Preschool children's math-related behaviors mediate curriculum effects on math achievement gains

This study used a mediational model to examine the effect of curriculum condition on student behaviors and how those behaviors related to math achievement gains. The student behaviors examined were children's participation in learning-related activities, talking during learning activities, and level of engagement with the materials. Conducted as part of a larger project involving the implementation and evaluation of a preschool mathematics curriculum, this study involved twenty urban prekindergarten sites with 57 classrooms randomly assigned to the new curriculum or a practice-as-usual condition. The final analytic sample included 675 children, predominately from low-income homes. Results showed that the greater gains made by children in curriculum classrooms were mediated by the number of times children were observed focused on mathematics and the number of times they were observed talking during mathematics. Findings from this study demonstrate the importance of focusing on children's actual responses to a new curriculum in determining its effects.     

The impacts of an early mathematics curriculum on oral language and literacy

Competence in early mathematics is crucial for later school success. Although research indicates that early mathematics curricula improve children's mathematics skill, such curricula's impacts on oral language and early literacy skills are not known. This project is the first to investigate the effects of an intensive pre-kindergarten mathematics curriculum, Building Blocks, on the oral language and letter recognition of children participating in a large-scale cluster randomized trial project. Results showed no evidence that children who were taught mathematics using the curriculum performed differently than control children who received the typical district mathematics instruction on measures of letter recognition, and on two of the oral language (story retell) subtests, sentence length and inferential reasoning (emotive content). However, children in the Building Blocks group outperformed children in the control group on four oral language subtests: ability to recall key words, use of complex utterances, willingness to reproduce narratives independently, and inferential reasoning (practical content).     

Implementing a Physical Activity Curriculum into the School Day: Helping Early Childhood Teachers Meet the Challenge

In Fall 2006, North Carolina kindergarten teachers were charged with the task of meeting the NASPE guidelines for providing daily physical activity to their kindergarten students. In turn, the teachers researched resources and consulted experts to design and develop a developmentally appropriate physical activity and physical play environment for their students. The purpose of this article is to disseminate useful information one group of kindergarten teachers believed would help other teachers in similar situations. The article discusses the planning process, suggestions for activities and necessary equipment for program implementation, and vignettes regarding the experiences the teachers and students have had during the physical activity and physical play program’s inaugural year.

Providence talks: A citywide partnership to address early childhood language development

Early research has shown that there may be inconsistencies in how parents in different socioeconomic classes prepare their children to learn to read. Previous research has highlighted a “word gap” between children from low-income families and high-income families. Effects of this “word gap” are evident at the start of kindergarten and contribute to the current nationwide achievement gap in educational outcomes for low-income children. Providence Talks (PT) is a city-wide initiative launched in 2014 in an effort to close this gap. PT helps caretakers learn about the importance of speaking with their children at an early age and supports them in their ability to improve the language environments within their home. We uncover positive results for the efficacy of a citywide intervention dedicated to improving outcomes for vulnerable children across the urban landscape.     

Supplementing literacy instruction with a media-rich intervention: Results of a randomized controlled trial

This study investigates whether a curriculum supplement organized as a sequence of teacher-led literacy activities using digital content from public educational television programs can improve early literacy outcomes of low-income preschoolers. The study sample was 436 children in 80 preschool classrooms in California and New York. Preschool teachers were randomly assigned to implement either a 10-week media-rich early literacy intervention that employed clips from Sesame Street, Between the Lions, and SuperWhy! or to a comparison condition. The media-rich literacy supplement had positive impacts (+0.20 ≤ d ≤ +0.55) on children's ability to recognize letters, sounds of letters and initial sounds of words, and children's concepts of story and print. The study findings show the potential for incorporating literacy content from public media programming into curriculum supplements supported by professional development to impact early literacy outcomes of low-income children.     

