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This article describes the development of the Early Elementary Writing Rubric (EEWR), an analytic assessment designed to measure kindergarten and first-grade writing and inform educators' instruction. Crocker and Algina's (1986) approach to instrument development and validation was used as a guide to create and refine the writing measure. Study 1 describes the development of the 10-item measure (response scale ranges from 0 = "Beginning of Kindergarten" to 5 = "End of First Grade"). Educators participated in focus groups, expert panel review, cognitive interviews, and pretesting as part of the instrument development process. Study 2 evaluates measurement quality in terms of score reliability and validity. Data from writing samples produced by 634 students in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms were collected during pilot testing. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the EEWR. A one-factor model fit the data for all writing genres and all scoring elements were retained with loadings ranging from 0.49 to 0.92. Internal consistency reliability was high and ranged from 0.89 to 0.91. Interrater reliability between the researcher and participants varied from poor to good and means ranged from 52% to 72%. First-grade students received higher scores than kindergartners on all 10 scoring elements. The EEWR holds promise as an acceptable, useful, and psychometrically sound measure of early writing. Further iterative development is needed to fully investigate its ability to accurately identify the present level of student performance and to determine sensitivity to developmental and instruction gains.

The last two years disrupted public education systems, but they also highlighted opportunities. Schools and districts can apply the nimbleness they demonstrated during the pandemic to efforts to reconnect and reengage their students. In this moment, state boards of education are in the perfect position to guide schools and districts, not just to a return to normal, but to a system that invites back students' whole selves through inclusive, culturally relevant practices. At a time when school systems have reported sharp declines in student enrollment, it is important to recognize that when students are disconnected from school they are disconnected from multiple facets of development. Culturally responsive practice makes use of culture as a basis for engaging and motivating students, and it fosters proactive classroom management and positive student behavior. Such practices also lead to improved academic performance, attendance, credits earned, retention rates, and positive self-identity.

Early childhood is an important time for building children's affinity with nature and the environment. Early childhood professionals play a crucial role in developing young children's understanding of the natural world. Over the past 50 years, there has been a movement in early childhood education and care contexts to provide young children with the opportunity to learn in natural surroundings such as forest schools and nature kindergartens. This research, occurred in four bush kinders, an Australian example of nature-based, early years education influenced by the forest school approach to education. In this paper we interrogate key ideas concerning environmental education, drawing on seminal empirical research, guiding curriculum documents such as Australia's Early Years Learning Framework and government policy documents to build understandings of how children's play can be observed by educators who can then support the children to develop their understandings of the natural world around them. Through ethnography, a methodology that uses both participation and observation of research participants, it became apparent that young children's play-based learning offers opportunities for development of understandings of the environment. Applying a recent definition of environmental education from the US Environmental Protection Authority (2022), we analysed four vignettes which provide examples of educators and children's interactions supporting children to build an affinity with nature observed during the research. This research's implications are novel when considering the relatively new bush kinder approach to early childhood education as the findings remind us of the benefits of bush kinders in generating opportunities for young children's environmental education.

Research Findings: This study explored the relationship between family-work conflict and autonomy support among Chinese kindergarten teachers. Autonomous motivation and ego depletion were considered as the mediator and moderator, respectively. A total of 859 kindergarten teachers were recruited and surveyed online. The results showed that (1) Family-work conflict was negatively associated with autonomy support; (2) Autonomous motivation partially mediated the relationship between family-work conflict and autonomy support; (3) The relationship between family-work conflict and autonomous motivation was found to be moderated by ego depletion. Practice or Policy: These findings highlight the contribution of resolving family-work conflict in improving kindergarten teachers' autonomy support. Effective policies should focus on enhancing autonomous motivation and mitigating the negative effects of ego depletion. These strategies are critical to fostering a supportive teaching environment that can benefit both teachers and young children.

