Brain Research and Childhood Education provides teacher educators, education students (both in regular and special education programs), school psychologists, practicing teachers, and school leaders with a brief, readable distillation of the most up-to-date research on brain development and how it relates to optimum teaching practice in childhood and adolescence. This accessible reference uses cases to further illustrate how studies on brain development and various learning processes have implications for educators and psychologists as they strive to enhance children's cognitive, social, emotional, and academic learning opportunities.

This book offers an engaging study that analyses contemporary childhood by examining new lines of argument about diversity, disability and difference. The author critiques the key issues that affect both adults' and children's quality of life, including market-driven values, poverty and civic disengagement.In this fascinating study, Dimitra Hartas analyses contemporary childhood. She discusses the plurality inherent in childhood and the cultural, ideological, social and biological forces that shape children's experience of growing up in the 21st century. She engages with new lines of argument about diversity, disability and difference, and critiques the big issues that affect both adults' and children's quality of life such as market-driven values, poverty and civic disengagement.Hartas uncovers evidence of how the right to childhood is being violated in both the developed and developing world and how our consumerist culture is shaping children's lives in ways that are not always understood, and advocates the right to childhoods. She concludes by discussing the implications of her findings for both policy and practice in early childhood education, and examines pedagogies that are responsive to ethics, diversity and difference.

Understanding Tablets from Early Childhood to Adulthood offers an alternative to dominant and populist narratives that young people are intuitively able to successfully use tablet devices. Adopting a research-driven approach, the book contests the ideology that touch-technologies are easier to understand, and identifies the factors that contribute to communicative encounters between users and tablets. Communication theory and cognitive psychology concepts and methods are employed to offer an epistemological exploration of user-tablet interaction with a focus on the use of these technologies in educational settings.

This volume looks at the role of Religious Education in the curriculum for the Early Years child. This book attempts to: *Discuss how to incorporate a wide range of religions in the classroom; *Consider how these can be explored in exciting and imaginative ways; *Help readers clarify their thinking on the subject; *Looks at the development of new approaches to the teaching of RE. Through studying practical examples and discussing what should be aimed at when considering good practice in the classroom, she provides a text that manages to be both inspirational and useful. This is a great addition to the RoutledgeFalmer series of books on Teaching and Learning in the First Three Years of School.

Originally published in 1997. By drawing on the experiences of children aged 3 to 8 attending schools in Britain, Germany, Iceland, Australia and the USA, the authors of these eleven case studies provide insights into what it means for young children to enter a new language and culture in school. They look at the scope of out-of-school language and learning practices (the role of care givers, siblings and community language classes) and go on to look at the ways in which the teacher can act as mediator of a new language and culture in school. This book helps teachers develop culturally responsive teaching programmes based on an awareness of the knowledge children bring from home and the community. The book will be of interest to early years and primary school teachers working in multilingual classrooms and students.

* Explores the main factors that impact upon the lives of your children in the current safeguarding climate and offers a starting point to understand risks, and categories of abuse and neglect. * Takes a child-centred approach, which is the most empowering perspective from which to consider the needs of a child and ensure that they are kept safe and protected by those who work with them. * Reflections, case studies, scenarios, and the voices of multi-agency professionals and parents are woven throughout. * Challenges in the field of child protection are growing for the early years sector, and this book offers encouragement to be both confident and competent within their roles.

A focal point of early childhood education is how young children build knowledge and the ways that practitioners, parents and carers can help them to do so. Many adults find it challenging to identify what knowledge young children are building and how they do so, making it difficult to support young children's learning and development in the most effective ways. This essential guide will help you to identify and develop young children's knowledge and understanding in early years settings, not only in terms of statutory requirements but far beyond them. Building Knowledge in Early Childhood Education draws on empirical research findings from the Young Children As Researchers (YCAR) project to examine everyday activities and reveal the means that young children use to build knowledge and understanding, as well as exploring the similarities between learning behaviours in early childhood and adult life. Interweaving everyday activities in practice with research and theory, this book covers: how young children construct knowledge; learning, problem-solving and exploring; concepts and conceptualising in early childhood; evidence-based decision-making; how young children behave as researchers. Offering practical advice and suggestions to create opportunities that identify and facilitate young children's own constructions of knowledge and understanding, this book is essential reading for practitioners, students and all those interested in the theories surrounding young children as researchers.

