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The need for equitable access to high-quality preschool has recently gained unprecedented attention. As states and districts strive to expand access while promoting quality, curriculum quality has emerged as a critical component of preschool programs that promote young children’s learning. Yet many educators make curricular decisions with insufficient guidance on what constitutes curricular quality. Indeed, deep divisions in the field are evident regarding how to define quality in preschool curricula. Jeanne L. Reid and Sharon Lynn Kagan explore the areas of consensus and disagreement among early education leaders. They argue that — using guidance from a study at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and drawing from international models of curriculum frameworks — the field can move toward consensus on what constitutes a high-quality curriculum and thus help to fulfill the promise of equitable access to high-quality preschool.

National-level monitoring of quality of early childhood education (ECE) is key to achieving inclusive and equitable education. Most countries report structural quality while process characteristics are rarely observed at the national level. This study examined the associations between ECE and children's development in a middle-income country using data from a nationally representative sample of public centers serving Colombian children (N = 3163; M = 4.3 years, 50% girls; 42% Mestizo, 16% White, 15% Afro-Colombian, 4% Indigenous, 23% not reported). Descriptive findings evidenced low to moderate quality. Multilevel models showed several positive associations between structural and process quality and child outcomes. Results have implications for the existing literature and highlight the feasibility of quality monitoring in low- and middle-income countries.

In recent decades, state funding for preschool programs has more than tripled as more states are trying to create universal access to Pre-K. Efforts to expand Pre-K access typically include the use and coordination of multiple preschool settings, notably those found in public schools and private community-based organizations, which often have distinct goals, resources, requirements, funding sources, and reporting systems. In this challenging context, the present study examined the empirical example of an ambitious policy initiative to provide high-quality universal Pre-K (UPK) in New York City. Inheriting a mixed-delivery system for UPK provision, the city employed substantial resources to increase and align quality across programs in different settings and with varied auspices. Comparing program and classroom data, the analysis identified significant variation by program setting and auspice that appears to have roots in systemic obstacles that are far from unique to New York City. The findings could inform policymakers nationwide who are striving to build effective systems for the provision of equitable, high-quality early childhood education.

In Colombia, the national law De Cero a Siempre (DCAS) provides a framework for holistic and integrated early childhood development and education for all children. Against the backdrop of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the DCAS policy objectives, Colombia set out to apply a comprehensive measure to track the quality of early childhood education programs that would inform pedagogical, programmatic, and policy strategies. Our study describes the process whereby key stakeholders selected, adapted, validated, and applied the Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) framework to characterize the quality of early childhood education at scale in the country. We describe the phases that led to the application of the different instrument modules, and the key enablers and challenges to the process. The paper includes implications for policy, practice, and research in Colombia and discusses lessons learned with relevance to the Latin American and global contexts.

Theoretical and empirical research is challenging long-held assumptions about how culture shapes children’s thinking, emotions, and actions. No longer is ‘culture’ thought to be a family-ba...

In a rapidly shifting twenty-first century context, early childhood education and care (ECEC) must consider contextual, scientific, and policy realities in order to realize its social obligations to young children. The current status of ECEC globally bears both good and bad news; many countries are paying attention to the importance of the early years, yet challenges remain related to quality, inequity, and sustainability. Given the surging importance of ECEC and the many challenges at hand, a new strategy is needed to suit the current context. Systems research represents one promising and exciting method for addressing a new set of global issues. This mode of inquiry takes the ECEC system as its unit of analysis, addressing far more than individual classroom pedagogy or even clusters of programs. Systems research advances the thinking that in order for an early childhood system to exist, in addition to quality programs, there must be a solid infrastructure that supports the programs. An emerging systems approach to ECEC considers sociocultural and temporal variables and transcends traditional domains.