This paper presents empirical evidence on kindergarten admission preparation services in Hong Kong. Parents increasingly turn to tutoring companies for a range of services, such as social skills training, portfolio editing, mock interviews, and parental consultation. We used qualitative methods to capture the views of parents, teachers, tutors, and early childhood educators (n = 78), to contribute to the lack of literature on this topic. Our findings indicate a market-driven ecosystem of education that favours commercial interests, widens educational inequalities, and is perpetuated by factors such as privatisation of the early childhood sector and misalignment between kindergarten and primary school curricula. Parents consider choice of school, future aspirations, and perceived hierarchies among kindergartens as major considerations for seeking admission preparation services. Heightened admission competition is also present in pre-nurseries and playgroups, calling for increased attention to be paid to the level of competition imposed among children.

The article addresses the role of Catholic early childhood education, the parents and the kindergarten in setting the developmental background for the child's future life perspectives and personal development. This research subject is analysed in the context of the situation in Ukraine, and the article focuses on how the respondents -- Ukrainian female refugees -- perceive the value of the process. The article begins with an outline of the essentials of Catholic education and their practical implementation through the educational conception developed by Edmund Bojanowski. Then it analyses opinions of refugee women from Ukraine, surveyed with action research methodology and a diagnostic survey to discover how the respondents understand the value of Catholic education and its importance in responding to contemporary life challenges. The respondents' opinions reveal how the state of war in Ukraine has brought home the importance of family education and the role of the parents and Catholic early childhood education in kindergarten for the well-being of the individual, the family and society. Research conclusions highlight a need to enhance early childhood education practices in an era of dynamic socio-cultural change, marked the unexpected and highly challenging events. Despite on-going secularisation, there is a growing conviction that Catholic early childhood education can offer a solid foundation for this enhancement, due to its reliance on stable, universal set of values and its emphasis on the regularities of child development.

Transition to kindergarten is an important developmental milestone for children and families. This study explored factors associated with kindergarten readiness focusing on the impact of a summer kindergarten transition program. A mixed-method design was employed, and the qualitative data from interviews with 16 randomly selected kindergarten teachers and the quantitative data of assessment scores of 320 kindergarteners were analyzed. Compared with children who were eligible but did not participate in the transition program, those who participated in the program had significantly more family engagement and stronger home-school relations. Smaller class sizes were associated with children's higher readiness scores in both academic achievement and social-emotional development. Larger school enrollment was associated with children's higher readiness scores in academic achievement, more family engagement, and stronger home-school relations. Higher school poverty was associated with children's lower readiness scores in social-emotional development. The findings can be used to inform program development and policymaking.

The concept of Thirdspace was employed to explore the interface of Haredi religious perception and contemporary psychological notions, focusing on male Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) kindergarten teachers' perceptions of "self." A two years ethnographic study was conducted, based on interactions with 90 male kindergarten teachers and 13 in-depth interviews in a Haredi Enrichment Centre for kindergarten children in Israel. The findings reveal a local notion of self-construal, including several features of contemporary Western independent self-construal along with Haredi religious perceptions. Together, these encouraged the development of an autonomous individual, capable of independently conducting his life as an adult. Children were perceived as distinct individuals with unique personal attributes whose expression would engender personal success, increase self-esteem, and encourage self-expression -- all this in a religious framework that sought to enhance the joy produced by experiencing the religious way of life. This paper additionally discusses limitations and implications for other multicultural educational settings.

Although teachers are expected to teach mathematics ambitiously, it is challenging for them to do so. Given that the first year represents a critical juncture between teacher preparation and inservice teaching, it may be particularly challenging to teach ambitiously. Understanding the nuanced characteristics in lessons taught by first-year elementary teachers identified as being generally ambitious can inform how mathematics teacher educators and school mentors support them. A thematic analysis of 15 transcribed lessons revealed instructional moves that were more and less prevalent. Task-level findings indicated that while first-year teachers solicited student input, encouraged them to participate in discussions, and had them attend to cognitively demanding tasks, they seldom assigned open-ended and non-procedural tasks. Students also had few opportunities to grapple with the mathematics. Turn-level findings indicated that first-year teachers maintained the task potential, facilitated student participation, and promoted student authority and perspectives. They further aimed to deepen students' mathematical thinking, albeit the subtle ways they did so sometimes were apparent across lessons (e.g., encourage students to continue to problem solve) and other times were limited (e.g., provide an opportunity for students to agree or disagree).