While the research on bullying and peer victimization has increased considerably over the past 20 years, a number of studies are emerging that document mixed results of bullying and prevention programs. During the last decades, several special issues devoted to research on bullying and victimization have been published in national and international scholarly journals. Based on the increase of published articles on bullying and victimization in journals, textbooks, government reports, and documents in professional organizations, it is timely for a special volume on research on bullying and victimization to appear in the series on Contemporary Perspectives in Early Childhood Education. The purpose of this volume is to share a collection of research strands on bullying and victimization of young children. It describes the historical roots and suggests anti?bullying programs and strategies to decrease bullying and victimization. The bullying and victimization volume can be a valuable tool to researchers who are conducting studies in that area. It focuses on important historical and contemporary issues on bullying and victimization in early childhood education (ages 0 to 8) to provide the information necessary to make judgments about these issues. It also motivates and guides researchers to explore gaps on research on bullying and victimization.

* New edition includes updates for cultural relevancy (non-white characters and names, less emphasis on gender roles). * Features full color illustrations. * Filled with critical thinking activities that teachers or parents can use with gifted pre-readers.

Storytelling in Early Childhood is a captivating book which explores the multiple dimensions of storytelling and story acting and shows how they enrich language and literacy learning in the early years. Foregrounding the power of children's own stories in the early and primary years, it provides evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach first developed by Vivian Gussin Paley, affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language-rich curriculum. The book explores a number of themes and topics, including: the role of imaginary play and its dynamic relationship to narrative; how socially situated symbolic actions enrich the emotional, cognitive and social development of children; how the interrelated practices of storytelling and dramatisation enhance language and literacy learning, and contribute to an inclusive classroom culture; the challenges practitioners face in aligning their understanding of child literacy and learning with a narrow, mandated curriculum which focuses on measurable outcomes. Driven by an international approach and based on new empirical studies, this volume further advances the field, offering new theoretical and practical analyses of storytelling and story acting from complementary disciplinary perspectives. This book is a potent and engaging read for anyone intrigued by Paley's storytelling and story acting curriculum, as well as those practitioners and students with a vested interest in early years literacy and language learning. With contributions from Vivian Gussin Paley, Patricia 'Patsy' Cooper, Dorothy Faulkner, Natalia Kucirkova, Gillian Dowley McNamee and Ageliki Nicolopoulou.

Teachers have often felt unnecessarily apprehensive about teaching without music without being gifted musicians themselves.Music 7-11 dispels the myth that to teach music effectively a teacher has to "be musical" and provides teachers with the opportunity of developing both the basic subject knowledge and the confidence needed to deliver enjoyable and valuable music lessons. It does this by encouraging practical engagement with the subject through making and listening to music, reflecting on experiences and sharing views.

What better way to make vocabulary words stick than through funny and engaging cartoons? Just one cartoon a day, complete with clear, simple definitions and sentences, will help build students' vocabulary and boost their reading, writing, and test-taking skills.

Chapters discuss issues impacting the education of African American girls and many of challenges that they encounter during their schooling experiences. The chapters were written by 24 authors including a school superintendent, university administrator and professors, classroom teacher, mother and a 10th grade African American student. The 20 chapters of the book are organized into four sections. Section one introduces the book and provides critical perspectives. Section Two focuses on Curriculum and instruction. Section Three shares information from significant stakeholders while the last section includes other schooling experiences and ends with a powerful poem by a tenth grade African American girl, entitled "Proud." The forward of the book, written by a Japanese American scholar, Valerie Pang, denotes the urgency of the book noting that the book "warms the heart." The book ends with an epilogue, written by an African American scholar, Tyrone Howard, who has a vested interest in African American males. He shares commanding interest in this scholarship, because what happens to African American females, impacts African American males and the entire African American community.

