Early To School

This very practical book offers advice for teachers. The authors pinpoint the particular educational needs of four year olds and give advice on meeting them together with positive examples of good practice. Areas covered include staffing, space, equipment and materials, teaching styles and monitoring progress. This is the essential aid to teaching four year olds.

Challenging the normative paradigm that school readiness is a positive and necessary objective for all young children, this book asserts that the concept is a deficit-based practice that fosters the continuation of discriminatory classifications. Tager draws on findings of a qualitative study to reveal how the neoliberal agenda of school reform based on high-stakes testing sorts and labels children as non-ready, affecting their overall schooling careers. Tager reflects critically on the relationship between race and school readiness, showing how the resulting exclusionary measures perpetuate the marginalization of low-income Black children from an early age. Disrupting expected notions of readiness is imperative to ending practices of structural classism and racism in early childhood education.

Early School Leaving in the European Union provides an analysis of early school leaving (ESL) in nine European Union countries, with a particular focus on young people who were previously enrolled in educational institutions inside and outside mainstream secondary education. The comparative approach employed by this volume adds to the existing body of knowledge on ESL and develops an understanding of how young people navigate through different educational systems. Contributors acknowledge the importance of reconstructing educational trajectories from the perspective of the individuals involved and, as a result, the book includes data collected during in-depth interviews, surveys, and insights from educational professionals, policymakers and representatives from civil society organisations. Adopting a classic tripartite approach, which acknowledges the complex nature of ESL, the book addresses individual, institutional and systemic factors. It identifies and analyses the prevention, intervention and compensation measures that can succeed in supporting young people’s attainment, and demonstrates how these can be used to reduce ESL. This unique book will be highly relevant for academics, researchers and postgraduate students, as well as educational practitioners. Drawing on the insights provided by the authors, the book formulates policy recommendations that should also be of interest for policymakers in European countries and beyond.

First Published in 1997. This case study of a small independent parent-run program in Milwaukee's inner city, finds that several factors combine to make the school effective: parental involvement at all levels including governance; a clear and shared sense of mission; and a coherent Montessori curriculum that takes children from preschool through the third grade. The study employed data from several surveys of parents, teachers, interviews with participants, and observation over five years. Begun twenty-seven years ago by parents and community members alienated from dysfunctional public schools and still supported mostly by contributions, Highland today is one of only a dozen schools in the United States receiving some of its revenue under a voucher program that provides state funds to independent schools. After an overview of Highland's history, demographics, and measures of success, two chapters examine the school's commitment to diversity, nonviolence, child nurturance, and egalitarianism. Other chapters focus on how Highland involves its parents and how parents alone govern the school, analyze the role of Highland's trustees, and details the school's Montessori curriculum. The final chapter explores the possibility of applying some of Highland's lessons to public school curriculums.

In today’s digital world, it is critical to ensure technology is utilized appropriately and best practices for adoption are continuously updated, particularly when it comes to education. New technologies provide myriad opportunities for improvement within early childhood development; however, further study is required to fully understand the different tactics and strategies. The Research Anthology on Early Childhood Development and School Transition in the Digital Era considers how technology can assist with the development of young children and identifies different technologies that should be utilized within education for the benefit of students. Covering key topics such as instructional design, learning, literacy, and technology, this major reference work is ideal for administrators, principals, researchers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, instructors, and students.