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This book explores key policy issues related to early childhood education. Through the contributions of various professionals in the field, the editors provide a vision, practical and possible, of early childhood education in the 1990s. Part I delves into the complex world, both personal and professional, of the classroom teacher. The essays in Part II look at issues of the school community, including the roles of class, race, gender, and exceptionality. Finally, Part III examines the relationship between schools and the community-at-large, and how complex issues find their way into social and economic policies that often stifle, rather than support, the democratic vision of American schools. Taken as a whole, the volume presents a stimulating discussion of the current state of early childhood education policy and practice.
"Dogmatic beliefs and unexamined practice will produce neither healthy professionals nor programs and policies consistent with democratic values. The authors and editors are to be congratulated for their efforts to put current policy issues in early childhood education into perspective." — from the Foreword by Mary A. Jensen, State University of New York, Geneseo
"The book's strength is that significant themes surface and then resurface later in new surroundings. This caused me to return to earlier chapters to puzzle over the controversial and timely issues they raise." — Margaret Yonemura, State University of New York, Binghamton
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Mary A. Jensen
Introduction
Lois Weis
1. Overview
Child Care in America: From Problem to Solution
Edward F. Zigler and Matia Finn-Stevenson
Part I: Teachers as Child Care Providers: Select Issues
2. The Child Care Provider: Pivotal Player in the Child's World
Deborah Phillips and Marcy Whitebook
3. Teaching and Being: Connecting Teachers' Accounts of Their Lives with Classroom Practice
William Ayers
4. Does Home Hinder Professional Commitment? The Case of Early Education
Kelvin L. Seifert and Laura E. Atkinson
Part II: Within the Schools
5. The Accomplishment of Genderedness in Pre-School Childen
Bronwyn Davies
6. Race, Gender, and Exceptionality: Peer Interactions in Two Child Care Centers
Elizabeth Blue Swadener
7. Work and Play in the Nursery School
Mariajose Romero
8. Children's Rough-and-Tumble Play: Issues in Categorization and Function
Anthony D. Pellegrini
9. Instruction and Assessment of Emergent Literacy
Carol Ann Hodges
Part III: Early Childhood Education in Broader Social and Economic Context
10. Targeting Children's Motivational Resources in Early Childhood Education
Wendy S. Grolnick
11. Different Care for Different Kids: Social Class and Child Care Policy
Julia Wrigley
12. Developing Preschool Education Policy: An Economic Perspective
Steve Barnett
13. A World of Difference: American Child Care Policy in Cross-National Perspective
Sally Lubeck
About the Editors
Contributors
Index