Primary schoolchildren are frequently shielded from education on sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases in an effort to protect their innocence. In countries like South Africa, where AIDS is particularly widespread, it is especially important to address prevention with younger boys and girls as active social agents with the capacity to engage with AIDS as gendered and sexual beings. This volume addresses the question of children's understanding of AIDS, not simply in terms of their dependence but as active participants in the interpretation of their social worlds. The volume draws on an interview and ethnographic based study of young children in two socially diverse South African primary schools, as well as interviews conducted with teachers and mothers of young children. It shows how adults sustain the production of childhood sexual innocence, and the importance of scaling up programs in AIDS intervention, gender and sexuality. It makes significant contributions to the global debate around childhood sexualities, gender and AIDS education.

Chapters discuss issues impacting the education of African American girls and many of challenges that they encounter during their schooling experiences. The chapters were written by 24 authors including a school superintendent, university administrator and professors, classroom teacher, mother and a 10th grade African American student. The 20 chapters of the book are organized into four sections. Section one introduces the book and provides critical perspectives. Section Two focuses on Curriculum and instruction. Section Three shares information from significant stakeholders while the last section includes other schooling experiences and ends with a powerful poem by a tenth grade African American girl, entitled "Proud." The forward of the book, written by a Japanese American scholar, Valerie Pang, denotes the urgency of the book noting that the book "warms the heart." The book ends with an epilogue, written by an African American scholar, Tyrone Howard, who has a vested interest in African American males. He shares commanding interest in this scholarship, because what happens to African American females, impacts African American males and the entire African American community.

The scope of these chapters reflects the strong influence that Sandra Wood Scarr's scholarship-her empirical research and theoretical contributions-has had on what we know about experience and development via the lens of the psychological sciences, especially the fields of developmental psychology, behavior genetics, early education and child care.

Discussing learning technologies in relation to young children often provokes a wide range of passionate responses, from sceptics to enthusiasts. This text explores the issues in a holistic, pedagogical and research-informed way. It helps professionals unpick the complex issues involved, understand the scope of available technology, examine the interplay between learning and specific technologies, and more broadly create a vision for a technology-enabled learning environment that is child-centred, playful, creative and interactive. Recurring case studies are analysed from a number of theoretical perspectives, and the approach deliberately goes beyond the scope of 'understanding of the world' to consider the contribution of technology-enhanced learning to a range of different contexts and subject areas. Throughout there are clear links to professional standards, the Early Years Foundation Stage and the characteristics of effective learning.

Across the United States, schools face the daunting issue of confronting the widespread effects of bullying, which threaten the physical, emotional, and intellectual well?being and development of youth. Creating and Negotiating Collaborative Spaces for Socially?Just Anti?Bullying Interventions for K?12 Schools is a theoretically and empirically grounded edited volume that describes practical ways to address bullying at both systemic and individual levels. Central to the scope of the book is a diversity?focused approach to assessing and conceptualizing discrimination and bullying among marginalized youth, such as LGBTQ, mixed race, gifted and talented, and special needs populations. Interspersed with concrete, real?life examples, each chapter in the volume expands on the multiple dimensions of bullying as well as research?backed anti?bullying interventions. The book advances previous literature by addressing contemporary issues in bullying. Special topics include teacher?to?student bullying, cyberbullying, restorative justice practices, and assessment of attitudes toward addressing bullying.

Inside the 'Inclusive' Childhood Classroom: The Power of the 'Normal' offers a critique of current practices and alternative view of inclusion. The rich data created inside three classrooms will challenge those who work in the field, as the children and their performances, previously overlooked, are foreground. Although at times confronting, it is ultimately invaluable reading for classroom teachers, students, academics, and researchers as well as anyone who desires to deepen their understanding of inclusive processes. The inclusion of children with diagnosed special needs in mainstream early childhood classrooms is a policy and practice that has gained universal support in recent decades. Exploring ways to include the diagnosed child has been of interest to inclusive research. Adopting a poststructural perspective, this book interrupts taken for granted assumptions about inclusive processes in the classroom. Attention is drawn to the role played by the undiagnosed children, those positioned as already included. Researching among children, this ethnography interrogates the production of the classroom 'normal'. As the children negotiate difference, the operations of the 'normal' are made visible in their words and actions. In their encounters with the diagnosed Other, they take up practices of tolerance and silence, effecting fear, separation, and a desire to cure. These performances echo practices, presumed abandoned, from centuries past. As a way forward this book urges a rethink of practice-as-usual, as these effects are problematic for inclusion and not sustainable. A greater scrutiny of the 'normal' is needed, as the power it exercises, impacts on all children and how they become subjects in the classroom.