As the provision of publicly funded pre-kindergarten has expanded in recent years, public programs for infants and toddlers have received relatively little policy attention. However, federal, state, and local governments are now trying to promote quality in family child care and center-based programs that serve infants and toddlers, often with an emphasis on workforce development. Despite the developmental importance of the first years in a child’s life, infant and toddler teachers in family child care and centers remain greatly under-studied in the research literature. This descriptive study seeks to help fill that gap by comparing the characteristics and views of family child care and center-based infant and toddler teachers in the context of New York City, where ambitious policies to promote the quality of infant and toddler programs have focused on workforce development in both settings. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected in 2019 via online surveys of 32 center-based and 30 family child care teachers, and then analyzed quantitatively to identify similarities and differences between the two groups. The results can inform the design of policies in New York City, other cities, and states that seek to promote the quality of infant and toddler care in different settings.

Resulting from a fragmented landscape of policies for and uneven investments in the early childhood education (ECE) field in the United States, the qualifications of the ECE teaching workforce are typically quite low. This article first reviews the history and status of the ECE teaching workforce in the United States, focusing on the evolution of the field, current demographic characteristics of the teaching workforce and the pathways to professional development and professional preparation of the teaching workforce. The authors then discuss the legacies of this history and policy landscape: a lack of quality, equity and sustainability. Offering a re-conceptualization of professional development within the context of systems thinking, the article concludes with a discussion of innovations and challenges with which the field contends relative to workforce development.

Around the world, there is an increasing focus on the importance of the early years, with growing numbers of countries specifying early learning and development standards. The authors find that differences in country context and pre-primary service delivery influence the content and use of standards documents. Generally, within their documents, countries favor either specifying precise indicators of what children should know and be able to do, or including many elements that guide early education more broadly, such as broad learning goals for children and pedagogical guidance for teachers. Although the standards’ documents vary, countries generally use their documents for the purposes of curriculum development, professional development, parent engagement, and national monitoring and evaluation. By using the standards for multiple purposes, early education is better aligned and countries are advancing the integration of their services. Standards have made numerous positive contributions to the early childhood field, but, lacking rigorous outcome evaluations, it is too early to discern the effect of standards on children’s performance and learning. The authors recommend that countries devote greater attention to developing their early childhood infrastructure so that the standards documents are more effectively understood, utilized, and evaluated.

Este documento investiga las siguientes preguntas relacionadas con las politicas de desarrollo infantil en America Latina y el Caribe: 1) ?Cuales son los principales marcos institucionales y legales que determinan la cantidad, naturaleza y prestacion de servicios de desarrollo infantil; 2) ?Que vinculos y mecanismos de coordinacion existen entre las politicas, programas y servicios de desarrollo infantil? y 3) ?Cuales son los principales desafios que limitan la capacidad del sistema de desarrollo infantil de los paises para producir resultados sistemicos de equidad, calidad y sostenibilidad? Aplicando en el analisis la teoria y el pensamiento sistemico, el documento presenta los resultados de un estudio comparativo en cinco paises de la region: Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala y Trinidad y Tobago.

