Classroom dimensions predict early peer interaction when children are diverse in ethnicity, race, and home language

The purpose of this study was to test a model for predicting preschool-age children's behaviors with peers from dimensions of the classroom and teacher-child relationship quality when the children were from diverse race, ethnic, and home language backgrounds. Eight hundred children, (M = age 63 months, SD = 8.1 months), part of the National Evaluation of Early Head Start, participated in this study just prior to entering kindergarten. We observed children with peers in their classrooms and rated classroom peer group size, affective climate for peer interaction, teacher management of the classroom, and materials for dramatic play. Teachers reported on teacher-child relationship quality. Children from Spanish-speaking homes played similarly in classrooms where Spanish was and was not spoken. After control variables and receptive vocabulary scores were entered into the model, classroom dimensions and teacher-child relationship quality significantly predicted pretend play, anxious-withdrawn, aggressive, and victim of peer aggression behaviors with peers. Children engaged in more pretend play and received lower ratings of being the victim of peer aggression when classroom groups were smaller. When teachers perceived teacher-child relationships as lower in conflict and higher in closeness, children's anxious-withdrawn, aggressive, and victim of aggression ratings were lower. Children's ratings of being the victim of peer aggression were higher when ratings of classroom positive peer climate were lower. Child-teacher ethnic or racial match did not moderate these predictions.     

Attachment and child care: Relationships with mother and caregiver

Two studies examined the influences of concordant and nonconcordant attachment relationships to mothers and to child care caregivers on children's behavior in child care. In both studies, attachment security with the caregiver was assessed within child care, using the Waters and Deane Q-sort for attachment security. In the first study, 40 infants were seen in the Strange Situation at 12 months and observed in child care when they averaged 21.5 months. In the second study, 60 infants were observed in child care when they averaged 18.5 months; maternal attachment security was assessed, using the Q-sort, during child care arrivals and departures. In both studies, the child's level of competence in play with the adult caregiver and engagement with peers was a function of attachment security with both mother and caregiver.     

Connections and critique: Feminist pedagogy and science teacher education

In this article, we authors and feminist science and teacher educators share assignments we developed and used in our undergraduate and graduate teacher education classes. We designed these varied assignments to help students feel comfortable with science, to begin to understand and critique the many ways science has been narrowly and powerfully shaped and has marginalized significant groups of individuals, and to begin to deconstruct scientific knowledge and construct alternative views of science and science education that are gender and culture sensitive. We also challenged them to use what they were learning to develop pedagogical strategies that would be inviting to their own students. The focus of the article is our students' reactions to these assignments and how these reactions—both inviting and resisting—informed us about their notions of science, of teaching, of themselves as learners, and of the social context in which they would teach. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 897–918, 1998.     

Changes in Child-Teacher Relationships in a Therapeutic Preschool Program

The purpose of this paper was to examine the processes and outcomes of teacher-child attachment relationship formation in a therapeutic preschool. Although the average child did not form a secure teacher-child attachment relationship, as a group and over time children became more secure in their teacher-child attachment relationships. Children who were least secure, most avoidant, and most resistant in their initial teacher-child relationship were the children who moved the most rapidly towards security. Children who moved the most rapidly towards security were the least resistant, and most likely to seek comfort within their teacher-child relationships by the final data collection point.     

Activity Settings and Daily Routines in Preschool Classrooms: Diverse Experiences in Early Learning Settings for Low-Income Children

This paper examines activity settings and daily classroom routines experienced by 3- and 4-year-old low-income children in public center-based preschool programs, private center-based programs, and family child care homes. Two daily routine profiles were identified using a time-sampling coding procedure: a High Free-Choice pattern in which children spent a majority of their day engaged in child-directed free-choice activity settings combined with relatively low amounts of teacher-directed activity, and a Structured-Balanced pattern in which children spent relatively equal proportions of their day engaged in child-directed free-choice activity settings and teacher-directed small- and whole-group activities. Daily routine profiles were associated with program type and curriculum use but not with measures of process quality. Children in Structured-Balanced classrooms had more opportunities to engage in language and literacy and math activities, whereas children in High Free-Choice classrooms had more opportunities for gross motor and fantasy play. Being in a Structured-Balanced classroom was associated with children's language scores but profiles were not associated with measures of children's math reasoning or socio-emotional behavior. Consideration of teachers' structuring of daily routines represents a valuable way to understand nuances in the provision of learning experiences for young children in the context of current views about developmentally appropriate practice and school readiness.     

Social pretend play in 2-year-olds: Effects of age of partner

The role of the partner in the development of social pretend play was examined in two related studies. In both studies toddler-age children (Study One: n = 16, Study Two: n = 48) played with same-age and 5-year-old partners. In both studies 2-year-olds engaged in more social pretend play with older than with same-age partners. In mixed play sessions, 2-year-olds and 5-year-olds engaged in asymmetrical interaction. However, 5-year-olds used similar social behaviors with same-age and younger partners. In Study two, the 5-year-old partners (n = 32) were asked either to play with or to teach their younger partners. No differences were found in 5-year-old behavior under the two conditions, and younger children did not engage in more complex social pretend play in subsequent play with age-mates.     

Learning in the contact zone: revisiting neglected aspects of development through an analysis of volunteer placements in Indonesia

Development rhetoric sometimes appears to take little account of the contingencies of relationships, activities and events, as if human interaction and understanding is being written out of the process. At the same time, practices such as volunteering, which foreground the human subjects involved in development, are often ignored by development professionals, despite (or perhaps because of) the high proportion of development agency staff who are themselves former volunteers. In this paper, a framework is developed which foregrounds this interactive and human dimension, illuminating its significance more clearly in the development process. This way of looking at development processes is the result of a four‐year field‐based study of volunteer teachers, hospital staff and development workers from the global North working with colleagues in Indonesian schools, hospitals and non‐government organizations. Working and interacting together is seen to involve participants in an active and often conflictual learning process. Through three typical stages (awareness of contradiction, transgression and negotiation), volunteers and their colleagues learn about the social boundaries in the context in which they participate, and about how they and other participants are themselves positioned in relation to these boundaries. The argument proposed here is that opportunities for such contextualized and emergent learning is essential if participants in development are to engage in robust and well‐informed collaborative actions in a particular development context.     

Ready to learn? Children's pre-academic achievement in pre-Kindergarten programs

We examined children's growth in school-related learning and social skills over the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) year in state-funded programs designed to prepare children for kindergarten. We expected that children's gains in academic and social skills could be attributed to variations in the structural and classroom process dimensions of program quality. Nearly 3000 (n = 2800) children were randomly selected, four per classroom, from approximately 700 randomly selected, state-funded pre-Kindergarten classrooms in eleven states. Enrollment in pre-K appeared related to gains in academic skills. Children showed larger gains in academic outcomes when they experienced higher-quality instruction or closer teacher–child relationships. Gains were not related to characteristics of the child or program (i.e., ratio, teacher qualifications and program location and length). These findings have implications for a range of state and local policy and program development efforts as well as for theories of contextual influences on development.