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"Reconstructing Democratic Education" was an international conference held virtually on June 22, 2024. This article uses the words of the speakers and the participants to present some of the stories and reflections that stimulated us that day. Speakers touched on a wide variety of challenges that democracy in general and schools in particular are facing. We heard about an effort to reconstruct the teaching profession in Cambodia, a collaboration between third-graders and a college class for preservice teachers, a yearlong sequence of courses for teachers that evolves from the students' life experiences, and a film arts program for educationally challenged students in British Columbia. Two periods of participant questions and comments produced lively conversations about the opportunities and dangers that mark our efforts to reconstruct democratic schools for the twenty-first century.

This article provides an opportunity to listen to a master teacher describe the achievements that go into having a good day in school with kindergarten children. It can look deceptively easy to achieve. We visit Vivian Gussin Paley's classroom, listen as she describes her goals, and get a glimpse of how she strives to achieve them. We then witness a novice student teacher, the author, attempt to learn to teach and then, in later years, help a struggling kindergarten teacher learn to have a good day with her children. We experience just how complex the skills are for having a good day in school. Shortly before she died, Mrs. Paley talked about four words that she felt she had not made clear to herself and others that provide the key to having a good day: That reminds me of … This article explores how these four words on the part of a teacher open the way to having a good day with children, and in thinking about teaching.

The authors believe that children need to feel safe--they need the illusion of safety--so that they can develop in a healthy way. But it is an "illusion" because in reality safety is never guaranteed for anyone. At times, traumatic events disrupt the safe environments that people have created. Janoff-Buhlman (1992) describes the "shattering of illusions"--one of them being the illusion of safety--that takes place when people experience trauma. Children sometimes experience traumatic events first-hand, but they can also experience trauma vicariously as well. When children become vicariously aware of war, large-scale violence, and terrorism, their illusion of safety may become bruised. The bruising may take the form of worrying about whether the adults in their life, whom they have assumed to be powerful enough to guarantee their safety, may not be able to keep them safe. When that happens, the illusion of safety needs to be reestablished. Adults can help to reestablish this illusory sense of safety using children's literature about violence--a rather new genre, within which some picture books have become available. It is essential, however, that when adults use children's literature focused on violent topics, they do so with an understanding of children's dominant age-related fears, behaviors, and needs and connect these to those fears, behaviors, and needs that may be created by traumatic events. This article focuses on how adult readers can assess children's picture books and use them to engender an illusion of safety, reestablished by caring adults.

In the present study, we examined the development of episodic memory and episodic foresight. Three- and 5-year-olds were interviewed individually using a personalised timeline that included photographs of them at different points in their life. After constructing the timeline with the experimenter, each child was asked to discuss a number of different events: an event that happened yesterday, an event that happened earlier today, an event that would happen later today, and an event that would happen tomorrow. As judged by their parents, children's accounts were highly accurate. After controlling for age and language scores, there was a strong relation between amount of information reported about past and future events. Overall, 5-year-olds reported more total information than 3-year-olds; however, reports by 3-year-olds included a similar proportion of first-person reference as did reports by 5-year-olds. No age difference appeared in proportion of future-oriented talk. We conclude that the present task provides a promising method of exploring the emergence of mental time travel during early childhood. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.)

What should families and teachers look for when they choose picture books to help young children overcome their fears of imaginary monsters, dark places, thunderstorms, and dogs? This article provides criteria for assessing picture books and suggests ways to read them in ways that support children's development. (Contains 4 tables.)

The ability to care for oneself, near and distant others, animals, plants, human-made objects, and even ideas is an antidote for violence in its many forms as experienced in childhood as well as adulthood. This article makes a case for facilitating the development of the ability to care as children develop. The authors emphasize the importance of teachers facilitating this development. However, early education teachers may not be able to nurture the ability to care in others without the ability to care being facilitated in their own development. This article emphasizes the importance of creating caring teacher education programs as a model to foster its development in preservice early education teachers.

This paper examines the effectiveness of "Bridging"--a performance-based assessment and curriculum development tool for teachers of young children--in shaping preservice teachers' learning and teaching experiences. The experiences are examined for evidence of whether the use of "Bridging" during the student teaching period 1) facilitates student teacher acquisition of new knowledge about individual children as diverse learners, 2) helps student teachers gain a deeper understanding of content knowledge in a range of subject areas, and 3) strengthens their ability to use assessment results to inform curriculum planning and teaching. A 5-year implementation study indicates positive results with regard to all three questions. The discussion focuses on components and processes of Bridging that are key to student teacher development. These include constructing learning profiles for individual children, recognizing children's zones of proximal development in different curricular areas, using assessment to inform curriculum and instruction, and working on these goals in a community of learners. (Contains 2 tables, 4 figures and 3 footnotes.)

McNamee and Chen describe the Bridging assessment system they developed to measure performance on specific learning tasks for pre-K through 3rd-grade students. Bridging assesses an individual student's skill level on learning tasks in five curricular areas: language arts and literacy, visual arts, mathematics, science, and performing arts. The assessment tool includes a detailed 10-level rubric for each task. The authors give examples of how teachers in Head Start classes in Chicago used Bridging to assess particular students and made specific changes in how they taught those students as a result of the assessment. (Contains 1 Figure.)

This essay discusses the achievements of early childhood educator, Vivian Gussin Paley, preschool and kindergarten teacher for more than 30 years, and author of 12 books portraying her work in the classroom with young children. It begins with a description of seven narrative tools she developed over the course of many years that became the means for uncovering insights about children and the nature of their learning in classroom settings: The essay then examines how her work speaks to contemporary educational debates about the education of young children including the need for intellectual and academic rigor in early childhood classrooms; the place of pretend play in achieving academic goals; the building of inclusive classrooms as communities that support diverse young children to thrive; and how schools can educate morally responsible future citizens for a democratic society.

Demonstrates how Thompson's Hestian/Hermean paradigm can be expanded to provide both a knowledge base and a theory base for early childhood and home economics educators. (Author)

Presents guidelines for parents and teachers on preparing young children (3 to 8 years old) for a visit to the art museum. In preparing children for museum experiences, education for the art museum should be related to child development, begin long before entering a museum ("museum education"), and be sequential. (BB)

Academic inquiry has focused recently on how to create caring classrooms and school communities—that is, classrooms and school communities that encourage children to continue to develop caring feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, or to feel, think, and practice them anew. After reviewing research on caring and attachment, this article discusses how to structure a caring classroom and suggests that parents and teachers consider picture books as a means of helping young children learn to care for themselves, animals, and others. The article concludes with a discussion of criteria for assessing picture books and suggests some appropriate titles based on these criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]