We need expanded federal leadership in early education to develop an excellent, coherent, and equitable system. The authors recommend 13 ways for the government to develop a universal and sustained approach to early childhood education. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The federal government's role in early education has a long and contentious history. While the nature and amount of federal engagement has shifted in response to changing social, political, and economic needs, the lack of long-term planning or coordination has yielded an array of programs, dispersed across federal agencies and legislative committees, which begs for greater excellence, coherence, and equity in early childhood education. The history of American early education is one of changing roles and goals. From the privately funded Infant Schools for indigent families in the earliest days of the republic, to the federal government's foray into early childhood with Depression-era nursery schools, to more recent investments in Head Start, federal early education policies can best be understood as a series of responses to shifting social, economic, and political phenomena (Beatty 1981; Cahan 1989; Cohen 1996). Amid these changes, four durable polemics have shaped the federal response. First, American society has long questioned whether young children should be served outside their homes at all. From the nation's birth, the primacy and the privacy of the home were ideological mantras, forcing early education programs to legitimate their existence; such programs have never been considered an entitlement akin to K-12 education. Second, because public values haven't generally supported out-of-home, nonmaternal care, federal support for early education grew during times of national crises and declined as the crises ebbed, leaving early education bereft of three essential mainstays: vision, permanence, and infrastructure. Third, there has been an enduring ambivalence regarding which children should be served and how. Most public programs have targeted children from low-income families, while the private sector has served children from middle- and upper-income families. Leaving a legacy of services segregated by income, which often translates into quality differences, early education policy defies deeply held American values regarding the equal opportunity that all young children need in order to thrive and learn. Fourth, there is no consistent agreement about the mission of early education. Should early education focus on care as the day nurseries did? Should it focus on socialization and education as nursery schools purported to do? Although increasingly regarded as a false dichotomy because good early education does both, federal and state policy makers still must tussle with the question as they debate early education's departmental jurisdictions and funding amounts. 5 Cornerstones Recognizing this historical context and building on the past, we first recommend five cornerstones for American early education: * Keep early education voluntary before kindergarten. * Maintain a diverse delivery system with both public and private providers for both fiscal prudence and choice for parents. * Foster developmentally oriented pedagogy that stresses cognitive, language, social, emotional, and physical development for all children. * Honor linguistic, cultural, and programmatic diversity. * Conceptualize early education as a partnership among families, programs, and communities. Second, we see a need for expanded federal leadership and investments in early education. However, such investments must be guided by clearly defined roles for federal and state governments. These roles must frame and bound the public early childhood policy agenda. In addition to role clarity, the goals of federal intervention must be clear. Early education efforts should focus on advancing excellence, coherence, and equity. …

Attendance in preschool centers can yield short-term benefits for children from poor or middle-class families. Yet debate persists in Europe and the United States over whether centers yield gains of sufficient magnitude to sustain children's cognitive or social advantages as they move through primary school. We report on child care and home environments of 229 children in the US who were 2½ years of age (on average) at entry to the study. Among children attending a center at 2½ or 4½ years of age, cognitive proficiencies were significantly higher at 7½ years of age, compared with children in home-based care, after taking into account prior proficiency levels, maternal attributes, and other covariates. No relationship between center attendance and social development, positive or negative, was detected at 7½. A priori selection factors modestly helped to explain the likelihood that mothers enrolled their child in a center. But associations between center exposure and higher cognitive proficiency at age 7½ remained after controlling for selection factors and testing for omitted variables bias.

A content analysis of 46 early learning standards documents developed by state-level organizations and available for review in January 2005 was conducted to determine the specific areas of development addressed within the standards documents. The authors contend that this type of analysis is important because early learning standards that define expectations for children's learning and development prior to kindergarten entry are, in essence, a reflection of how states are conceptualizing children's readiness for school. Results suggest that early learning standards have emphasized the language and cognitive domains, and that specific areas within domains of learning and development, such as physical fitness, relationships and reading comprehension have been addressed relatively less often. Standards developed under the leadership of the state departments of education emphasized social–emotional and approaches toward learning domains less than standards developed under the leadership of other agencies. The authors suggest that the content of the early learning standards reflects a number of different factors, such as the views of persons involved in developing the standards, and in some cases may not be consistent with the research literature on children's early learning and development. Implications for the standards development process and for future research are discussed.

