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Rates of homelessness are worsening in the United States, with a third of individuals experiencing homelessness being families with children. These families face many challenges, including limited social supports, insufficient access to services, and mental health concerns. These challenges inform a nuanced worldview, leading parents experiencing homelessness to understand their child's school life in unique ways. The purpose of this study is to explore how parents experiencing homelessness understand their children's participation in Head Start and publicly funded 4 K programs. We utilized semi-structured interviews with parents of 4 K students and applied an iterative approach for analysis to identify emergent themes and concepts. Results suggest families enter homelessness through several avenues and struggle with many aspects of homelessness, including stigma directed at parents and children. Parents identified many strengths in their children's school programs, including education and support from faculty, as well as areas for growth, such as more comprehensive transportation and meal services. Overall, these results suggest families experiencing homelessness encounter many barriers to finding stable housing. Additionally, parents of children experiencing homelessness value their child's education and access to resources in schools while still fearing the potential for their child to experience stigmatization and discrimination in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One in 30 American children experience homelessness, and yet educators are often unaware of the challenges these students face. Drawing on a qualitative study of 21 pre-service teachers (PSTs) interviewed at the completion of their early childhood/ESL teacher education program, the overall purpose of this study was to ascertain PSTs' reported attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and self-identified skills for working with young homeless children in schools with the goal of identifying opportunities for teacher education programs to better prepare PSTs for work with children experiencing homelessness. Findings suggest that PSTs enter teacher preparation with many misconceptions about children and families experiencing homelessness. Incorporating specific information about homelessness into coursework and supervision, nurturing PSTs' capacity for critical self-reflection, and creating opportunities for PSTs to develop positive teacher–student relationships with children experiencing homelessness were identified as essential in fostering PST self-efficacy, and, by extension, the resilience of homeless children. By illuminating the processes through which PSTs make sense of children's experiences of homelessness and its impacts on schooling, these findings have important implications for the education of young children and the design of professional development opportunities and structured learning for preservice teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this investigation is to deepen understanding of the clandestine professional lives of men who care for young children, exploring the pressure to hide parts of themselves experienced by many. The author utilizes an autoethnographic approach to examine social and psychological experiences he has navigated during his work as a classroom teacher, counselor, and researcher in urban Head Start centers. He finds that there are structural, attitudinal, social, and conceptual barriers to men being engaged in young children's lives as educators and caregivers. In response, the author considers how dominant theories of caregiving in the field of early childhood education are informed by and inadvertently perpetuate traditional hegemonic notions of masculinity. He concludes by articulating the importance of critical praxis and disrupting hegemony, re-imagining opportunities for transformation and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mirroring many of the same social and geographic inequities present in the K-12 educational system, the promise of early childhood education has been unfulfilled for many young children and their families. Social norms and funding structures, including the lack of universal, publicly funded high-quality preschool offerings, have served to perpetuate gender, class, economic, and racial inequity. The outcomes of these inequities are clearly manifested in the politics of universal preschool access and quality. In this policy analysis, the author discusses disparities in preschool access and quality, critiques social and political barriers to equitable distribution of preschool resources, and suggests several strategies for countering the current politics of class, race, gender, and geography in early childhood education. Findings from this analysis suggest that in order to provide high-quality early childhood education for all children, policy makers and advocates must address structural and attitudinal inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown for decades that early childhood education contributes to long term increases in student achievement for all children, but what is motivating the current movement toward universal Pre-k? This study used a content analysis of five major print media sources to explore how the media is framing the public pre-K movement.We looked for the issues or constituencies that are pushing the movement and how the movement is being framed in the media and sold to the public. We framed our findings within Edelman’s theory of political spectacle, which attributes policy formation to the active and deliberate creation of dramatic spectacle by a power elite in order to sell policy to the public (Edelman, 1988). We found that a substantial number of examples of the use of rhetorical patterns and symbolic representations consistent with political spectacle in both political statements quoted in the media and media language. We conclude with a discussion of the disconnect between the political spectacle and current policy in universal pre-K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]