Learning the Language of Nature: Young Children as Mathematical Thinkers

Math Early On, funded by the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, involves a partnership between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and the Educares of Nebraska, part of a national network of highquality child care centers for low-income children from birth to age 5. Th e goal of the Math Early On project is to off er professional development opportunities that build on the past successful professional development efforts of UNL’s NebraskaMATH and its Primarily Math initiative. The Primarily Math curriculum for primary teachers was adapted and redesigned to create new experiences for the purpose of enriching preschool teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. This booklet tells some of the powerful learning stories that emerged in the Educares of Omaha at Indian Hill and Kellom and the Ruth Staples Child Development Laboratory at UNL. In the model of the Hawkins exhibit, and of Italian-style documentation, the stories combine images, description, and teacher interpretation to reveal, unpack, and share moments and processes of early intellectual discovery

Learning the Language of Nature: Young Children as Mathematical Thinkers

Math Early On, funded by the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, involves a partnership between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and the Educares of Nebraska, part of a national network of highquality child care centers for low-income children from birth to age 5. Th e goal of the Math Early On project is to off er professional development opportunities that build on the past successful professional development efforts of UNL’s NebraskaMATH and its Primarily Math initiative. The Primarily Math curriculum for primary teachers was adapted and redesigned to create new experiences for the purpose of enriching preschool teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. This booklet tells some of the powerful learning stories that emerged in the Educares of Omaha at Indian Hill and Kellom and the Ruth Staples Child Development Laboratory at UNL. In the model of the Hawkins exhibit, and of Italian-style documentation, the stories combine images, description, and teacher interpretation to reveal, unpack, and share moments and processes of early intellectual discovery

Statewide Policies to Improve Early Intervention Services: Promising Practices and Preliminary Results

The State of Nebraska Co-Lead agencies, who are responsible for developing statewide early intervention policies, rolled out professional development for two evidence-based strategies across several pilot sites. Implications of these strategies for child/family assessment, Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) development, and Early Intervention service delivery were examined utilizing family (n=30) and professional interviews (n=50), and analyses of IFSPs (n=30). The results of this mixed method study indicate widespread strategy implementation with fidelity fosters early working relationships with families and enables teams to generate, using family members’ own words, a robust group of high-quality child and family IFSP outcomes. Family engagement in planning services such as identifying service providers and setting the frequency and length of home visits was limited. In addition, further professional development is needed to strengthen use of routines-based interventions during home visits and promote family-professional collaboration to monitor child/family progress. Implications for systematic scale-up of evidence-based practices as a function of state policy implementation are reported

Concern, Conflict, and Chaos: Nebraska Educator Experiences during the Pandemic

During the spring of 2020, Nebraska’s 983 public schools sat vacant, and Nebraska’s 329,290 Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 students were learning in environments other than school. Educators were expected to pivot quickly from traditional classroom instruction to remote experiences. Understanding the effects of the pandemic on educators is necessary to effectively meet their needs and the needs of students. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the experiences of Nebraska’s urban and rural PreK–Grade 12 educators during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In surveys collected in July 2020, participants (i.e., superintendents, principals, and teachers) completed both fixed-response items and one open-ended question that assessed experiences during the initial pandemic-related school closings. The results indicate educators identified lack of family help and inability to engage students as a top concern about student academic progress. Educators reported dramatic increases in stress during school closures. Many reported coping only somewhat well or worse. Educators also reported personal challenges with remote instruction, including mental health issues and blurred work-and home-life boundaries. Significant differences were found between rural and urban educators, as well as between elementary and secondary educators. Direct quotes from participants vividly describe their lived experiences

Analyses of Parental Interaction Behaviors and Young Children\u27s Language Skills

The Preschool Language Scale-5 (PLS) and samples of spontaneous speech from 20-30-minute play interactions between toddlers and parents, were used to examine children’s emerging language abilities. The speech samples were used to compute children’s rate of words, utterances and different words per minute, and mean length of utterances for a full transcript or simply the three longest utterances. Parents’ comments and directives were noted in five-minutes of toy play with their children. The proportion of parental comments to directives was found to be significantly related to all spontaneous speech measures, but not PLS scores. Spanish-speaking parents were found to have statistically more directives than English-speaking parents. There were no significant differences noted between Spanish- and English-speaking parents’ use of comments, or the proportion of comments to directives

Supporting Social-Emotional Development for Children with Identified Developmental Concerns: The Impact of Parenting and Executive Function

