teaching and learning. The authors offer several suggestions for creating a climate in teacher education programs that will promote a developing sense of self-awareness in preservice teachers.     

Teacher Planning,Instruction and Refl ection: What We Know About Teacher Cognitive Processes

The process of teaching is complex and multidimensional. Teaching behaviors and actions are shaped by numerous cognitive decisions made by the teacher before, during, and after instruction. This article examines teacher cognition across the broad field of education and, more specifically, physical education in teacher planning, instruction, and reflection. To date, research has largely examined the areas of planning, instruction, and reflection separately and often in controlled settings. It is suggested that future researchers examining teachers. thoughts and actions employ methodologies, such as case study, that examine the three processes holistically and in the natural teaching environment, thereby linking actual behaviors with the cognitive processes that produced them.     

Early Care and Education Matters: A Conceptual Model for Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Integrating the Key Constructs of Knowledge,Reflection, and Practice

There has been a great deal of discourse in the field of early care and education concerning the experiences, skills, competencies, and education level needed by early childhood teachers to ensure that quality teaching and learning take place in the early years. The purpose of this article is to describe an early childhood teacher preparation program developed by a Child and Family Development Department at a large, urban, state-funded university in the hopes that we can further the discourse on how the field can ensure quality teaching and learning in both ECE and university classrooms. We propose a conceptual model that is built around three key constructs: knowledge, reflection, and practice and describe our approach to preparing early childhood educators. Using qualitative data from student reflections and course syllabi and quantitative data on the experiences and perceptions of graduating seniors, we hope to present promising practices in early childhood teacher education and provide support for our contention that the quality of early childhood teacher education matters.     

Early Childhood Teacher Education: A Global Perspective

A couple of years ago I attended a presentation at a professional meeting that made a major impact upon my life. The session, “Ways of Achieving Excellence in a Global Community,” included presentations by early childhood educators from Australia, Hungary and Finland. At the conclusion of this sharing of ideas regarding what other countries are doing to improve the lives of children, I overheard an American colleague whisper to her neighbor in amazement, “My God! We're a Third World country when it comes to child care.” Without contrasts brought out by this session, however, this educator might have never been open to the world of ideas for improving children's lives.     

Practice What We Preach: Differentiating Instruction and Assessment in a Higher Education Classroom as a Model of Effective Pedagogy for Early Childhood Teacher Education Candidates

Teacher education faculty are experiencing increasingly diverse higher education classrooms. In many ways, the diversities present in collegiate classrooms mirror the differences in classrooms of young children. The diversity may be a result of a range of ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic differences. Or it may be differences resulting from previous experiences, background knowledge, learning style, needs, or interests. In this article, two university colleagues present challenges related to meeting a plethora of learner needs in a course with participants from three different programs of study. The authors describe the challenges faced, steps taken to use the challenges as opportunities for growth, and the outcomes of their efforts. The authors candidly describe how they used the principles of Differentiated Instruction to model effective pedagogy for their early childhood teacher educator candidates.     

Exercise and Asthma: What The Physical Education Teacher Should Know

Asthma is one of the most common respiratory disorders in many parts of the world today. It has been established that as many as 14% of Singaporean elementary school children have asthma (Chay, 1990). This means that a physical education teacher in Singapore with a class of 40 students can expect to have, on the average, five or six students in that group who suffer from asthma. A total of 7,465 patients were admitted to Singapore hospitals with bronchial asthma during 1991 (Ministry of Health, Singapore, 1992). It has been claimed that as many as 10 million Americans are affected, 3 million under the age of 18 years and 7 million adults (American Lung Association, 1990) while the general prevalence has been determined as 6.6% (Dodge and Burrows, 1980). There were 4,300 asthma related deaths in the USA in 1988 and the annual economic cost of the disease, including direct and indirect costs, exceeded $4 billion in 1988 (American Lung Association, 1990). More than 1.2 million Canadians are asthmatic and the disease kills about 600 per year. It is imperative, therefore, that the physical education teacher has a sound understanding of the disease as an attack of asthma provoked by physical activity is a common occurrence.     

Before Student Teaching: How Undergraduate Students in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Programs Describe Their Early Classroom-Based Experience

Classroom-based experiences, alternatively known as practica, are an integral component of undergraduate teacher preparation programs, which provide students essential opportunities to apply knowledge in practice. Though much is known about student teaching, much less is known about students’ earlier classroom-based experiences. This qualitative study explores how early childhood care and education students describe their early classroom-based experience. Thirty-four students enrolled in a teacher preparation program participated in interviews, submitted journals, and responded to survey questions about their early classroom-based experience. Results are presented in terms of how students talk about their experiences—belonging or not belonging in the classroom—and what students talk about when discussing their experiences, including communication, support, freedom, new learning, and “the children.” These themes are discussed in terms of students’ experiences in the classroom and implications for undergraduate teacher preparation in early childhood education.     

Economic returns to education: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and Where We Are Going—Some brief pointers

The estimation of the economic return to education has perhaps been one of the predominant areas of analysis in applied economics for over 50 years. In this short note we consider some of the recent directions taken by the literature, and also some of the blockages faced by both science and policymakers in pushing forward some key issues. This serves by way of introduction to a set of papers for a special issue of the Economics of Education Review.     

Australian Early Childhood Teacher Education: Developments and Concerns

The history of early childhood teacher education in Australia dates back to 1897 with the establishment of the Kindergarten Union Teachers' Training College in Sydney. Since the 1970's, small, specialized, private teachers' colleges in each state have emerged to become part of the national government system of Colleges of Advanced Education (CAE's). These institutions had as a primary goal to teach rather than to conduct research about teaching. CAE's have historically been primarily responsible for vocationally-oriented professional courses of study such as nursing, teaching, social welfare, media and communications, fine arts and health studies. It was in this CAE's system where students were prepared to be early childhood, elementary, and secondary teachers. These programs lead to a three-year Diploma of Teaching or a four-year Bachelor of Education. This approach was based on the Australian pattern of specialized teacher training which was generally provided immediately upon graduation from high school. Universities provided training in early childhood-related areas such as psychology, psychiatry, social work and medicine but did not include specialized early childhood teacher preparation per se (although they do provide secondary teacher preparation).     

