Happy holidays?

Patsy Allen has taught in and directed preschools, secondary, and college early childhood education programs. Currently she is writing, consulting, and practicing her parenting skills with her three children in Friona, TX.     

Integrating leisure guidance into a career counseling center

Conclusion Most people cannot realize a life that is gratifying and fulfilling, that meets their major needs, through their jobs alone. If a career guidance center is to realize its full potential, its counselors must teach its clientele that a career is more than a job. When career is broadly defined as a composite of the many activities in which a person engages over a lifetime, it will include both work and leisure activities. By helping their clients to select a balance of work and leisure activities that together can create satisfying and need-fulfilling lives, counselors in career planning centers can augment significantly their already vital role in human development.Patsy B. Edwards is the owner/manager of Constructive Leisure, a leisure and career guidance center founded in Los Angeles, California in 1968.Paul A. Bloland is Professor and Chair, Department of Counseling, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.     

Consultation: Developing a comprehensive approach to service delivery

This article brings together some of the thinking that seems important in illuminating key aspects of a consultation approach to the work of an educational psychology service. It begins by considering some current forces that influence the pattern of service, and the value of locating these forces historically. Definitions, assumptions and underlying psychological models for a comprehensive consultation approach to educational psychology service are considered, and an outline is offered of how it is carried out, how it works and its outcomes. Common pitfalls regarding consultation and the implications for change in a service context are described.     

Working with parents when children speak a different language

Patsy Allen has taught in and directed preschools, secondary, and college early childhood education programs. Currently she is writing, consulting, and practicing her parenting skills with her three children in Friona, TX.     

Parent-teacher conferences

Patsy Allen is a writer and consultant who has taught in and directed preschool, secondary, and college early-childhood-education programs.     

From the Editor

With the rollout of edTPA, Common Core Standards (CCS), and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there is renewed interest in teacher education programs providing an interdisciplinary approach to curriculum. Yet, future teachers are under increased pressure to pass standardized exams, such as the MTEL, WIFOR and PRAXIS, with a focus on content-specific instruction. Curriculum and assessment policy initiatives present contradictory messages regarding best practice. This research study examines an interdisciplinary approach to teaching content in one early childhood education teacher preparation program. Teaching that crosses disciplines and honors the content and epistemology of each discipline is complex and challenging to convey. Data for this yearlong study exploring student and faculty understanding of teaching from an interdisciplinary perspective at a small liberal arts college included semester-end surveys, focal student interviews, final projects, and faculty surveys. Based on this research, we suggest that integration of content area specialists in college curriculum courses, cross-institutional attention to effective integration strategies, and purposeful interdisciplinary field placements are needed as early childhood educators face continued policy reform.     

From the Editor: Challenges to Guiding the Teacher of Guided Play

ABSTRACT

New education reforms in Australia, and elsewhere in the world, are calling for degree-qualified early childhood teachers to work in prior to school contexts, including child care. Yet, emerging research indicates that the majority of early childhood graduates are averse to work in child care, with a career desire to work in other contexts – primary, kindergarten, preschool. This paper reports on a pilot study that focused on early childhood teacher preparation, with attention to child care professional experience. Interviews with early childhood teacher educators, including program coordinators, focused on the decision making processes about the child care professional experience. Discourse analysis located some of the competing and complex discursive considerations, illuminating the contingencies and tensions that face early childhood teacher educators. The imperatives on reflective thinking and decision making in complex early childhood teacher education landscapes are illuminated. These contingencies and tensions have implications for the workforce they are charged to prepare, as policy imperatives call for teachers prepared and willing to work in child care.