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Winsler, A., & Carlton, M.P (2003). Observations of children’s task activities and social interactions in relation to teacher perceptions in a child-centered preschool: Are we leaving too much to chance? Early Education & Development, 14. 155-178.

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... Parents can overcome this by making a conscious effort to ready their children to enter school. Winsler and Carlton (2003) found that parental behaviors can reduce the gap in school readiness experienced by disadvantaged students. Parents can overcome obstacles by reading to their children and maintaining regular contact with their children's teachers (Winsler & Carlton, 2003). ...
... Winsler and Carlton (2003) found that parental behaviors can reduce the gap in school readiness experienced by disadvantaged students. Parents can overcome obstacles by reading to their children and maintaining regular contact with their children's teachers (Winsler & Carlton, 2003). And, when parents regularly engage children with cognitive stimulation, even in small amounts, it can have very positive impacts for children's overall school readiness and developmental milestones (Winsler & Carlton, 2003). ...
... Parents can overcome obstacles by reading to their children and maintaining regular contact with their children's teachers (Winsler & Carlton, 2003). And, when parents regularly engage children with cognitive stimulation, even in small amounts, it can have very positive impacts for children's overall school readiness and developmental milestones (Winsler & Carlton, 2003). ...
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This study scrutinizes the current compulsory education law in Pennsylvania. All components of the law, including historical factors, social aspects, and attempts to amend the statute are examined. Obstacles that have prevented Pennsylvania from joining the 48 states that require enrollment before the age of eight are reviewed. The identity and motivations of lobbyists who argue against amending the law and factors leading to their success are identified. Statistics regarding unenrolled children in Pennsylvania between the ages of six and eight are compared to social issues affecting school enrollment in 2014. The study also reviews social issues from 1991, when the number of unenrolled six- and seven-year-olds was estimated to number 26,000. Finally an amendment to the Pennsylvania School Code compulsory enrollment age is presented.
... First, some teachers find that it is challenging to set up CCLEs because the environments have to include a variety of materials and provide diverse learning experiences (Ozola, 2017). Second, some teachers fear that children do not learn sufficient knowledge if they spend less time on focused, goal-directed activities and interacting with teachers and more time on interacting with peers (Song, 2015;Winsler & Carlton, 2003). Third, some teachers feel exhausted to facilitate children's learning in child- centered environments, given that they have to respond promptly to children's continuously chan- ging interests and keep on observing children's zone of proximal development (Ozola, 2017). ...
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Research Findings: This study investigated the relationships of preservice teachers’ year of study in the teacher education program, creativity, zest, and self-efficacy in managing children’s behaviors to self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments. Data were collected from 275 Hong Kong preservice teachers via self-reported questionnaires. Results showed that creativity had a direct positive linkage with self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments. Zest was associated with self-efficacy in creating child-centered learning environments, however, indirectly through self-efficacy in managing children’s behaviors. Year of study was unrelated to both self-efficacies. Practice or Policy: Preservice teachers’ creativity and zest can be conceptualized as personal resources for creating child-centered environments. Teacher education programs should therefore incorporate components of fostering pre-service teachers’ own creativity and zest.
... This general programmatic orientation may become more apparent in terms of the reservations of preschool teachers about fostering children's academic competencies during preschool. In this regard, one could also stress the 'early childhood error' (Bredekamp & Rosegrant, 1992 , p. 3), which states that preschool teachers are only rarely directly involved in children's activities (e.g. via scaf- folding; Bodrova & Leong, 2012) in order to foster their development (Winsler & Carlton, 2003; see also Tietze et al., 1998, for a similar argumentation). The aforementioned interpretations are sobering. ...
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A large body of research has examined the quality of educational processes in preschools, but it has usually been studied at the group level. Thus, there is a lack of research on the quality of educational processes as experienced by individual children. Therefore, this study investigated the quality of educational processes in preschools at the individual child level. The sample consisted of 133 children attending 51 preschools that were located in two German federal states. Data were collected in spring 2006 (first year in preschool), spring 2007 (second year), and spring 2008 (third year). The findings revealed moderate educational quality with regard to a ‘support of social competencies’ composite, whereas educational quality representing the composites ‘support of cognitive competencies,’ ‘support of early literacy competencies,’ and ‘support of early numeracy competencies’ was virtually inadequate. This applied to the first, second, and third preschool years. In addition, there were some modest, albeit inconsistent, changes in educational process quality over time.
