M. Susan Burns

Head Start Instructional Professionals' Inclusion Perceptions and Practices.

This study considered the facilitators and barriers of successful inclusion in Head Start classrooms by examining the perspectives and practices of instructional professionals. A cross-sectional survey design was combined with direct observation in inclusive Head Start classrooms. Survey data were collected from 71 Head Start instructional professionals in three Head Start programs. Observations took place in nine classrooms to examine the practices of 19 instructional professionals using an observation rating scale. Participants identified a lack of professional development as the greatest barrier to successful inclusion. Participants believed that their inclusion needs were greater than the inclusion supports available to them. Inclusive classroom quality varied significantly among different classrooms. Study findings suggested that the instructional professionals appear to be key to successful inclusion in Head Start settings. Additional professional development for Head Start instructional professionals focused on effectively enacting inclusion practices could support high-quality inclusion for children with disabilities.

It's a Hurricane! It's a Hurricane!: Can Music Facilitate Social Constructive and Sociodramatic Play in a Preschool Classroom?

Sustaining attention and successfully engaging with others in collaborative play are important accomplishments focused on in preschool classrooms and childcarecenters. In addition, music is frequently used in early childhood classrooms, and even recommended as an environmental feature to motivate and regulate childrens behavior. Although pretend play provides appealing opportunities for developing these social abilities, no studies to date have explored the use of music as a tool to motivate and sustain constructive and social pretend play. Results from the current study indicate that within 1 preschool classroom, more sustained play (with fewer interruptions) occurred when music played as compared to when no music played in the background. In addition, significantly more dyadic play occurred when slower music played in the background, than when no music played.

An Interaction, a Conversation, Often in the Context of Play: Constructing Intentional Teaching in Early Childhood Education.

High profile documents in early childhood education describe Intentional Teaching (IT), yet little research has been undertaken to give specificity to the definition so that application is possible, for example, to determine and prioritize information to include in professional development, assess fidelity of the implementation of that professional development, and measure impact on teachers. Prekindergarten teachers in a community-based Head Start program participated in the study and were observed during large-group and centers/small-group activities. Three studies using mixed methods are presented. In 2 of the studies, experts together observed focus teachers with attention to coding all instances of IT. They then discussed their observations. Discussions were recorded and analyzed with grounded theory analyses. Features of IT were specified. The additional study used direct observations of teachers to assess their IT, comparing those given professional development centered on IT and a control group. F...

Head Start classroom teachers’ and assistant teachers’ perceptions of professional development using a LEARN framework

This study investigates early childhood education teachers’ and assistant teachers’ views about a year-long professional development model that focuses on developing intentional teaching. The study shares the results of interviews conducted with the teachers at the end of the implementation of a one-year experimental professional model in Head Start settings in a large metropolitan area. The purpose was to gather feedback on the model, which included large-group, on-site and one-on-one interactions. Teachers and assistant teachers were asked about the various components of the model and the influence the professional development opportunities had on their practice and classroom interactions. The results of this study support the importance of providing networking opportunities across sites and sharing usable knowledge and strategies that can be applied directly to their work with young children.

New border crossings for the interaction hypothesis: the effects of feedback on Gonja speakers learning English in a rural school in Ghana

While Ghanaians in urban and rural settings are multilingual, English is the language of Ghanaian newspapers, politicians, the courts, much of television and radio in the metropolitan centres of the country. Indeed, urban Ghanaian adolescents have expanding opportunities to use English, the only official language of Ghana, even when not in school. Interaction in English is much less true of rural contexts, many of which are not on the national electric grid, have few electric generators resulting in little or no television and Internet access, and perhaps only an occasional newspaper found on the side of a dusty road. The purpose of this study, arising from conversations with policy leaders, is to demonstrate how language development occurs when students are given a task that provides them with opportunities to utilize their language resources to formulate questions. A controlled, small, fast-response, clinical design was sought because voices from the policy arena felt that relying on similar studies from industrialized contexts would not necessarily mirror those of rural Ghana. However, findings indicate otherwise. Tasks that stimulated interaction promoted question-form development. The paper concludes with important pedagogical implications for instructional practices in rural Ghana. The paper further argues for scaling up the study, situating it in classrooms, and developing tasks that are linked to school subjects.

Writing: Underutilized for young children with disabilities?

Young children write to learn the alphabetic code, take notes to help them remember, and provide meaningful text to others. These are cognitively and linguistically complex processes. Reciprocal relationships among the development of writing, the purposes of writing, and the learners of interest impact instructional approaches and student outcomes. Teachers can increase success when they provide explicit and systematic self-regulation and writing instruction, view children as collaborators in the process, provide scaffolding that gradually shifts the responsibility to the children, and adapt instruction to meet the abilities and interests of the children. Effective instructional practices for young children with disabilities or who are at risk, are presented, for example, scaffolded writing, the use of graphic organizers, and self-regulated strategy development.