With the increasing use of robotics in education, this study examined the influence of educational robotics on K-12 students' creativity and problem-solving skills by using Meta-analysis on 20 typical studies published from 2011 to 2021. Subsequent results exhibited five major points: 1) The overall effect of educational robotics was at 0.821; 2) Educational robotics had significantly improved students' creativity more than their problem-solving skills; 3) Educational robotics had the best effect on kindergarten children, but only had less effect on middle school students; 4) Educational robotics had a more significant learning effect on girls than boys; and 5) Different course periods of educational robotic teaching all had a positive effect on learning, but would notably decrease as the course period extends. Hence, educational practitioners and researchers should completely utilise its advantages to effectively improve students' creativity and problem-solving skills, and provide guidance for the development and application of educational robotics.

In this article, the authors unveil the Trade Book Inquiry Design Model (IDM) blueprint. Anchored in a compelling question inspired by a trade book, the new blueprint is broken into two instructional blocks: "Reading and Comprehension" and "Living Social Studies." The inquiry template is designed to be instructionally efficient and take two 30-minute classes with a targeted Taking Informed Action opportunity so that students can practice and apply civic ideas. We have included "grab-and-go" resources including vocabulary lists, mini-lessons, ready-made sources, and Taking Informed Action guides to assist busy teachers in finding time and inspiration to do meaningful social studies inquiry. The authors we developed three different trade book inquiries at grades K-1, grades 2-3, and grades 4-5 to showcase the new format and to assist our elementary colleagues in talking with our youngest citizens about what it means to be active and engaged in a democracy. At the end of the article, we outline the ambitions for the "Trade Book Begets Inquiry" initiative and invite readers to participate in this exciting endeavor

Outdoor pedagogies have gained significant traction in Early Childhood Education over the years and European traditions represent a cultural norm in what is generally referred to as Scandinavian outdoor pedagogies. This small-scale ethnographic research adopted an interpretative methodological approach and afforded opportunities to observe young preschool children engaging in an outdoor, allotment, Garden School in the centre of Oslo Norway. Here we were in the privileged position to capture moments vis a vis the environment, and whilst we acknowledge traditional child led discourses, affiliated with healthy child development, we also envisaged a world where children engaged in post-anthropocentric entanglements with human and non-human kinships.

Children's development during early childhood affects their well-being and educational success, but there are few reliable assessment instruments available. The aim of the study was to develop, pilot and validate an e-assessment instrument for assessing five-year-old children's development in cognitive processes, learning, language and mathematical skills. The tablet-based instrument was piloted in Estonia in 11 kindergartens with 122 children. The teachers guided the children one by one over several days. The instrument was validated using teachers' evaluations of the sampled children's skills. The results showed positive associations in expected skill areas supporting the claim of the instrument being valid for assessing young children's development.

Grade retention, the practice of holding a student back in the same grade, has been a controversial topic in the United States for decades. English learners, a growing population in US schools, are consistently identified for grade retention more often than their English-only counterparts. The purpose of this study is to test the impact of grade retention on a set of language learning outcomes (reading, listening, and writing) for English language learners over a seven-year period. The data was collected in a large urban school district in the south-central region that serves predominantly Spanish speaking natives. Retained students were matched with non-retained students for a quasi-experimental control group using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) techniques. Multilevel growth models, with time (level 1) nested within students (level 2), were applied to these two groups to estimate the effect of grade retention on their longitudinal trajectory for each language learning outcome. We found that after 7 years, matched-promoted students had higher levels of English proficiency than retained peers in all three domains: listening, reading, and writing.

Inclusion of children with disabilities in general schools is drawing attention in Jordanian political and educational domains. Teachers play an important role in the successful implementation of inclusive education. This study explores teachers' perceptions regarding inclusive education using focus group discussions. The findings revealed that teachers were generally positive about including children with physical and mild intellectual disabilities, but believe that it is not feasible to implement in current school environments. The challenges include insufficient human and physical resources, inaccessible buildings, inadequate training and lack of parental support. It is imperative to address these challenges for the effective implementation of inclusive education.