... The literature on teacher-child interactions has addressed the importance of conversational classroom interaction for preschool children's optimal language and literacy development (Justice, Mashburn, Hamre, & Pianta, 2008;Tompkins et al., 2013;Wasik & Bond, 2001;Wasik, Bond, & Hindman, 2006;Wilcox-Herzog & Kontos, 1998;Winsler & Carlton, 2003). Furthermore, the literature has suggested various teacher interaction strategies and skills, such as asking inferential questions (Tompkins et al., 2013;van Kleeck, Vander Woude, & Hammett, 2006) and open-ended questions (Wasik et al., 2006). ...
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Research Findings: This descriptive study used sequential analysis to examine both preschool teachers’ responsiveness to children’s utterances in sociodramatic play and the children’s responses to their teachers’ utterances. Eleven teachers in a Head Start program were videotaped while interacting with children in the dramatic play center. Salient findings of this study are threefold: (a) Teachers’ responsiveness and the children’s responsiveness to their teachers’ talk varied substantially, (b) the children responded frequently to the teachers’ topic-continuing utterances, and (c) the children responded frequently in the pretend play mode when teachers extended the children’s utterances following the topics initiated by the children. Practice or Policy: The current study contributes to the extant research by providing a more fine-grained analysis of children’s response modes in the sociodramatic play context. In addition, the current study suggests that teacher education and that practice and policies supporting teaching quality should consider emphasizing the details of teacher–child interaction in the dramatic play center at the utterance level.
... This disparity may be due to a lack of resources or knowledge in providing high-quality EL learning opportunities in ECE classrooms. Many early childhood educators have recognized the importance of providing more explicit instruction for their students asking for training and support (Dickinson & Caswell, 2007; Nitecki & Chung, 2013; Winsler & Carlton, 2003). Recent work by Nitecki and Chung (2013) also indicate tension between teaching EL, using DAP, and addressing the new curriculum standards. ...
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The early skills of Emergent Literacy include the knowledge and abilities related to the alphabet, phonological awareness, symbolic representation, and communication. However, existing models of emergent literacy focus on discrete skills and miss the perspective of the surrounding environment. Early literacy skills, including their relationship to one another, and the substantial impact of the setting and context, are critical in ensuring that children gain all of the preliminary skills and awareness they will need to become successful readers and writers. Research findings over the last few decades have led to a fuller understanding of all that emergent literacy includes, resulting in a need for a new, more comprehensive model. A new model, described in this article, strives to explain how emergent literacy can be viewed as an interactive process of skills and context rather than a linear series of individual components. Early literacy learning opportunities are more likely to happen when teachers have a solid knowledge base of emergent literacy and child development. Research has shown that preschool teachers with limited knowledge about literacy development are significantly less able to provide such experiences for children. Teachers will be better able to facilitate all of the components of emergent literacy if they have access to, and understanding of, a model that describes the components, their interactions, and the importance of environmental factors in supporting children.
... The CKM, however, also has a number of limitations, the most important of which is the fact that it limits the children's ''autonomy'' and their ''free choice'' by creating a choosing space in which they play in a goal-directed environment . Indeed, the assumption that if children are granted ''autonomy'' and ''free choice,'' significant amounts of learning will occur did not prove itself (Fuligni et al. 2012; Winsler and Carlton 2003). Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the price that must be paid for the model's success: the loss of freedom of choice and creativity. ...
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This article presents a “child-centered” model of the teaching–learning process—the challenge kindergarten model. The model is an attempt to deal with the limitations of the “child-centered” approach without giving up its benefits. In this model, the teachers enable the children to direct their activities and improve their independent learning thanks to careful planning and consistent implementation. The model focuses on two learning-related skills that are most likely to bring about independent learning and two teaching strategies designed to promote these skills. The learning-related skills are self-regulated learning and cooperative behaviors. The integrated strategies are allowing children to direct body-movement and using it as an opportunity for setting up personal and group scaffolding.
... Examining the relationship between teacher inferential questions and children's responses within the early education environment has practical educational applications in terms of developing interventions to improve the linguistic quality of teacher-child interactions given that the quality of the preschool classroom language environment is often low (Justice, Mashburn, Hamre, & Pianta, 2008a;Wilcox-Herzog & Kontos, 1998;Winsler & Carlton, 2003). However, Wasik and colleagues have shown that when teachers of preschoolers at risk were trained to ask interactive (including both literal and inferential) questions during book reading, that children in these classrooms engaged in more conversations with teachers and peers and had better vocabulary skills than children in control classrooms (Wasik & Bond, 2001;Wasik et al., 2006). ...