PERHAPS nowhere is the international transmission of ideas and knowledge better understood or more widely practiced than in the field of early childhood education. For decades, transcontinental exchanges have made early childhood education an international hybrid. LEARNING FROM ABROAD America has welcomed innovations from abroad. From Germany a century ago came Friedrich Froebel's idea of the kindergarten. From the former Soviet Union came Lev Vygotsky's ideas about socially constructed knowledge and scaffolding. From Italy came the pioneering work of Maria Montessori and the widely admired practice of Reggio Emilia. Indeed, American early childhood education owes its very existence to the work of international pioneers. This international influence may be necessary once again, as American early childhood education undergoes major intellectual shifts. Long-held theories about when, what, and how children learn are being questioned. The prominence of play, once the sine qua non of high-quality early education, is being challenged. (1) Curriculum, which once emanated directly from the child's interests, is now framed to comply with adult-developed standards. (2) And services for young children, once the purview of many small, community-based microenterprises, are increasingly becoming part of the education system. (3) In response to these profound ideological shifts, American early childhood education has been besieged with reforms. While these reforms have targeted a variety of areas, including governance, finance, quality rating systems, professional development, and program accreditation (4)--to mention but a few-perhaps the most pervasive reform has been the introduction of learning standards to early childhood education.(5) Statements of what children should know and be able to do, these early learning standards now exist in 46 states. (6) Whether called benchmarks, frameworks, guidelines, or standards, such efforts are legion. We make a case here for enhancing the American standards movement in early care and education by learning from our international counterparts. We present cogent evidence from the Going Global Project, a sixnation initiative funded by UNICEF that provides valuable lessons for three pivotal aspects of the standards approach: content, values, and process. But first, a brief summary of the Going Global Project is in order. For the past three years, we have been involved in this effort, working with Brazil, Ghana, Jordan, Paraguay, the Philippines, and South Africa to develop, validate, and implement early learning standards. (7) Representing several continents and a wide range of heritages and cultures, the countries also varied in their initial receptivity to early learning standards. As in the U.S., some international early care and education professionals were skeptical of the idea; they expressed grave concern about establishing a standard to which all children, coming from different backgrounds and having had variable opportunities, would be held equally accountable. Others were Only five states have comprehensive standards for physical and motor development at a time when childhood obesity ranks high on the national agenda. concerned with the nomenclature, feeling that "standards" implied a leveling that did not accommodate the diverse learning styles and approaches traditionally fostered in early childhood settings. Finally, still others were concerned that the development of early learning standards offered a "false promise" unless it was backed up by intensive professional and parental support. Despite these concerns, through a structured and highly inclusive process, enriched by ongoing technical assistance, each country developed standards, taking the concerns of the skeptics into consideration. In all cases, the resultant standards were tailored to each country's unique values and social construction of children and childhood. Within each country, the process emphasized respecting and embracing internal cultural differences. …

The improvement of international education in U.S. schools cries out for strong national leadership. Ms. Kagan and Ms. Stewart, guest editors of this special section, make the case that helping students become globally competent citizens is crucial to the future prosperity and security of the United States, and they discuss strategies for making this happen. THROUGHOUT this special section, as in many of the documents used in its preparation, the call for a greater focus on international education (IE) is sounded loudly. The contributors to this section have used the terms international education and international studies to refer to the intentional preparation of American students -- prekindergarten through college -- to be citizens, workers, and leaders in the interconnected world of the 21st century. Given that the nation's political and economic leaders have voiced concerns that we are not preparing our students to succeed in a globalized world and that we have a system of universal K-12 public education in which some schools have adopted some excellent and diverse IE models, one might think that IE is a "no brainer"! It is not. In contemporary America, IE is the coveted jewel of a limited number of forward-looking academics, practitioners, and advocates. According to Robert Scott, president of Adelphi University, IE has been the subject of "many calls, but little action," with global illiteracy the result.1 Many reports and commissions have noted the problem, including the Perkins Commission on Languages and International Studies in the 1970s; the Carter Administration's Simon Commission, which called for significantly greater attention to foreign languages; reports from the American Council on Education in the 1980s calling for the internationalization of higher education; and reports from the Asia Society and the National Geographic Society in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Both the Clinton Administration and the current Bush Administration have supported an emphasis on IE. In 2002, at the first States Institute on International Education in the Schools, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige declared that "to meet our goal to leave no child behind, we must shift our focus from current practice and encourage programs that introduce our students to international studies earlier in their education, starting in kindergarten." To be sure, the press for international education is not entirely new, with some of the clarion calls being backed by action, especially in higher education. For 50 years the federal government has supported, primarily for national security purposes, the development of area studies, international studies, and language centers to produce scholars and experts in major world regions. Moreover, in the past 15 years, many higher education institutions have been trying to "internationalize" their curriculum, to encourage students to study abroad, and to promote the international exchange of faculty.2 Although K-12 education lags behind higher education, some states have added language to their social studies standards that encourages teaching about world regions, history, geography, or religions. Despite these advances, so far there has been little change in K-12 classrooms or in the general state of American students' knowledge of the world. Why have American schools been so inward looking? One can speculate on many possible reasons for this tendency -- geography, economy, history, ideology. Compared to European countries, the United States is a huge continental landmass, isolated by two enormous oceans. Its large domestic market has meant that international trade was, until recently, a relatively small part of the economy. New immigrants, fleeing repression at home, often wanted to forget where they had come from, which corresponded well with the mission of U.S. schools to create a new nation by "Americanizing" these immigrants. Two world wars fueled Americans' sense of isolationism and contributed to intense suspicion of those who spoke languages other than English. …