Evaluating an improved quality preschool program in rural Bangladesh

An important goal of education in developing countries is to implement and improve early childhood education. A pre–post intervention–control design was used to compare a piloted-revised versus a regular preschool program offered by an organization in rural Bangladesh. After 7 months in operation, the quality of the piloted-revised program was higher than the regular program, though the regular program had also improved. Children attending pilot preschools made greater gains than children attending regular preschools on most outcome measures. Action research was conducted alongside the quantitative evaluation to study the process of the implementation and to identify areas for further improvement.     

Reframing the curriculum: a transformative approach

ABSTRACT

While acknowledging higher education’s complicity in inequality, the premise of this paper is that curriculum transformation can be one means of challenging and dismantling structural injustices towards the goal of equity of access and outcomes. Fraser’s multi-dimensional framework for social justice is drawn upon to explore what this transformation requires. The framework is used to critique a particular case of curriculum intervention, Education Development in South Africa. In Fraser’s terms, the interventions have been largely affirmative, not transformative. In addition, they have focused on only the first dimension of justice, redistribution, and have generally failed to attend to misrecognition and representation. Overall, we argue that the responses of higher education institutions in South Africa to the challenges of a globalised, pluralist world have been affirmative, not transformative. A transformative approach demands a ‘reframing’ of the curriculum. This involves adjusting the scale of the problem, interrogating assumptions informing the norms of the curriculum, questioning current boundaries between ‘mainstream’ and ‘other’ students and reviewing the fitness of the curriculum for a pluralist society. The paper concludes with recommendations for what such a reframing of the curriculum might entail.     

Constructing a new KS3 curriculum at Brooke Weston CTC: a review and commentary

This paper reviews changes to the key stage 3 curriculum at a leading comprehensive school. The nature and practical concerns of the changes are described. These move beyond a fresh approach to content; they include issues about engaging students actively in learning for the future, planning around the school's distinctive ethos and expertise in ICT, and using curriculum as a vehicle for providing energy for new staff and heads of department to engage in learning leadership. Theoretical models of curriculum are examined to locate thinking at Brooke Weston CTC in a conceptual framework. The paper suggests that futuristic curriculum development resonates with some classical curriculum models that have been ignored over the past two decades of the National Curriculum.     

Two-way and monolingual English immersion in preschool education: An experimental comparison

An experimental study was conducted comparing the effects of dual language, or two-way immersion (TWI) and monolingual English immersion (EI) preschool education programs on children's learning. Three-and four-year old children were randomly assigned by lottery to either a newly established TWI Spanish/English program or a monolingual English program in the same district. Children in the study were from both Spanish and English home language backgrounds. All classrooms in the study used the High/Scope curriculum, and all met high standards for teacher qualifications, ratio, and class size. The TWI program alternated between English and Spanish weekly by rotating children between two classrooms (and teachers) each week. Programs were compared on measures of children's growth in language, emergent literacy, and mathematics. Children in both types of classrooms experienced substantial gains in language, literacy, and mathematics. No significant differences between treatment groups were found on English language measures. Among the native Spanish speakers, the TWI program produced large gains in Spanish vocabulary compared to the EI program. Both TWI and EI approaches boosted the learning and development of children including ELL students, as judged by standard score gains. TWI also improved the Spanish language development of English language learners (ELL) and native English speaking children without losses in English language learning.     

Long-run benefits from universal high-quality preschooling

This paper investigates the role of preschool quality for children's school performance at the end of primary school. We construct five structural quality indicators based on unique Danish administrative register data. 30,444 children finishing primary school's 9th grade in 2008 and who attended a formal preschool institution in 1998 are used in the analyses. OLS analyses show that three out of five quality indicators, a higher staff-per-child ratio, a higher share of male staff, and a higher share of staff with formal preschool teacher training are associated with significant improvements in children's test results in Danish. Boys benefit more from preschool quality than girls. Ethnic minority children benefit from higher staff stability.     