The purpose of this article is to qualitatively explore the disparity in the perspectives of female and male staff in promoting physical activity towards 3-5-year-old girls and boys in the outdoor playground of a Norwegian kindergarten. The sample consisted of eight female staff and two male staff members from one kindergarten. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather in-depth insight on their attitudes, thoughts, and actions. The results of the study illustrate a basic agreement that male staff are usually more physical and active with both girls and boys. Further, the results demonstrate that neither the female- nor male staff view promotion of physical activity in a gender perspective. The interviews reveal that both female and male staff intend to treat every girl and boy in the same manner when it comes to promoting physical activity; thus, a surprising result is that they do not seem to be conscious about their own stereotypical attitude and how this may affect the girls and boys when promoting physical activity. The staff members, regardless of their gender, obtain an attitude of learned helplessness because they feel there are not enough adults present in the outdoor playground of the kindergarten.

Purpose: We examine the content, context, and management of literacy learning opportunities in a large, diverse sample in the US and whether these opportunities were differentiated by children's oral language and decoding skill levels. Method: A total of 1,404 children in 153 preschool-through-third-grade classrooms were observed for several multi-hour observations of their literacy time. Children were administered assessments of code-focused and meaning-focused skills before each observation. Results: Code-focused instruction was most common in kindergarten and was appropriately differentiated only in this grade. Significantly more meaning-focused instruction was observed in 1st-3rd grades than in earlier grades and there was limited evidence of differentiation of this type of instruction. Conclusion: Kindergarten is a focus year for learning to read and children who do not make sufficient progress may face challenges due to limited, undifferentiated learning opportunities in subsequent grades. Meaning-focused instruction time is emphasized in later grades, which is a missed opportunity for younger learners.

Purpose: We examined whether the relations between home literacy environment (HLE), children's independent reading, and emergent literacy and reading skills are confounded by parents' reading skills (a genetic proxy). Method: One hundred eighty-nine Chinese children (M[subscript age] = 74.26 months, 40% female) were followed from kindergarten to Grade 2 and were assessed on emergent literacy skills (pinyin knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary) and word reading in kindergarten and on reading comprehension in Grade 2. Their parents (both mothers and fathers) were also assessed on reading (word reading and reading comprehension) and completed questionnaires on HLE (code-related activities, meaning-related activities, and access to literacy resources) in kindergarten and their children's independent reading in Grade 2. Results: Results of structural equation modeling showed that access to literacy resources was associated with children's vocabulary, and code-related activities indirectly predicted reading comprehension through pinyin knowledge after controlling for parents' reading skills. Parents' reading skills indirectly predicted children's reading comprehension through children's independent reading. Conclusion: Code-related activities and access to literacy resources may have a true effect on children's reading development over and above the effect of parents' reading skills as a proxy for genetic transmission. The children of parents with better reading skills may engage in more independent reading, which may be related to their better reading comprehension.

The purpose of this study was to explore self-compassion among K-12 music educators. Our sample consisted of 139 practicing K-12 music educators across the United States. Participants completed a modified version of the Self-Compassion Scale Long Form (Neff et al., 2021), which measured both positive (self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness) and negative (self-judgment, isolation, over-identification) aspects of self-compassion (Neff, 2003). Through one-way ANOVAs, we found significant differences between teaching experience and participants' scores for mindfulness, overidentification, self-judgment, isolation, and their overall self-compassion scores. We also discovered significant differences between age, over-identification, self-judgment, grade level taught, common humanity, and isolation.