The effects of center-based care on early development, outside of carefully controlled demonstration programs, appear to be positive yet often modest for children from low-income families. But little is known about variation in the quality of centers and preschools found among low-income neighborhoods. Evidence also remains scarce on the observed quality of home-based care, the settings that most children attend and into which large infusions of federal dollars are now directed. This paper reports on the observed quality of 166 centers and 187 nonparental home settings (including family child care homes and kith or kin providers) serving children in five cities situated in California, Connecticut, or Florida. Centers displayed higher mean quality as gauged by provider education and the intensity of structured learning activities, compared to home-based settings, but did not consistently display more positive child–provider interactions. Great variability among centers and home-based settings was observed, including between-city differences. Second, we found that contextual neighborhood attributes accounted for the quality of providers selected more strongly than family-level selection factors. Mothers with stronger verbal abilities (PPVT scores) did select higher quality centers; those employed longer hours each week relied on kith and kin providers with lower education levels. Interrelationships among different quality measures are detailed. The policy implications of such wide disparities in center and home-based care quality are discussed, including how states could more carefully strengthen regulatory or quality improvement efforts.

Young children in poor communities are spending more hours in nonparental care because of policy reforms and expansion of early childhood programs. Studies show positive effects of high-quality center-based care on children's cognitive growth. Yet, little is known about the effects of center care typically available in poor communities or the effects of home-based care. Using a sample of children who were between 12 and 42 months when their mothers entered welfare-to-work programs, this paper finds positive cognitive effects for children in center care. Children also display stronger cognitive growth when caregivers are more sensitive and responsive, and stronger social development when providers have education beyond high school. Children in family child care homes show more behavioral problems but no cognitive differences.

Assessing children’s readiness for school, like defining readiness itself, should be an easy task. In reality, it is more complex than meets the eye. In this commentary, I delineate what is meant by readiness and tease out some of the most trenchant issues associated with it. Specifically, this Commentary considers the purpose, content, and process of assessing children’s readiness for school. In the field of early childhood, assessment is typically undertaken for a variety of purposes: to improve children’s instructional program; to evaluate program effectiveness; to identify children for special services; and to monitor trends in service delivery. Unfortunately, these different purposes of assessment are not always clear. Moreover, the kinds of data each purpose evokes are also confounded. This article delineates the different purposes for collecting data and discusses critical principles that could be used to guide the construction of an assessment system that captures and uses data efficiently and appropriately.

El bienestar infantil es importante tanto por razones eticas como economicas porque los ninos que prosperan en los primeros anos tienen mas probabilidad de volverse ciudadanos productivos y saludables en el futuro. Este ano, la edicion de Desarrollo en las Americas (DIA) se centra en el bienestar infantil desde la concepcion hasta los 8 anos de edad y establece la necesidad por la intervencion publica para mejorar los resultados de los ninos. El proceso del desarrollo del nino - fisico, comunicativo, cognitivo y socio-emocional - esta determinado por las experiencias que los ninos acumulan en el hogar, las guarderias, y en la escuela. Los padres, familiares, otros cuidadores, maestros y el gobierno influyen en la formacion de esas experiencias. Este libro ofrece sugerencias para la formulacion de la politica publica para mejorar esas experiencias de manera que sin duda marcaran la vida de los ninos y las sociedades en las que viven.