A qualitative study of the current transformation to rural village early childhood in China: Retrospect and prospect

By far, literature regarding Chinese early childhood education and care (ECEC) has primarily focused on Youeryuan in urban settings. Youeryuan is the everyday Chinese term used for ECEC programs serving children ages three to six, which does include the U.S. version of the kindergarten year. This paper will refer to Youeryuan rather than the Western definitions of preschool or kindergarten so as to maintain authenticity. Furthermore, this paper will focus on the history and development of rural Youeryuan based on a qualitative study of the government-owned, privately operated Youeryuan that represent the current reform initiatives in early childhood in China. Through teacher and administrator interviews, onsite observations using ECERS-R, and school documents, the lead author immersed herself in rural Youeryuan as part of a larger ethnographic study in China in the midst of economic and educational transformations. The findings of this study revealed themes related to increased government investment, improved school policies, the lack of instructional materials, curriculum and instruction issues, local government support for professional development, administrative support for instruction, and the need for mentoring for teachers.     

Early achievement in rural China: The role of preschool experience

Two studies examined the relationship between preschool experiences and the early academic achievement of rural Chinese children. In both Study 1 (n = 165) and Study 2 (n = 205), the school preparedness, and the literacy and mathematics attainment of first graders with different preschool experiences (kindergarten, separate pre-primary class, “sitting-in” a Grade 1 class, no preschool experience) were assessed. In Study 1, educational attainment was evaluated using end-of-semester examinations designed by local educational authorities; whereas in Study 2, better-constructed and identical tests were administered at the beginning and end of the academic year. Further, in Study 2, the different types of preschool programs attended by participating children were directly observed. Findings from both studies showed that children with developmentally appropriate preschool experiences (kindergartens or separate pre-primary classes) had higher school readiness scores than other children. Results from Study 2 also indicated that (i) disparities in children's school attainment were associated with the type of their preschool experience; and (ii) children from the developmentally appropriate kindergarten program showed higher mathematics and literacy achievement at the end of Grade 1 than children who merely “sat in” Grade 1 classes or had no preschool experience. Implications of the findings for the scaling up of preschool services in rural China are discussed.     

Mind the gap: vocabulary development in the primary curriculum

In the context of an on-going project emphasising the centrality of speaking and listening in the primary curriculum, the present article turns to vocabulary development: to the wide differences characterising primary age children in this regard, to their consequent unequal access to the wider curriculum, and to means by which such deficiencies may be addressed. This article reports how, given a variety of in-service supports, teachers in a small group of schools undertook to define relevant aims and objectives and to include a range of appropriate approaches in their teaching. Particular emphasis was placed upon active and ‘explicit’ vocabulary instruction. The viability and effectiveness of the strategies employed were assessed through analysis of a range of collected data; numerous examples of which are presented and evaluated here. This article concludes by reviewing such matters from teachers’ as well as pupils’ perspectives, and by emphasising the role of explicit instruction within the various approaches discussed.     

A small-scale randomized efficacy trial of Carescapes: Enhancing children’s social development in child care homes

The quality of the child care environment and caregiver practices can potentially have significant, lasting impact on children’s social development. This study involves the development and a small-scale efficacy trial of the Carescapes program, a video-based training program that focuses on promoting positive social development in young children attending family child care. Fifty-seven caregivers who provided child care in their homes were randomly assigned to immediate intervention or waitlist control groups. Random coefficients analyses showed significant increased use of effective behavior management practices and decreased overall children’s problem behavior for the intervention group. A mediation model demonstrated that increases in effective behavior management practices were associated with decreases in problem behavior. A medium intervention effect was found for caregiver’s monitoring and a small effect for use of positive attention. These effects declined 5 months following the intervention. Implications for future efficacy and effectiveness studies in family child care settings that involve strategies to facilitate maintenance are discussed.     

The power of improvisational teaching

In this study we examine how improvisation can facilitate understanding how teachers respond to children's multiple resources, interests, experiences, and skills in early childhood programs. Improvisation is conceptualized as a responsive, partnered activity through which teachers and children generate meaning and knowledge together. In our analysis we show improvisation is taken up differently in two classrooms and how it variably provides opportunities for learning. Two cases from a professional development program designed to support culturally and developmentally appropriate early mathematics are used to demonstrate the possibilities improvisation creates in era of increasing standardization of curriculum.     

