Sherron Killingsworth Roberts

• University of Central Florida Professor of Language Arts & Literacy
• Professor at University of Central Florida

This content analysis examined the evaluative components of elementary, high-stakes, state standardized writing sample rubrics. We explored the ten most populated states in the United States, and thus most influential states, to yield salient trends in writing evaluation for early grades. Using Spandel’s analytical traits as our conceptual framewor...

Picturebooks are a unique and complex art form that combines both visual and textual elements. Based on Kohlberg’s Cognitive Development Theory and Social Gender Theory, young children’s perceptions are likely influenced by portrayals of mothers in picturebooks. Therefore, this content analysis examined both the text and the visual portrayals of mo...

Portrayals of poverty in children's books seem especially salient knowing that in the United States, children living in poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. According to the Child Welfare League, child poverty rates in 2022 increased to include 3.7 million more children in poverty in America since 2021, with children of color most impac...

Portrayals of poverty in children's books seem especially salient knowing that in the United States, children living in poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. According to the Child Welfare League, child poverty rates in 2022 increased to include 3.7 million more children in poverty in America since 2021, with children of color most impac...

Picturebooks play a vital role in the lives and learning of young children. These complex, multimodal texts offer unique opportunities for meaning-making as readers engage with the interplay between text and illustrations. Picturebooks offer children stepping stones into the literary arts, providing information and storylines that illuminate reader...

Background Physical activity (PA) improves outcomes, but disadvantaged children typically experience more sedentary behavior (SB). This study explored movement, executive function (EF) health, and academic achievement (AA) for economically disadvantaged kindergarteners. Methods Children in 2 classrooms (n = 16; n = 7) wore wrist‐based acceleromete...

Background Physical activity (PA) improves outcomes, but disadvantaged children typically experience more sedentary behavior (SB). This study explored movement, executive function (EF) health, and academic achievement (AA) for economically disadvantaged kindergarteners. Methods Children in 2 classrooms (n = 16; n = 7) wore wrist‐based acceleromete...

The current article explores the impact of work–family conflict (WFC) on work engagement, as well as the potential mediating role of psychological detachment and the moderating effect of gender. A total of 203 Chinese preschool teachers were randomly recruited for this experiment. Results showed that WFC has a significant negative influence on work...

The US student body is rapidly diversifying, but remains unmatched by the teachers who serve in their classrooms. There is a growing understanding that teachers, particularly White teachers, must explicitly and thoughtfully engage in anti-bias and anti-racist practices in their classrooms. Our nation, and correspondingly our schools, have witnessed...

Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs provide skills needed for successful kindergarten strides, especially for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. While Florida’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) program currently serves most four-year-olds, some educators have questioned the program’s quality. The purpose of this study was to investig...

Research Findings: This study explores how Chinese preschool teachers’ enactment of Concept Development (CD) strategies, as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), might effectively elicit children’s higher-order thinking during whole-group science teaching. Participants included 25 Chinese preschool teachers and 800 young chil...

The role of play in early elementary education (K-2) generates dichotomous opinions, and more research is required to support efficacious pedagogical decision-making. This pilot study explored the effects of pedagogical approaches on Title I kindergarten students’ executive function (EF) to test the hypothesis that children, especially those from l...

The purpose of this study was to investigate current Chinese preschool teachers’ use of behavior management (BM) strategies in preschool classrooms during the challenging juncture of routine care and their impact on children's behavior performances, as well as the features of high-quality BM. Using a stratified, random sampling procedure from data...

The research literature well establishes that adverse conditions, such as poverty, can affect children’s cognitive development and academic achievement. Educators are challenged to translate these understandings into instructional practices grounded in research that best meet the needs of students, especially students living in poverty who are at g...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error in Abstract section, in-text reference citation and reference section.

This study examined the moral discourse of 79 dyads of Taiwanese parents and children during shared storybook readings and the associations with children’s cognitive and affective moral attributions. This study involved four- to six-year-old children who participated in a receptive language test and a moral reasoning task. Their responses were anal...