Recent decades have seen an upsurge of research with and about young children, their families and communities. The Handbook of Early Childhood Research will provide a landmark overview of the field of early childhood research and will set an agenda for early childhood research into the future. It includes 31 chapters provided by internationally recognized experts in early childhood research. The team of international contributors apply their expertise to conceptual and methodological issues in research and to relevant fields of practice and policy. The Handbook recognizes the main contexts of early childhood research: home and family contexts; out-of-home contexts such as services for young children and their families; and broader societal contexts of that evoke risk for young children.

The major lesson for the U.S. to take from Sweden is a fidelity to values that cherish children and that acknowledge the special nature of childhood, according to Ms. Kagan and Ms. Hallmark. IMAGINE a Swedish 4-year-old as he starts his first day of preschool. He enters a beautiful building with no concrete parking lot surrounding it, no fenced-in playground. Rather, his school overlooks a forest on one side and the seashore on the other. There is also a yard to play in, a pond, an herb garden, and a playhouse, and the entire school is surrounded by planting areas where he will observe and participate in the miracles of nature. His teacher is university trained and will engage him in activities that will develop and stretch his young mind as well as his young body. This little preschooler will help to plan his own activities, too: he will have access to a function room for reading, music, and art; a computer room and a library; and an open room for gymnastics and play when he is not taking walks through the forest or pretending that he has stepped back hundreds of years in time to trace the steps of his Viking ancestors. Of course, if he is not a native of Sweden, this preschooler will also be encouraged to share his own heritage with his classmates and to continue to speak his native tongue while he builds his skills in the language of his new country. What is so unique about this child's experience is that it is not unique. Almost all young children in Sweden, as well as their parents, are involved in preschool programs like the one described - programs that are guided by clear goals for children's development as well as clear pedagogical and curricular principles. Such settings are inspiring, and they yield great quantities of productive work by young children, including the following poem that describes the sentiments of a young child in the Swedish "Bracelet" preschool: Here, I am never afraid. Here, I am accepted and liked. Here, I know what I'm allowed to do and what I'm not allowed to do and why these limits exist. Here, others listen to me. Here, I meet tolerance and understanding and I am helped with the things I find difficult. Here, they see what I am good at and tell me. Here, I may try new ideas and make my own choice. Here, I can sense that what I think, feel, and wish is of importance. Here, I feel that I am accepted and that I am somebody. What does it take to produce such conditions? We maintain that in order for any nation to provide a system of rich and appropriate services for its young children, it must begin by discerning how it regards children and childhood. How does the nation think about childhood? What role do children assume in society? What are society's obligations toward children, and theirs, if any, toward society? The responses to such questions constitute a nation's social construction of childhood that guides its thinking about and policies for young children. Indeed, it might be said that a nation's success in developing a high-quality system of early care and education is predicated on the match between that nation's social construction of childhood and the services it proffers. Such a vision is not necessarily programmatic, such as a national curriculum or a set of national standards. Rather, the social construction of childhood is a set of beliefs and principles about children that frame policy stances. The United States has traditionally lacked such a clear, nationally held, collective vision of children and childhood. The result is a history of inconsistent and episodic policy starts and stops. One nation, however, for which the vision of children and childhood is very clear is Sweden. This keen perspective has translated into an early care and education system that is both exemplary and inspiring. While not adaptable in total to the U.S. context, the Swedish system provides a constructive counterpoint to U. …

