首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
相似文献
 共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 968 毫秒
1.
The design and evaluation of the New England Head Start Teaching Center (NEHSTC), one of 14 federally funded programs created to test the efficacy of participatory, hands-on training for enhancing Head Start service delivery is the focus of this article. The unique characteristics of the NEHSTC and the outcome evaluation results from 3 years of training will be discussed. The findings demonstrate the NEHSTC was successful in implementing high quality, participatory training within the context of an ongoing Head Start program. Various Head Start staff who participated in the NEHSTC trainings demonstrated gains in knowledge, skills, and attitudes compared to similar Head Start employees who did not receive training. The positive findings suggest that participatory training should be included in the menu of training options available. Because of the unique size and scope of Head Start, the success of ongoing efforts to improve the quality of its programs and services are particularly significant. Within Head Start, this discussion of quality enhancements via innovative training models is timely given the advent of the new performance standards and the restructuring of the Training and Technical Assistance system. Additionally, the findings are relevant for broader efforts to improve early care and education programs nationwide.  相似文献   

2.
Abstract

This distance degree program was specifically designed to meet the needs of Head Start teachers working with children from birth through 5 years of age and to raise the professional standards of these multicultural, non‐traditional students. Using electronic technologies and traditional learning methods, a partnership of university faculty and Head Start partners designed and evaluated the 3‐year program (1997–2000) of professional education distinguished by tailored instruction, work site mentoring and consultation, active self‐directed study, reflection and cooperative learning. Evaluative outcomes of program quality included learning success, relevance and practicability of curricula, efficacy of retention efforts, completion rates, quality of delivery strategies, instruction and mentoring. Evidence of program success was supported by these outcomes using multiple sources, including participating Head Start teachers, their supervisors, and university faculty.  相似文献   

3.
4.
Data from the Head Start Impact Study (N = 4442) were used to test for differences between Spanish-speaking Dual Language Learners (DLLs) and monolingual English-speaking children in: (1) Head Start attendance rates when randomly assigned admission; and (2) quality ratings of other early childhood education (ECE) programs attended when not randomly assigned admission to Head Start. Logistic regressions showed that Spanish-speaking DLL children randomly assigned a spot in Head Start were more likely than monolingual-English learners to attend. Further, Spanish-speaking DLLs not randomly assigned a spot in Head Start were more likely to attend higher-quality ECE centers than non-DLL children. Policy implications are discussed, suggesting that, if given access, Spanish-speaking DLL families will take advantage of quality ECE programs.  相似文献   

5.
Among a nationally representative sample of 2336 Head Start children, patterns of school readiness were compared at the beginning and end of children's first preschool year, and predictors of stability and change across readiness profiles were examined. The present study documented that although the majority of children remain in a qualitatively similar school readiness profile across their first year in Head Start, 20% of children move to a qualitatively different profile over the school year, reflecting both improvements and declines in functioning. Child and family attributes (e.g., child age, ELL status, maternal education, and family structure), as well as contextual factors (e.g., teacher education and experience, parenting style, and parent involvement) were significant predictors of both profile stability and change. Given that we have little understanding about what factors practice or policy can manipulate to improve school readiness, these findings shed light on what we might do to promote school readiness and prevent declines in functioning over time. Thus, findings from this study provide a population- and pattern-based perspective of Head Start children's strengths and needs, relevant for informing both individual and systems level change in Head Start programs across the nation.  相似文献   

6.
7.
Data from the Head Start Impact Study (= 3,185, age = 3–4 years) were used to determine whether 1 year of Head Start differentially benefited children from homes with high, middle, and low levels of parental preacademic stimulation on three academic outcome domains—early math, early literacy, and receptive vocabulary. Results from residualized growth models showed positive impacts of random assignment to Head Start on all three outcomes, and positive associations between parental preacademic stimulation and academic performance. Two moderated effects were also found. Head start boosted early math skills the most for children receiving low parental preacademic stimulation. Effects of Head Start on early literacy skills were largest for children receiving moderate levels of parental preacademic stimulation. Implications for Head Start are discussed.  相似文献   