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This study examined teachers’ questions and children's responses during a play-based activity implemented in small groups within preschool classrooms. The first aim of this study was to describe teachers’ questions in terms of four levels of abstraction (i.e., a continuum of literal to inferential questions) and children's responses to these questions. The second aim was to examine the relations between teachers’ questions and children's responses using sequential analyses, to include children's level of abstraction and mean length of utterance (MLU). Participants were 39 teachers and up to six children from their preschool classroom. We found that teachers’ questions made up an average of 25% of their talk to children during play, and were relatively balanced between literal and inferential questions. Furthermore, significant sequential associations were found between the level of abstraction of teachers’ questions and the level of abstraction of children's responses (e.g., teachers’ inferential questions tended to elicit children's inferential responses). Finally, we found that teachers’ inferential questions were not related to children's MLU; that is, teachers’ more abstract questions did not elicit longer utterances from children. These findings suggest that play is a valuable context in which teachers may promote children's use of inferential language.
... There has been some recent work on time use in early childhood programs. For instance, Winsler and Carlton (2003) considered the behavior and activities of children in a single high-quality, university-affiliated laboratory preschool. They found that children spent most of their time on-task, engaged in non-aggressive behavior, with positive or neutral affect; however, they were engaged with teachers less and were off-task more than their teachers believed. ...
Article
The current paper considers how children spend their time in state-funded pre-kindergarten programs and how time use relates to ethnicity, gender, and family income, based on the assumption that how time is spent in pre-kindergarten is relevant for the programs’ success in narrowing achievement gaps. Classroom observations of 2061 children in 652 pre-k programs in 11 states were analyzed. Findings indicated that the pre-kindergarten day was roughly equally divided among free choice, teacher-assigned activities, and meals/routines. Children spent much of their time in language/literacy, social studies, and art, and less time in math and gross motor activities. Much of the pre-k day was spent in ‘no coded learning activity.’ Children in classes with lower proportions of Latino and African American children and higher average income-to-need ratios were generally engaged in richer and more stimulating experiences. The child-level variables of ethnicity and income were generally unrelated to how children spent their time, above and beyond the effects of classroom-level ethnicity and income. There were generally small, but significant gender differences – always in the gender-stereotyped direction – in how time was spent, especially during free choice time.
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Background Early childhood teachers’ child-centered beliefs, defined as teachers’ attitudes about how children learn, have been associated with teachers’ developmentally appropriate practices and positive child outcomes. The predictors of teachers’ child-centered beliefs, however, are less frequently explored. Objective This study tested whether teachers’ perceived work climate in child-care programs is associated with their child-centered beliefs, mediated by their job-related well-being. Methods The sample consisted of 522 preschool teachers (16 % Head Start, and 25 % nationally accredited programs). Path analysis was conducted to test the direct and indirect associations between teachers’ perceived work climate (i.e., collegiality and influence), job-related well-being (i.e., satisfaction and stress), and child-centered beliefs. Results The results of the path analysis showed that teachers’ perceived collegiality and influence had positive associations with job-related satisfaction, which in turn was positively associated with child-centered beliefs. On the other hand, teachers’ influence in the program was negatively associated with job-related stress, which was in turn, positively associated with child-centered beliefs. Test of mediation using bootstrapping technique showed significant mediation effects. Conclusions Work climate in child-care programs has important implications for teachers’ child-centered beliefs through job-related well-being. Teachers may need more support from the program directors and policy to create high levels of collegiality and influence, which will eventually be related with more developmentally appropriate philosophy.
Article
The aim of this study was to assess whether children's development benefited from teacher- and child-managed academic activities in the preschool and kindergarten classroom. Extensive systematic observations during four half-days in preschool (n = 8) and kindergarten (n = 8) classrooms revealed that classrooms differed in the amount of time spent on teacher-managed academic activities. The time teachers spent on math activities was remarkably low. Teacher-managed activities accelerated children's development, particularly for preschool children (n = 47); they showed larger gains in language, literacy, and math skills if their teacher devoted a relatively large proportion of classroom time to these topics. With regard to kindergarten children (n = 45), only their math skills seemed influenced by their teacher's engagement in academic activities; these children showed larger gains in math skills if their teacher initiated many language and literacy activities. Children's language and literacy development benefited from child-managed language and literacy activities. In contrast, child-managed math activities were not related to children's gains in math skills. The study provides insight into children's daily experiences in the preschool classroom and yields important implications for the professional development of teachers in early childhood education.
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