As increasing numbers of children enter child-care environments that are subsidized by federal and state funds, the demand has risen from policy makers and activists for valid, cost-effective methods of assessing the quality of those environments. In this study we asked whether data on child-care quality obtained from a telephone interview with the provider can serve as an adequate proxy for data obtained from direct observation. Observations were conducted in 89 family child-care homes and 92 centers using the Family Day Care Rating Scale (FDCRS) and the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale (ECERS-R), respectively. The target providers and teachers were subsequently interviewed by telephone using a protocol developed by the authors. For the family child-care providers, the 25 item telephone interview explained 49% of the variance (adjusted r 2 ) in the total FDCRS score. Discriminant analyses revealed that the telephone interview was able to predict accurately 92% of the homes in terms of three FDCRS-derived categories of quality: “poor,” “mediocre,” or “developmentally appropriate.” For the centers, the 22 item telephone interview accounted for 51% of the variance (adjusted r 2 ) in the total ECERS-R score. The telephone interview was able to predict the classification of 89% of the centers in terms of the ECERS-R derived categories of “poor,” “mediocre,” or “developmentally appropriate.” Shorter forms of the telephone interviews (12 items for family child-care; 13 items for center-based care) also demonstrated adequate predictive capability. These findings suggest that the telephone interview can be a valid source of data concerning the global quality of a child-care environment.

This paper examines the reasoning and experiences of mothers in selecting child care while trying to meet welfare-to-work requirements. Three theoretical positions that have been used to look at child care selection -rational choice, structuralist, and cultural - are examined and critiqued in light of a structural developmental psychology perspective. The paper then reports on semi-structured, open-ended interviews with seven mothers from three different ethnic groups—African- American, Anglo, and Latina—who range in age from 21 to 42. Interviews covered a 15-month period of time following the mothers' enrollment in a welfare- to-work program. The major finding is that mothers have hierarchically ordered criteria for evaluating child care possibilities, and the preeminent criteria is that they trust the child care provider to keep their children safe and well cared for. Structural constraints on the mothers choices are also analyzed. The findings in this article suggest that policy makers should focus on ...

Guest editors Stewart and Kagan reflect on what the articles in this special section have taught us about the impact of globalization on education systems around the world. They conclude with recommendations for steps the U.S. can take to advance its own role in the ongoing development of international education. AFTER THE discovery of atomic fission, Albert Einstein said, "Everything has changed except the way we think." While less cataclysmic, the quickening pace of globalization over the past 20 years--driven by the profound technological changes described by Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat; by the economic resurgence of China, Russia, and India; and by the accelerating pace of scientific discovery--has produced a whole new world. The implications of these changes are not completely clear, but it is clear that the changes will be profound. Information, people, and ideas now traverse the globe with unprecedented speed and frequency. Perhaps even more important, such internationalization affects every field of endeavor. Yet somewhat ironically, our educational discourse is largely stuck in a time warp, framed by issues and standards set decades before the widespread use of the personal computer, the Internet, and free trade agreements. But we can no more afford to isolate ourselves educationally than we can economically or in terms of national security. At the same time, other countries such as China, Russia, India, South Africa, Chile, Jordan, and Brazil, to mention but a few, are reexamining their education systems and making fundamental reforms in response to changed political conditions and demographic shifts and in order to prepare their students to be successful in the knowledge-intensive, high-tech, and globalized economy. They and other nations around the world are eager to share their own experiences and effective practices and to learn from the educational choices made by other countries. COMMON CHALLENGES Clearly, because of widely differing historical, social, and economic contexts, the nations of the world are at very different stages of progress in education and child development services. But as economies in most of the world become more knowledge-intensive and as populations press for greater opportunities for their children, governments face many similar challenges as they seek to expand access to education and child development services; to increase the quality, effectiveness, and accountability of their investments in these areas; and to wrestle with new issues brought on by globalization itself. 1. Increasing access. Worldwide, access to education has improved greatly over the past 30 years. Enormous expansions of basic education in countries as different as South Africa and Turkey have helped to open up societies in ways unimaginable a generation ago. But much remains to be done--110 million children around the world, including over 60 million girls, do not go to school at all. The high returns on investments in basic education in terms of health and economic development suggest the urgency of creating effective national and international responses to the Millennium Development Goal of getting all children into basic education by 2015. Even where children are enrolled in school, the overwhelming challenge remains to narrow the achievement gaps between poor children and their more affluent peers and between children in cities and those in rural areas. The nature of a society's expenditures and policies can have a major impact on the size of these gaps and is an important area for cross-national discussion. (1) More recently, some societies have begun to invest in early childhood services on a large scale. These investments have been spurred by research on the early development of the brain; by longitudinal evaluations of early intervention programs that demonstrate the benefits of early childhood education for children's cognitive, social, and emotional development as well as their longer-term success in school and in the labor force; and by the significant cost savings that accrue to those societies that provide the benefit of high-quality early education. …