8.
9.
Head Start Teaching Centers are a national demonstration project designed to provide participatory training in all Head Start component areas within the context of an exemplary Head Start program. Each Teaching Center employs an independent evaluation to study this alternative approach to Head Start staff development. This paper presents the results of the outcome evaluation for the first year of the New England Head Start Teaching Center. The New England Head Start Teaching Center was designed to provide intensive training during a 3 or 5 day period of residence at the Teaching Center. This paper briefly describes the national Head Start Teaching Center model, the implementation of this model in the New England region, the outcome evaluation plan, and the results from the first year of training. The analyses of year one data indicated that training provided by the New England Head Start Teaching Center produced significant gains. As compared to similar Head Start employees who did not participate in training, both trainees and their supervisors reported significant gains in trainees' knowledge, skills, and expertise after participating in the New England Head Start Teaching Center training.  相似文献   

10.
This paper considers the case of the Michigan Migrant Head Start program to describe and analyze the labor market conditions and teaching staff characteristics to identify the challenges faced by Migrant Head Start grantees in attracting, hiring, retaining, and training degreed teachers. The emphasis is on describing and analyzing the child care labor market characteristics that confront Migrant Head Start grantees in upstream locations and on describing the characteristics and opinions of Migrant Head Start teachers and interpreting their significance for developing educational programs that facilitate the ability of Migrant Head Start teachers to become degreed in early childhood education. The implications of the findings for making early childhood education work for Migrant Head Start teachers are discussed from the perspective of administrators of Migrant Head Start programs and teacher preparation programs at community colleges and universities.  相似文献   

11.
While mathematics instruction for very young children needs to be age-appropriate in format and content, it also needs to prepare children conceptually for the kinds of mathematics learning that will be expected of them in future years. This perspective, informed by the work of Russian psychologists and educators on a measurement-based approach to early mathematics instruction [e.g., V.V. Davydov, Children’s Capacity for Learning Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Reston, VA, pp. 109–205], was the basis for an experimental mathematics curriculum which focused on the concept of unit as it applies to enumeration, measurement, and the identification of relations among geometric shapes. The curriculum particularly emphasized two ideas about units that derive from a measurement perspective: first, that the numerical result we obtain from counting or other measurement operations will depend on our choice of a unit; and second, that units of one kind can be combined to form higher-order units or taken apart to form lower-order ones. The curriculum included a weekly project activity conducted by the Head Start teachers, suggestions for supplementary activities, and a weekly home activity for a parent or other family member to carry out with the child. It was implemented with children in three Head Start centers (N=46; age range 2 years, 9 months–4 years, 7 months at the beginning of the program). To evaluate the curriculum, two assessment instruments (the mathematics subscale of the DSC and a supplementary instrument constructed especially for this study) were administered, at the beginning and again at the end of the school year, to these children and to two comparison groups. One comparison group (N=48; age range 2 years, 6 months–4 years, 7 months) received a literacy intervention rather than a mathematics one; the other (N=29; age range 2 years, 8 months–4 years, 7 months) did not receive any experimental intervention. Results showed significant, albeit modest, positive effects of the intervention. The importance of reexamining current beliefs about what is possible—and desirable—within a preschool mathematics curriculum is emphasized.  相似文献   

12.
In February 1981 as President Reagan and his Cabinet considered which programs to sustain and which to cut, Secretary Bell of the U.S. Department of Education Spoke out on behalf of Project Head Start. The program, he is reported to have said, is effective in preventing later school failure and is deserving of continuing support.The incident seems remarkable. Ten years earlier, the failure of Project Head Start was cited by another President at much the same juncture of his administration as part of the reason for dismantling the Office of Economic Opportunity. In a decade or less, it is not remarkable for a social service program to fall from favor to the abyss. Project Head Start may be, however, the only example if not of a resurrection, then at least of a salvation. For this reason, it may be instructive to examine what happened to Head Start, particularly the influence of two studies as distinctive as the fortunes of the program itself: the Westinghouse-Ohio and the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies evaluations.  相似文献   

13.
Classroom quality is critical for young children's learning, yet evidence suggests that the quality of early care and education (ECE) classrooms varies widely, even within federally administered Head Start. This study uses data from the nationally representative Head Start Impact Study to examine variation in children's access to formal and high-quality ECE by policy characteristics that demonstrate a state's commitment and approach to regulating ECE quality. Findings support existing evidence of the impact of randomization to Head Start on children's access to formal and high-quality ECE, and expand our understanding of the ways in which these impacts vary. Overall, we find that stronger state child care licensing regulations and other indicators of a child-friendly policy climate are associated with a smaller contrast between the Head Start versus control groups' access to both formal and high-quality ECE. This study also offers initial evidence that state regulations targeting the quality of an ECE program's professional environment may be particularly important for access to high-quality classrooms.  相似文献   

