This study utilized data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 to examine the longitudinal effects of delayed, early or on-time kindergarten enrollment and relative age on children’s reading and mathematics achievement from kindergarten to third grade. Data were analyzed using a propensity score stratification method and a cross-classified random effects model, adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics. Children in the delayed group entered kindergarten with higher reading and mathematics scores, yet achievement differences were negligible by the end of third grade. Relative age predicted children’s performances in reading and mathematics achievement. Typically, children who were older than their peers in the same class had higher academic achievement scores.
There is much current interest in the impact of early childhood education programs on preschoolers and, in particular, on the magnitude of cognitive and affective gains. To address this issue comprehensively, a meta-analysis was conducted for the purpose of synthesizing the outcomes of comparative studies in this area. Consistent with the accrued research base on the effects of preschool education, significant effects were found in this study for children who attend a preschool program prior to entering kindergarten. Although the largest effect sizes were observed for cognitive outcomes, a preschool education was also found to impact childrenï¿½s social skills and school progress. Specific aspects of the treatments that positively correlated with gains included teacher-directed instruction and small-group instruction; provision of additional services tended to be associated with smaller gains.
This article explores how several classroom practices can promote self-reflection and metacognition among elementary students. When built into the existing curriculum, activities such as directed goal-setting, practice with language prompts, written self-reflections, and posttask oral conversations are shown to enrich the learning process by increasing students' awareness of themselves as learners.
This article discusses the notion of parent-teacher partnerships in early childhood education and care, and presents findings from an ethnographic study of relationships between mothers and teachers in a child care center.
The authors describe in this article an innovative language intervention program involving the creation of bilingual, student self-authored identity texts. Called the Early Authors Program (EAP), the intervention stands as an example of how spaces and opportunities for literacy development among young ELLs can be created in a classroom instructional environment.
The author argues that American educators rely on standardized tests at too early an age when administered in kindergarten, particularly given the original intent of kindergarten as envisioned by its founder, Friedrich Froebel.
An inquiry into Western representations of childhood in art, literature, social and cultural history, philosophy, psychoanalysis and religion. Implications are considered for the future of the adult-child relation in child rearing and education.
This article focuses on the considerably lower proportion of Latino parents who select a formal preschool or child-care center for their three to five-year-old youngsters. The authors empirically focus on the influence of ethnicity, maternal education, family structure, and preliteracy practices on parents' propensity to select preschools and center-based programs.
Reports on a study of the way children are provided for in Scandinavia and explores those aspects of the child-care system which are potentially adaptable to American needs.
An introduction to this special issue of the Teachers College Record that represents some of the most recent thinking on the conceptual and practical growth within the field of early childhood education and child care.
Child care and early childhood education should be fully integrated. The roots and consequences of the current separation are examined. A description is provided of the Kramer Project, a day care school. Obstacles to fully integrated day care and educational services are discussed.
After tracing the changing forms of work, family life, and child care in America, this article explores the benefits to family, home life, work place, parents, children, and child care workers afforded by a variety of current employer practices in child care services and support.
Buffalo's Early Childhood Centers, which grew out of court-ordered desegregation plans, are described and evaluated in this article in terms of student achievement, parental involvement, and racial balancing.
The change process surrounding the introduction of an all-day kindergarten program in a small suburban school district is examined in this case study. Implications for adoption and implementation of early childhood programs in other school systems are discussed.
A look at programs that reduce damaging outcomes for at-risk youth.
This article discusses the connection between the availability of day care and early childhood education and the future of the U.S. economy by examining three key elements in the relationship: the family, the individual, and the nation as a whole.
Two antithetical views of the sense-making potential of young children are explored: the Piagetian egocentric view and the sociocentric view. The article suggests that empirical research demonstrates socially construed perspective-taking tasks do not show the young child to be egocentric, but sociocentric.
Kindergarten programs in public schools generally have an academic/ formal orientation or an intellectual/experiential orientation. This article highlights the fundamental differences between the two approaches by examining current curriculum, policy and staffing, and administrative practice regarding kindergarten.
This article outlines key issues in early childhood education related to (1) identification and characterization of the populations to be served, (2) definition of the goals of services, (3) preparation of early childhood specialists, and (4) optimal settings for delivery of service.
This article discusses four reasons for advocacy activities related to early childhood education and child care: preserving existing programs; increasing capacity and quality of service; making early education more accessible, affordable, and equitable; and educating the public.
The views of Jean Piaget and Rudolf Steiner concerning children's stages of development are compared and related to present-day instructional practices used in the Waldorf schools, which employ Steiner's ideas. Educational principles and practices used at the elementary school level are discussed.
Jean Piaget's theories about children's cognitive development are applied to the evaluation of childhood psychosis. Problems with the testing of such children are described, and results of a research project that used the Piaget-inspired Uzgiris and Hunt Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development to assess autistic children's cognitive processes are given.
Jean Piaget's belief that children's developmental levels largely determine what they can learn is challenged. Research concerning the existence of cognitive structures in children is critiqued, and problems with administering Piagetian tasks are pointed out. Educators should not restrict children's exposure to learning because, according to Piagetian criteria, they are not ready.
On November 14, 1980, the Developmental Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, held a memorial conference in Thorndike Hall to mark the death of Jean Piaget on September 17, 1980. Sixteen scholars from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and education presented brief reflections on Piaget’s work to an audience of about sixty people.
The underlying premise of this article is that the information and the education processes should be perceived as integrated—or combined in a larger process—and that activities related to both processes should be coordinated. The perception is important in both the industrialized and less industrialized countries (LIC's).
The 1960s saw the widespread adoption in this country of early education pro¬grams aimed at counteracting the effects of poverty on human development. This article is an analysis of seven early education program studies.
As fresh studies of familial education are undertaken in their own right—studies in which explicitly educational questions are addressed to appropriate primary sources—a criticized body of generalizations will begin to emerge, and we shall come to see the family anew as the crucially important educator it has always been.
The author discusses some of the literature on the family as educator. The family is an arena in which virtually the entire range of human experience can take place. Warfare, violence, love, tenderness, honesty, deceit, private property, communal sharing, power manipulation, informed consent, formal status hierar¬chies, egalitarian decision-making—all can be found within the setting of the fam¬ily. And so, also, can a variety of educational encounters, ranging from conscious, systematic instruction to repetitive, moment-to-moment influences at the margins of awareness.
Within anthropology we have developed several useful distinctions in discussing the questions of how grandparents do or do not play a role in the education of children in any given society, and particularly in our own. Within the context of this article the author uses the word education to include conscious teaching of any sort, whether of speech, manners, morals, or skills, but include also the process of socialization, which occurs in all societies as children learn to restrain their impulses, postpone gratification, control their sphincters, walk, talk, and participate in social life, and the process of enculturation, by which children learn a particular culture.
It is possible to combine all the individual and group consumption that goes on in the family unit into one "family consumption package" and, using economic theories designed for analyzing individual decisions, to make valid and useful statements about family activities.