Social-emotional skills and executive function at preschool are critical for children\u27s school readiness and long-term success in relationships and academic achievement. Unfortunately, young children who are at increased risk due to socioeconomic factors and identified developmental concerns are more likely to have poor social-emotional development. Existing literature demonstrates parenting is related to executive function and social-emotional development. However, the associations among executive function, parenting behaviors, and social-emotional development are not fully understood, especially for special populations (e.g., children with identified developmental concerns). This study examines (a) bidirectional associations between parenting, executive function and social-emotional skills; and (b) executive function as an explanatory mechanism for the predictive relation between specific parenting behaviors and children’s social-emotional development. Data came from 267 parents and children with identified developmental concerns attending Head Start and other publicly funded center-based preschools. Parenting behaviors (i.e., reciprocity, conflict and cooperation) were observationally assessed from video-recorded parent–child interactions. Children\u27s executive function was assessed by teacher-report. Children\u27s social-emotional skills (i.e., agency, compliance, affection towards the parent, avoidance of the parent and negativity) were observationally coded from video-recorded parent–child interactions. Multiple regression analyses were conducted. Higher levels of conflict in the fall predicted poorer executive function in the spring of the first year of preschool. Poorer executive function in the fall predicted less reciprocity and cooperation in the spring of the first year of preschool. Less agency and more affection towards the parent in the fall predicted poorer executive function in the spring of the first year of preschool. Poorer executive function in the fall predicted less affection towards the parent in the spring of the first year of preschool. Cross-lagged panel models demonstrated that executive function was not an explanatory mechanism for the relation between parenting behaviors and children\u27s social-emotional skills. However, higher levels of conflict displayed by parents in the fall of the first year of preschool predicted more conflict during the spring of the same year. Higher levels of conflict in the spring then predicted poorer executive function and less agency during the spring of the child’s second year of preschool

Supporting Social-Emotional Development for Children with Identified Developmental Concerns: The Impact of Parenting and Executive Function

Social-emotional skills and executive function at preschool are critical for children\u27s school readiness and long-term success in relationships and academic achievement. Unfortunately, young children who are at increased risk due to socioeconomic factors and identified developmental concerns are more likely to have poor social-emotional development. Existing literature demonstrates parenting is related to executive function and social-emotional development. However, the associations among executive function, parenting behaviors, and social-emotional development are not fully understood, especially for special populations (e.g., children with identified developmental concerns). This study examines (a) bidirectional associations between parenting, executive function and social-emotional skills; and (b) executive function as an explanatory mechanism for the predictive relation between specific parenting behaviors and children’s social-emotional development. Data came from 267 parents and children with identified developmental concerns attending Head Start and other publicly funded center-based preschools. Parenting behaviors (i.e., reciprocity, conflict and cooperation) were observationally assessed from video-recorded parent–child interactions. Children\u27s executive function was assessed by teacher-report. Children\u27s social-emotional skills (i.e., agency, compliance, affection towards the parent, avoidance of the parent and negativity) were observationally coded from video-recorded parent–child interactions. Multiple regression analyses were conducted. Higher levels of conflict in the fall predicted poorer executive function in the spring of the first year of preschool. Poorer executive function in the fall predicted less reciprocity and cooperation in the spring of the first year of preschool. Less agency and more affection towards the parent in the fall predicted poorer executive function in the spring of the first year of preschool. Poorer executive function in the fall predicted less affection towards the parent in the spring of the first year of preschool. Cross-lagged panel models demonstrated that executive function was not an explanatory mechanism for the relation between parenting behaviors and children\u27s social-emotional skills. However, higher levels of conflict displayed by parents in the fall of the first year of preschool predicted more conflict during the spring of the same year. Higher levels of conflict in the spring then predicted poorer executive function and less agency during the spring of the child’s second year of preschool

Analyses of Parental Interaction Behaviors and Young Children\u27s Language Skills

The Preschool Language Scale-5 (PLS) and samples of spontaneous speech from 20-30-minute play interactions between toddlers and parents, were used to examine children’s emerging language abilities. The speech samples were used to compute children’s rate of words, utterances and different words per minute, and mean length of utterances for a full transcript or simply the three longest utterances. Parents’ comments and directives were noted in five-minutes of toy play with their children. The proportion of parental comments to directives was found to be significantly related to all spontaneous speech measures, but not PLS scores. Spanish-speaking parents were found to have statistically more directives than English-speaking parents. There were no significant differences noted between Spanish- and English-speaking parents’ use of comments, or the proportion of comments to directives

Fathers’ perceived co-parenting and children’s academic readiness among Chinese preschoolers: Longitudinal pathways through parenting and behavioral regulation

Co-parenting quality has frequently been linked to young children’s social–emotional functioning, but limited research has focused on the relationship between co-parenting and children’s early academic skills, or the underlying mechanisms through which co-parenting influences children’s development. Using data collected from urban China, the present study examined how fathers’ perceptions of co-parenting quality was related to their preschool-aged children’s academic readiness (i.e., receptive vocabulary, reading, early math; N = 336), and whether father’s parenting practices and children’s behavioral regulation mediated the link between co-parenting quality and child outcomes. Findings suggested that the relation between co-parenting quality and children’s academic readiness was mediated by children’s behavioral regulation. However, fathers’ parenting practices were not related to children’s academic readiness, nor did fathers’ parenting practices mediate the relations between co-parenting and child outcomes. The present findings were consistent between boys and girls. That is, the mediating process did not differ as a function of child gender. The study highlights the importance of fostering a quality co-parenting relationship to better support children’s development of behavioral regulation and academic readiness