Local curriculum development as object construction: A sociomaterial analysis

This paper examines teachers' local curriculum development by analyzing such development as a process of object construction. One team of lower secondary school teachers, mandated to develop a subject curriculum for their school, was followed closely over a year through an ethnographic approach. Data from six team meetings were analyzed to trace how the curriculum was developed through a series of object instantiations that also worked on the construction process. This process required various forms of epistemic engagement, which should be acknowledged in current discussions of teachers’ work and their extended professional responsibilities.     

Against the Unchallenged Discourse of Homelessness: Examining the Views of Early Childhood Preservice Teachers

Abstract

Because of the link between teacher training and higher‐quality classroom practice, early childhood researchers and professional organizations have placed an increasing emphasis on all early childhood teachers—including those in early care and education (ECE) settings—obtaining a minimum of a Bachelor's degree as part of their professional development. Given the differing licensure requirements for ECE teachers, the variety of settings early childhood teachers work in, and the creativity needed to respond to the changing roles teachers play in those settings, however, this paper offers an additional perspective that is sometimes left out of the discussion regarding what teachers need: that of the early childhood practitioner. Using conversations with both a certified, public school teacher and a non‐certified teacher in a private ECE setting in New Jersey, this article reports on these teachers’ professional development experiences, as well as the implications of their experiences for future considerations of what teachers need in order to enhance their growth as educators.     

Classroom-level curriculum development: EFL teachers as curriculum-developers,curriculum-makers and curriculum-transmitters

This qualitative study aimed to explore teacher curriculum approaches and the strategies attached to each approach because they influence the taught curriculum, teacher development and student learning. The study was therefore grounded in teacher curriculum development, curriculum implementation, teacher development, student cognitive and affective change and constructivism. To address this study's qualitative and exploratory purposes, it made use of the qualitative paradigm at the levels of ontology (multiple curriculum realities), epistemology (interaction with rather than detachment from respondents) and methodology (using idiographic methodology and instruments). In line with the qualitative paradigm, it used qualitative case-study (method), general interviews, pre/post-lesson interviews, group interviews and participant observation (data collection methods) in addition to grounded theory (data analysis approach) to meet the research purposes. Working with English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and mixed-nationality college students, the study reached a teacher curriculum approach classification comprising curriculum-transmission, curriculum-development and curriculum-making. It recommended alternatives for teacher, student and curriculum development, curriculum implementation and teacher training.     

Comparing beliefs about appropriate practice among early childhood education and care professionals from the U.S., China, Taiwan, Korea and Turkey

The purpose of this study was to examine what, if anything, caregivers and teachers of 3- to 5-year-old children from the U.S. (n = 412), China (n = 244), Taiwan (n = 222), Korea (n = 574), and Turkey (n = 214), had in common in terms of self-reported beliefs and self-reported practices related to the National Association for the Education of Young Children's (NAEYC) policy statement for developmentally appropriate practices (DAP). DAP is widely endorsed by early childhood education and care professionals in the U.S. and is assumed to have far reaching impact on curricular beliefs and practices throughout the world. Pearson correlations and one-way ANOVA were used to compare overall mean scores for beliefs measured by the Teachers Beliefs Scale (TBS) to those of practices measured by the Instructional Activities Scale (IAS) [Charlesworth, R., Hart, C. H., Burts, D. C., & Hernandez, S. (1991). Kindergarten teachers’ beliefs and practices. Early Child Development and Care, 70, 17–35]. Item-by-item analyses were conducted using factor analysis and χ² analyses within and across countries. Similarities emerged related to, in particular, those beliefs and teaching practices associated with integrating across the curriculum, promoting social/emotional development, providing concrete/hands-on materials, and allowing play/choice in the curriculum.