This investigation of how Chinese preschool teachers use feedback strategies as part of Initiation, Response, and Feedback (IRF) sequences during whole-group science lessons can inform current practice. Using quantitative and qualitative data analysis, this study examined 28 videos of preschool science lessons from three regions representing above...

This study examined 69 Chinese preschool teachers’ use of feedback strategies in their math lessons. Guided by the Initiation-Response-Follow-up (IRF) framework, math lessons were coded using quality feedback strategies in CLASS (CLASS-PreK; Pianta et al., 2008). Specifically, the frequency of teachers’ feedback strategies as well as their effectiv...

This study investigated the association between parents’ perceptions of home-school partnership and parental satisfaction with preschool services using data collected from 532 preschoolers’ parents in Guangdong Province, China. We explored the moderating role of parents’ childrearing beliefs as an important factor exerting influence on parental sat...

Research Findings Provision for Learning (PFL) is a composite of indicators reflecting the structural quality of Early Childhood Education (ECE) classrooms such as physical environment, materials, and daily schedule. This study explored profiles of PFL among 118 Chinese rural preschool classrooms based on Space and Furnishing (SF), Curriculum Plann...

The amount of intentional, instructional, purposeful play has decreased in primary grades, and didactic, test-driven instruction has increased. Emerging neuroscientific evidence is beginning to highlight the significant effects the toxic stress from poverty has on developing brains. Almost half of American children can be considered to come from lo...

This chapter focuses on the roles that children’s literature with global perspectives can serve, especially as a means to bridge cultures. Within the pages of this chapter, key resources for discovering high quality children’s books with global perspectives are offered, such as World of Words, the Mildred Batchelder Award; Notable Books for a Globa...

Recent shifts in elementary instruction over the past few decades have resulted in less play-based engagement in schools. Simultaneously, children are being referred for counseling or mental health services at startling rate. As members of elementary school leadership teams, counselors are often in a unique position to advocate for the best interes...

Children living in poverty frequently enter kindergarten lacking critical cognitive, academic, and social-emotional skills, and this gap predictably widens through 12th grade. Several researchers have developed intervention programs intended to close the academic gap by building foundational curricular skills. These interventions may not be the mos...

Teacher educators might consider using high-quality picturebooks as partners to help teacher candidates understand and navigate today's painful world realities. From a critical perspective, these books also have the potential to reflect and shape empathy and action in regard to these difficult situations. This piece includes a rationale for using p...

Aim/Purpose: The doctoral experience is a complex, challenging, and life-changing process. Cultivating a scholarship mindset is a requirement for success in early and later academic careers. This paper presents a situated framework for socializing doctoral students' scholarship mindset. Background: Faculty of doctoral education programmes prepare s...

This article features a content analysis of 21st century picturebooks that feature the narrative stories of those who have been displaced or become refugees due to war or armed conflict. The findings point to four themes that are highlighted across the texts: courage, identity, human connection, and hope. The books provide an invitation for young r...

Neuroeducation, or educational neuroscience, is an emerging field combining various scientific disciplines as it relates to learning to study the relationships between the biological processes of the brain and students' cognitive development. Researchers and educators are increasingly working together to bridge these fields to increase positive lea...

Systemic racism, and the white privilege that it supports and maintains, remains firmly entrenched in U.S. culture. The current educational climate may be experiencing an increase in racial animus, and students are not immune to the challenges they face as a result. For teachers who truly believe that all children can learn and are entitled to the...

This article explores depictions of refugees of war in current picturebooks and provides common themes across all books.

Literature can play a critical role in helping children understand and cope with the challenging situations that surround them. In particular, high quality picturebooks offer an accessible, developmentally appropriate support for young learners who experience different forms of crises in their worlds. This chapter offers a rationale for using liter...