While most studies on the determinants of learning deal with either cognition or motivation, there is a growing awareness that both should be considered. Our purpose was to examine the relative roles of cognitive and motivational factors for the scholastic achievement and behaviour of disadvantaged children. Cognition was conceptualised in terms of the psychosemantic theory that assesses cognitive processes by characteristics of the individual's meaning assignment (Kreitler & Kreitler, 1987a). Motivation was conceptualised in terms of the cognitive orientation (CO) theory which assumes that cognitive contents guide behaviour (Kreitler & Kreitler, 1982). Participants were 57 third and fourth graders of both genders, recommended for a remedial summer programme. They were administered the Meaning Test assessing cognitive abilities; the CO Questionnaire of Motivation for Learning assessing the disposition to learn; and the Metropolitan Achievement Test and the IOWA tests assessing verbal, mathematical and working skills. Teachers completed the Teacher-Child Rating Scale assessing six scholastic behaviours. Regression analyses showed that all dependent variables were predicted by the cognitive and motivational variables, better by specific than global predictors. Cognitive variables contributed more to the predictions, especially of academic achievements, and more in the case of verbal than mathematical abilities. In girls, motivational factors played a larger role than cognitive factors, absolutely and relative to boys. Implications for promoting scholastic achievements are discussed.

(1994). Families and Children: Who is Responsible? Childhood Education: Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 4-8.

This article presents the status of Early Learning and Development Standards (ELDS), as part of the Going Global with Early Learning and Development Standards (or Going Global) initiative to improve and support integration in early childhood programs and policies. ELDS are national statements of expectations for what children should know and be able to do, rooted in social, cultural, and political values and the scientific literature to guide programming and policies using a child-centered approach. Going Global uses a multisectoral inclusive partnership model to develop ELDS and is currently operative in over 20 countries across five regions of the world and is being used in multiple ways to improve integrated early childhood development.

Despite growing interest in children's policy and in research regarding childhood bilingualism and language acquisition, much concern exists regarding the early care and education of linguistically and culturally diverse preschoolers. This article attributes comparative policy inattention to linguistically and culturally diverse preschoolers to several causes including widely and tenaciously held personal beliefs, political ideologies, misperceptions regarding the lack of a demographic imperative, and academic disciplinary fragmentation. After questioning these causes, the authors explore the current state of today's practice, suggesting that four fundamental issues must be addressed if policy and practice in this domain are to improve: (1) socialization, resocialization, and the family/child relationship; (2) modalities of instruction; (3) contextually discontinuous strategies; and (4) subsystem creation versus system reform. Each issue is discussed, and action principles and leadership strategies are presented in hopes of moving an action agenda to assure linguistically and culturally diverse preschoolers access to high quality and developmentally appropriate preschool experiences.

This article explores the relationship between profit and quality in early childhood care and education from historical, research, and policy perspectives. It analyzes why the profit/nonprofit debate is endemic to our current system and why it is so salient for current policy. Drawing primarily upon four studies that have compared quality in profit and nonprofit early care and education settings, and upon selected other studies, the analysis offers suggestions for future research and policy initiatives to improve the nation's child care system.

School-based family resource programs are examined as an illustration of a promising programmatic direction in family-school relations. A brief historical review of family-school interactions is provided and a continuum of family-school interactions is set forth, The article describes examples of diverse family resource programs, identifies problems in implementing and evaluating family resource programs, and suggests needed directions in strengthening the potential of school-based, prevention-oriented services to families.

In order to accommodate the changing needs of today's children and families, early care and education policy and practice will need to be changed dramatically. This essay delineates philosophical, structural and pedagogical challenges that must be retrofitted as a new and effective social strategy is crafted.