Purpose: Phonological awareness (PA), the awareness of sounds in spoken words, is strongly linked to reading outcomes. However, there is an ongoing debate regarding the effectiveness of PA instruction without including print (i.e. PA without exposure to words or letters). Specifically, is PA-only instruction just as effective in improving reading outcomes when compared to print-based instruction (e.g. phonics)? Method: Robust variance estimation was used to examine the effectiveness of PA-only instruction across 38 independent studies and 293 effect sizes. The sample consisted of 3,880 participants in preschool through first grade. The average age of participants was 5 years 7 months. Moderator analysis were conducted to examine differences in effect across outcomes, comparison conditions and participant characteristics. Results: PA-only instruction had a moderate overall effect (g = 0.57, 95% CI [0.40, 0.74], p < 0.001) on reading-related outcomes. PA-only instruction was less effective when compared to print-based instruction (g = -0.54, 95% CI [-0.80, -0.27], p < 0.001) and less effective for word reading outcomes (g = -0.33, 95% CI [-0.66, -0.01], p = 0.05) than for PA outcomes (g = 0.64, 95% CI [0.44, 0.84], p < 0.001). Conclusion: PA-only instruction can be beneficial for reading-related outcomes, but the effect varies depending on two important contextual factors: 1) the reading outcome type and 2) the comparison condition. Specifically, PA-only instruction might be less effective in improving word reading outcomes than PA outcomes. In addition, it has less of an effect on reading-related outcomes when compared to print-based instruction like phonics.

Even as research on teachers of Color increases, there still are few studies that examine Asian American teachers working cross-culturally with Latinx American students in US K-12 schools. This qualitative case study uses elements from borderlands theory and culturally responsive teaching to examine three Chinese American teachers working with eleven Mexican American students in three ethnically diverse urban secondary schools in the Pacific Northwest. Findings suggest that the Chinese American teachers used borderland teaching (a hybrid of borderlands theory and culturally responsive teaching) to promote academic performance and build kinships with the Mexican American students. Implications of the study include further refining borderland teaching for educational research and practice.

Integral to the global nature play movement, nature play programs have flourished over the last decade, both in Australia and internationally. Internationally, there are two prominent schools of thought in this movement, Danish Nature Kindergartens, and British Forest Schools. The underpinning philosophy of Danish Nature Kindergarten programs has been translated worldwide, raising questions about implementation, and possible decontextualisation, post-translation. Specifically, there are claims that the British translation known as Forest School, has become a marketable commodity and a 'McDonaldised' set of practices that educators have been trained in worldwide, including Australia. In this review article we examine Australian outdoor, nature play programs in early childhood education (ECE) settings to identify the relevance of these claims to Australian ECE contexts. These contexts appear to be diverging from the two international schools of thought, forging a uniquely, Australian 'Nature Play' pathway contextualised to social, cultural, political and educational landscapes. However, we acknowledge the limited Australian nature play program research to date has only been conducted in government regulated ECE settings. In such settings, legislation mandates that early childhood (EC) qualified educators implement programs underpinned by philosophy and pedagogy. Although not infallible, this likely minimises the potential for commodification. Whereas among private-for-profit, outdoor, nature play programs without the same legislated requirements, we argue the potential for commodification may be greater. We identify the need for research to examine the philosophical and pedagogical basis of such private-for-profit programs. As there is no Australian research in these settings, we recommend a research agenda to explore this gap.

This study explores the relationship between parental attitudes toward outdoor activities and children's health-related quality of life, focusing on the mediation of outdoor activity time and nature connections. Data from 399 kindergarten children, supplemented by parental insights, were analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM). Positive parental attitudes toward outdoor activities were found to predict enhanced physical functioning and kindergarten performance. Additionally, a positive correlation was observed for social functioning, while emotional functioning remained unaffected. Parental attitudes directly influenced physical functioning, with indirect effects on kindergarten performance mediated by outdoor time and nature connections. These findings highlight the importance of parental attitudes in promoting children's well-being and suggest potential strategies to enhance their health-related quality of life.

As technology-enhanced children's learning has gained wide attention, programmable robots have been gradually introduced in early childhood education. Hence, it would be valuable to understand how young children perceive robot programming learning. Draw-a-picture technique is an ideal method to elicit ideas, thoughts, and feelings for children with limited literacy, and epistemic network analysis (ENA) is a novel analytical method to analyze children's conceptions through the visualized network model. Therefore, this study employed a draw-a-picture technique and ENA to explore 189 5-6-year-old young children's conceptions of robot programming learning and probe whether their conceptions differ by gender and learning achievements. Results revealed that most children believed that with robot programming kits, they could engage in programming activities with peers in any location and held positive emotions and attitudes. In addition, young children's conceptions of robot programming learning differ notably by gender and learning achievements. Based on the current findings, several suggestions were proposed, which could set a reference for future robot programming teaching in early childhood education.