Mindfulness and meditation programs, and their associated benefits for education, can be examined within three related disciplines: psychology, elementary education, and exceptional education. A review of psychology research provides evidence that meditation and mindfulness work to balance the often negative effects of students' social-emotional en...

Given the importance of writing, especially in light of college and career readiness emphasis, and the observations that time spent writing in context diminishes over a student's years in school, this article proposes to reignite writing instruction in elementary classrooms through three practical approaches for supporting students in authentic wri...

In China, the 2001 Kindergarten Education Guidelines (Trial), or New Outline, delineates what constitutes high-quality, developmentally appropriate practices in all early childhood education curriculum domains, including mathematics. The New Outline is known for advocating a child-centered, play-based approach to teaching and learning, a significan...

The Chinese Preschool Inclusion Survey, which is an adaptation of Odom et al. [2004. ‘Preschool inclusion in the United States: A review of research from an ecological systems perspective’. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 4 (1): 17–149] a list of the features of quality preschools, was given to 234 preservice teachers and 307 inser...

Social studies is an area of crucial importance for students. Yet, it is often neglected within the elementary curriculum. This article argues that high quality children's literature, particularly in the form of text sets, can help to connect social studies and literacy learning, while offering children content and socially-rich material that invit...

http://www.flreads.org/Publications/quarterly/samples/FRJ-Spring-2016-SAMPLE.pdf

This research study examined the challenges faced by early childhood education (ECE) in rural China based on a qualitative study of 217 kindergarten classrooms in a large agricultural, rural province. This study utilised onsite teacher surveys, interviews, and observational field notes. This investigation's findings revealed important information i...

Roberts, S. K., Brasel, N., & Crawford, P. A. (2014). Poetry as Praxis: An exploration of poetry discourse as qualitative inquiry. Journal of Poetry Therapy: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Research and Education, 27, 167-181. Published in the JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY. Version of record available at http://www.tandfonline.com/ep...

In recent years, the Chinese government has initiated a national plan to universalize quality kindergartens for all age-eligible Chinese children. Kindergarten is the main form of early childhood education and care (ECEC) service across China. However, the government faces two thorny issues on the journey toward realizing educational equity for som...

The purpose of the study was to explore the validity of a novel computer-analytic developmental scale, the Writing Ability Developmental Scale. On the whole, collective results supported the validity of the scale. It was sensitive to writing ability differences across grades and sensitive to within-grade variability as compared to human-rated sensi...

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) scholars and health professionals worldwide share a common concern about the decline in children's physical development and activity due to lack of access to good quality outdoor environments. Early childhood education and care facilities across the world have been affected by trends that are limiting outdo...

By far, literature regarding Chinese early childhood education and care (ECEC) has primarily focused on Youeryuan in urban settings. Youeryuan is the everyday Chinese term used for ECEC programs serving children ages three to six, which does include the U.S. version of the kindergarten year. This paper will refer to Youeryuan rather than the Wester...

This article examines administrator perspectives of innovative services for the inclusion of young children with disabilities in regular preschool classrooms in China. Twelve directors from 12 pilot inclusion preschools in Beijing participated in this study. Qualitative interview results revealed the following sub-themes: definition, advocacy, teac...

The national policies of the Chinese government regarding preschool inclusion are emerging to promote the well-being of all children, particularly children with disabilities in natural environments such as regular preschools or in homes. Following the global trend towards inclusive education, preschools in Beijing are gradually implementing both th...

This article explores the role of teacher research as part of a robust program of professional development. Teacher research offers teachers at every stage of development a recursive and reflective means of bridging the gap between current practice and potential professional growth. The purpose of this dual level inquiry was to probe the concept of...

Provides a theoretical framework for designing a children's literature course that requires preservice teachers to critically analyze literature in ways that are personally meaningful. Suggests how preservice teachers can read children's literature intensively rather than extensively. (PA)

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1987. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-122).

This article provides a rationale and related practical suggestions for using literature as a support system for social-emotional development as children cope with the stresses, anxieties, and feelings of loss that can occur in family life.