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The home is the most frequently used location for providing early intervention supports and services. However, practices to address child development outcomes have shifted from direct, hands-on "treatment" to supporting families through collaboration and consultation so that they can promote their child's development by using identified intervention strategies effectively and confidently during their everyday activities. Routine activities, those everyday family experiences, provide rich opportunities for promoting child development. Interventionists support families' use of these routine activities as learning opportunities by embedding intervention strategies, individualized to the unique learning characteristics of the child into the routine activities. Practices regarding child-focused interventions include considering the setting (i.e., routine activity) in intervention design, ensuring strategies can be used across settings where children learn, and promoting child engagement with other people and materials. A recommended practice for interdisciplinary models is "team members focus on between-session time (i.e., build in activities that can be carried out across time and contexts)." Although home visiting consultation practices are endorsed, early interventionists might have difficulty implementing these practices, especially when they have been trained to be more hands-on and directed toward the child rather than the caregiver and child. This article guides early interventionists' reflections on their own home visiting practices with respect to recommended practices. The practices discussed are specific to the times during home visits when intervention is focused on child learning outcomes. There most likely will be other times when the home visit focus is on other family outcomes, where these practices might be modified to reflect the different focus. (Contains 1 table.)

The purpose of this study was to inform early intervention practice by exploring the various adaptations families make to promote their child's learning, the supports they perceive as helpful in creating adaptations, and the supports they perceive as still needed. Holistic case studies were developed for 5 families of infants and toddlers with disabilities or developmental delays. Resulting conclusions were that families (a) created adaptations according to their goals, their child's developmental characteristics, and environmental factors; (b) relied primarily on their own knowledge of their child; (c) most frequently used responsive caregiving strategies and adaptations of the requirements of, or instruction for, participation; and (d) applied intervention guidance in various ways. Resulting recommendations for early intervention practices are described.

Mastery motivation is an internal drive to master a skill, behavior, outcome, or goal. It has been called persistence, "stick-to-it-iveness" (McCall, 1995), goal-directedness, determination, and tenacity. Mastery motivation is expected to foster development as the child is motivated to learn something new. Parents and other caregivers play an important role in promoting mastery motivation. In this article, the authors discuss how interventionists promote mastery motivation among children. The authors also describe the components that are involved in promoting mastery motivation and provide specific intervention recommendations. These components include: (1) Moderately challenging goals; (2) Goal-direction; (3) Persistence; (4) Attention; (5) Imitation; (6) Initiation; (7) Choice Making; (8) Use of multiple strategies; (9) Enjoyment of trying; and (10) Enjoyment of partial success. (Contains 1 table.)

Home visiting is a primary service delivery approach to promote young children’s development and support families. Early Intervention professionals are expected to partner with families to create effective learning experiences in the daily context of routine family life. Concerns about early childhood (special) educators’ readiness to take on this partnership role have been voiced, suggesting explicit learning opportunities are needed within preservice preparation programs. This study explored the impact of an introductory assignment analyzing a videotaped home visit on preservice Early Childhood Education/Early Childhood Special Education students’ learning about home visiting practices. Implications for scaffolding home visiting experiences in preservice preparation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authentic assessments are naturalistic methods to obtain functional, contextual information relevant to learning in routine activities. Seven focus groups were conducted with 73 practicing Part C early interventionists to gather their reports on authentic assessments. Participants reported various ways of applying authentic assessment methods, with eligibility determination identified as the most difficult assessment decision point and progress monitoring as the easiest assessment decision point to use such strategies. Barriers and facilitators to using authentic assessments were described in the themes of administrative requirements, knowledge and experience, and family-professional partnerships. Implications for professional development systems and early intervention leadership are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses issues concerning the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children in the U.S. She mentions the highlights of the 2012 DEC conference, which include a keynote speech by Sondra Samuels on the vision of the organization. She cites the appointment of Ted Burke as conference program chair.