Electronic Portfolios in Teacher Education: A Case Study of Early Childhood Teacher Candidates

The use of electronic portfolios is increasingly becoming popular in teacher education programs. The electronic portfolio allows learners to express their work and take ownership over their own ability to plan and assess and reflect upon their learning during a specific period of time. While many teacher education programs have adopted electronic portfolios in order to meet accreditation requirements, others use electronic portfolios to develop and improve on students’ technology skills—train students on how to better use technology in instruction and student assessment. Irrespective of the reasons for adoption, there is the need to assess students’ perceptions of electronic portfolios, and especially to explore the benefits and challenges students face in using electronic portfolios in their course work. Using a qualitative research design, the current study explored teacher candidates’ attitudes toward electronic portfolios and the differences that electronic portfolios bring to their profession. Such a study is necessary to help administrators identify students’ needs to ensure that they are gaining the maximum benefits from the use of electronic portfolios in their programs of study.     

Homophobia,Sexism, and Early Childhood Education: A Review of the Literature

We reviewed 31 articles that explored issues related to gender and sexuality in early childhood education (ECE) settings. This body of literature suggests that ECE programs and elementary schools often reinforce the homophobia, heterosexism, and sexism that characterize contemporary U.S. society. A number of the articles described strategies that the teachers of young children can use to promote gender equality, respect for sexual diversity, and healthy sexual development. We concluded our review with a discussion of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and the important role that community college and university-based teacher education programs can play in helping the teachers of young children actively challenge systems of privilege and oppression based on gender and sexuality.     

Consultation Courses Offered in Special Education Teacher Training Programs: A National Survey

This article argues that how public services and supports for children and families are delivered is closely related to how they are financed. It is therefore essential to examine how financing systems for education and other children's services inhibit or promote more integrated service delivery systems. Two questions are specifically addressed: (a) How do current financ- ing arrangements present specific legal, political, administrative, and attitu- dinal obstacles to implementing comprehensive, community-based children's service approaches? (b) What are some promising strategies for overcoming these obstacles? The article concludes by noting that alternative financing approaches offer unique opportunities for the educational and psychological consulting communities because of the potential of these mechanisms to foster a more integral role for such personnel in children's service provision.     

From the Editors: Math Achievement and Early Childhood Teacher Preparation

The researchers conducting this study investigated the relationship between early childhood teachers' educational levels and their beliefs about appropriate and inappropriate practices by examining the differences between lead teachers and teacher assistants in publicly funded prekindergarten classrooms. For this purpose, the researchers analyzed self-reported teachers' beliefs using analysis of variance and examined 26 individual items. Findings of this study suggest that lead teachers endorsed developmentally appropriate practices more strongly than did teacher assistants. Teacher assistants were more likely than lead teachers to agree with developmentally inappropriate practices. Despite the significant differences between the two groups of teachers, it is important to note that there was a general tendency for both lead teachers and teacher assistants to endorse developmentally appropriate practices. Thus, although there appears to be a link between teachers' educational levels and teacher beliefs, teachers' educational levels alone may not be sufficient for understanding their beliefs and practices in the classroom. Implications for practice and future research in teacher education are also discussed.     

美国早期特殊教育立法与实践新进展

美国政府颁布的<障碍者教育法案(2004)>是当前与美国早期特殊教育关系最密切的法案,对美国早期特殊教育的发展产生了重大影响.该法案的最新修订文本中增加佑了可以获得早期特殊教育服务的障碍类型,对早期特殊教育教师提出了更高的资质要求,进一步强调了家长的权利和义务.也对早期特殊教育服务两个阶段问的衔接作出了新的规定.美国早期特殊教育立法注重科学性和发展性,注重提高教师专业素质,强调多学科协作和家长参与,这些经验值得我们借鉴.     

Practicing What We Preach in Teacher Education: A Critical Whiteness Studies Analysis of Experiential Education

In this article I problematize the reasons for and methods through which I incorporated an opportunity for experiential learning, via a Community Inquiry Project, into my own teaching. I take the stance of a teacher-researcher to closely analyze the specific documents and tasks used to introduce pre-service teachers to the project. I draw on sociocultural approaches to teacher development and literature on experiential education in teacher education to provide a background for the project and the self-study and offer critical whiteness studies as an appropriate lens through which to analyze the various elements of the project. Findings from this study suggest that the project limited the pre-service teachers’ characterizations of community, understandings of sociocultural approaches to learning, relationships to the community, and perceptions of the role of community in teaching. I draw on these findings to suggest that teacher educators share their reflective practices with their students and learn about the diverse experiences of the pre-service teachers themselves to better prepare them to inquire into and draw on knowledge of communities as they work with diverse populations of students.     

Neuroscience,Early Childhood Education and Play: We are Doing it Right!

This editorial examines neuroscience and its impact on the field of education. Starting with a narrative between two young children, the author intertwines research with basic principles of learning, using the interaction between two 4-year-olds to illustrate the precepts. The four principles are: (1) the brain is uniquely organized; (2) the brain is continually growing; (3) a “brain-compatible” classroom enables connection of learning to positive emotions; and (4) children’s brains need to be immersed in real-life, hands-on, and meaningful learning experiences. The editorial concludes with an illustration of how the brain works while two children are playing at the small animal center in their classroom.