This research explored if a social robot would play a role in facilitating the development of friendship between young children while they engage in playful learning. Grounded in child-robot interaction and child development literature, we instantiated four sessions of triadic interaction activities among two children and a robot, where the robot mediated the children's collaborative interactions. There were two types of robot-mediated activities (Conversational and Tablet assisted) with each type having two sessions and each session taking approx. 20 minutes, depending on the children. The activities were deployed with ten children (aged five to six) in an after-school program in a rural public school in the U.S. twice a week for two weeks. We video-recorded the sessions and later annotated these recordings for analysis. The friendship development between the children in a pair was observed in terms of five behavioral categories ("liking, togetherness, parity, agreement, and co-construction"). The results showed that both conversational and tablet-assisted robot mediation contributed complementarily to friendship development among the children.

Parent-child reading critically affects children's learning and development, and dialog reading (DR) is a highly effective strategy for parent-child reading. This study employed the prompt, expand, evaluate, and repeat (PEER) DR strategy to develop a picture book incorporating augmented reality (AR) technology. AR information is extracted from the book using a mobile device to guide children through PEER-based reading. To determine the effectiveness of the AR picture book, a total of 56 preschool children participated in an experiment. The children were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The participants in the control group were accompanied by their parents, and they engaged in conventional parent-child reading; however, the participants in the experimental group engaged alone in AR-assisted reading. The results indicated that the experimental group achieved learning effectiveness significantly higher than that of the control group. A cycle of behavioral changes," scanning with a mobile device [right arrow] reading augmented information [right arrow] answering the questions on the mobile device [right arrow] scanning with a mobile device", was observed. This cycle indicates that child-mobile device-picture book interaction increased the children's learning effectiveness.

The number of low-income families in Singapore is increasing. Young children from impoverished backgrounds are at risk of development gaps and challenges. Research has shown that the accumulation of risk factors from adverse childhood experiences can lead to weaker outcomes later in life. The NTUC First Campus (NFC) launched the Child Support Model (CSM) to serve children and families from vulnerable, low-income backgrounds with a range of financial, social and learning support. A 3-year evaluation study using mixed-methods design was conducted to understand the effects of the CSM and the active ingredients in CSM. A cohort of 58 children from families making a monthly income of SGD$3,500 or less participated in the quantitative component where children's language and cognitive outcomes and classroom engagement were measured at three time points in 2019 (Kindergarten 1) and 2020 (Kindergarten 2). Participating children's parents and teachers were interviewed in the qualitative component and reported their perspectives and experiences in CSM.

Despite the increased presence of popular music education in K-12 music classrooms and interest in the inclusion of popular musics in post-secondary music teacher preparation programs, most collegiate music schools emphasize Western art music (WAM) and replicate existing traditions. As the music industry outside the academy innovates at a dizzying pace, most university schools of music remain tightly focused on music of the past, resistant to change. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of "hard policies" (mandated by bodies outside the institution, particularly NASM accreditation) and "soft policies" (internal policies both overt and covert) on the emergence of popular music education in collegiate music programs. To better understand the perceived policy influences on the inclusion of popular musics in post-secondary music programs, we surveyed 117 music education faculty and administrators at NASM-accredited schools of music. We found that most participants believed difficulties in enacting change were due to lack of resources, hard policies such as those handed down by state lawmakers, and soft policies like longstanding institutional traditions and faculty attitudes beliefs regarding the ultimate direction of music teaching and learning in higher education. We discuss opportunities, challenges, and implications for curricular change in music teacher preparation programs.

The purpose of this article is to examine how the discourse of childhood innocence masks the ways in which sexual violence by boys against girls is perpetrated in kindergarten. Findings from a year-long ethnographic study conducted in two Canadian kindergarten classrooms show that narrow understandings of gender and sexuality in childhood obscure schools' responses to problematic gendered behaviors enacted by certain boys. The author contends that in failing to attend to gender and sexuality with young children, kindergarten education may contribute profoundly to the early normalization of sexual violence. The article concludes with a discussion on the role that kindergarten education can play in countering sexual violence inside and outside of schools.