Is it possible to meet all the needs of a widely diverse group of children in one class? Based upon the author's own research into this question, this new book invites readers to compare teachers' accounts of their best lessons and provides useful discussion and viewpoints about inclusive pedagogy in a variety of learning contexts. Inclusive Pedagogy in the Early Years covers: structured and signposted case studies to encourage comparison examples of children's work to demonstrate how they responded to lessons.

Nurturing Young Thinkers Across the Standards: K-2 provides multiple practical resources to assist teachers in working with standards across subject areas in ways that bring critical thinking into the everyday process of learning content and skills. The authors provide suggestions for engaging and sustaining children's interest and illustrate the use of teaching language that actively nurtures the habits of lifelong learning. The book is rich with opportunities for developing tools for design, implementation, and assessment of vibrant integrated curricula for K-2 students that support the development of cognitive skills and increase confidence in their abilities to think and learn.

Anti-Bias Education in the Early Childhood Classroom provides a useful, clearly outlined guide for implementing anti-bias and anti-oppression practices in early childhood education settings. Throughout the book, you'll find: Stories from the field Strategies for keeping teaching practices in touch with growing social justice movements Tasks and questions to spark your professional growth in this important area Katie Kissinger uses her personal experience as a longtime educator to highlight both the challenges and the potential for transformative learning in the anti-bias classroom, and gives other teachers the tools they need to create classrooms that welcome all students and families.

Infants and toddlers-the so?called "touchscreen generation"-are living in a screen mediasaturated world. They are the target market for ever?growing numbers of apps, TV shows, electronic toys, and e?books. Making sense of the complex issues associated with screen media in the lives of children under 3 can be challenging for the adults who care for them. There is a strong need among teachers (and parents) of infants and toddlers for guidance related to the appropriate role of screen media in early care and education. Unlike most other books about technology in early childhood, this book focuses specifically on infants and toddlers. It explores why and how infant and toddler teachers need to be techwise in order to understand the implications of screenmedia for children's learning and development. The book serves as a single, accessible resource to relevant research findings from the fields of pediatric medicine, child development, developmental psychology, social and behavioral sciences, and brain science. It provides infant/toddler teachers with a comprehensive approach and strategies to guide their decisionmaking and promote practices that are evidence?based, family?centered, culturally responsive, and collaborative. It is a call for teachers to think carefully and act wisely when making decisions about screen media-both the technology that they are encountering now and the technology they will encounter in the future-in order to optimize the learning and healthy development of infants and toddlers.

Over the past few years bilingualism has come to be seen not as a hinderance to assimiliation but as an asset which, properly nurtured, will benefit children's linguistic awareness, cultural sensitivity and cognitive functioning. Bilingualism in the Primary Classroom gives primary teachers a window on the experience of the bilingual children in their care and by doing so helps them to make the most of what the children and their parents have to offer as well as giving them a good start in the National Curriculum. Many of the contributors to the book are themselves bilingual and are thus able to understand the children's experience from within, but they are also particularly careful to show monolingual teachers how they too can make use of children's mother tongue experience. The book is based throughout on rich case study material of individual children at various stages on the bilingual spectrum.

History in the Early Years is an innovative and accessible guide to helping young children explore the past through their environment, family history and story. This fully revised edition includes guidance on introducing children to the past at the Foundation Stage in school and pre-school settings. Throughout it shows how the requirements of the early years curriculum can be met in innovative ways, and is fully illustrated by case study examples of children's learning and also supported by recent research. The book will support both new and experienced early years practitioners in developing young children's sense of identity through history. It encourages practitioners to ensure that history is a significant dimension of early years education and will be essential reading for all teachers in the early and primary years.