14.
Program quality is an important theme for Head Start. Even staunch supporters of Head Start are concerned that too few Head Start classes are of the quality that is needed to best promote children's growth and development. This study examined relationships between classroom quality and child outcomes among 145 Head Start children from poor quality to more stimulating home environments. Results indicated that children in higher quality Head Start classrooms performed better on measures of achievement and preacademic skills, regardless of the quality of their home environment. Children from better home environments seemed to benefit more from classroom quality in the area of problem solving and reasoning than did children from less stimulating homes. Teacher characteristics such as education, experience, and attitudes were not associated with classroom quality in this group of 32 Head Start classrooms. On the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, no classroom received a rating of inadequate, but only 9% met or exceeded the score that would be considered developmentally appropriate.  相似文献   

15.
This study uses the Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) data from 1997 to investigate the degree to which child, family, classroom, teacher, and Head Start program characteristics are related to children's school readiness and continued development over the four-year-old Head Start year. Latent class analyses were used to examine the constellation of school readiness competencies within individual Head Start children in both the fall and spring of the four-year-old Head Start year. Multinomial regression analyses examined patterns of association between demographic and program characteristics and profile membership over time. Four distinct developmental profiles were found in the sample in the fall, and three were found in the spring. Furthermore, a substantial proportion of Head Start children (43%) moved from a developmental profile including some risk to a strengths profile between the fall and spring of the Head Start year. Child age, family structure, parental educational attainment, classroom quality and teacher's level of educational attainment emerged as important factors associated with stability and change in profile membership over the four-year-old Head Start year, but receipt of social services through Head Start was not associated with stability or change in profile membership.  相似文献   

16.
This qualitative interview study investigates the Hoover Community Action Agency's Head Start salary policies as described by 3 program administrators and 10 teachers. Feminist theories explain how teachers' and administrators' interpretations of salaries reflect societal beliefs about the value of Head Start teaching. Head Start teachers acknowledge both their low wages and their deep commitment to the Head Start mission. Low- and middle-income teachers differ in how they describe current salary levels: low-income teachers are proactive in salary enhancement efforts and middle-income teachers view salaries as supplemental family income. Agency administrators, while acknowledging the low teacher wages, argue that Head Start employment is more financially lucrative than day care teaching. Administrators cite teacher commitment, not salary, as the best predictor of teacher tenure.  相似文献   

17.
This study investigates the sustained effects into kindergarten and grade 1 of Project Head Start for disadvantaged black children. Participation in generic Head Start programs was compared to both no preschool and other preschool experience for disadvantaged children in two American cities in 1969-1970. Incorporating both pretest/posttest and comparison group information, the study has advantages over other Head Start impact studies. Both preprogram background and cognitive differences were controlled in a covariance analysis design, using dependent measures in the cognitive, verbal, and social domains. Children who attended Head Start maintained educationally substantive gains in general cognitive/analytic ability, especially when compared to children without preschool experience. These effects were not as large as those found immediately following the Head Start intervention. Findings suggest an effect of preschool rather than of Head Start per se. Initial findings of greater effectiveness of Head Start for children of below average initial ability were reduced but not reversed. The diminution of effects over time, especially for low-ability children, may reflect differences in quality of subsequent schooling or home environment.  相似文献   

18.
This article explores the history of Head Start, the federal early education program for economically disadvantaged preschool children in the United States, as a way of understanding what it means to talk about change in the late twentieth century. The history of Head Start has been a story of administrative changes and improvement and accountability initiatives in the realm of public policy, a ominant narrative of progress and rational planning that is consonant with a large, centralized governance structure. In an effort to create another way of conceiving of the organization, we first examine shifting definitions and conflicting interpretations of parental involvement and staff development within the program to reveal some of the tensions inherent in all human endeavors. We then draw on interviews with women who work in and are served by Head Start to show how needs and resources vary and how policy mandates can have differential—and unintended—effects. In the conclusion, we suggest, following Toulmin (1990), that the certainty and stability that has characterized public policy since the Enlightment must now be tempered with a postmodern recognition of change, complexity, and variability. Rather than one history, we see many histories. Instead of one approach, we see value in tailoring improvement initiatives to the needs of families and staff in specific circumstances. .  相似文献   

19.
In all communities, rural and urban, the increase of culturally diverse families served requires that Head Start programs support family childrearing practices and build upon cultural strengths to enhance social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development of the Head Start children. This study augments information, in both theory and practice, about Head Start programs which are based on culturally sensitive, child-centered, curriculum models and authentic parent involvement. The study revisits two family literacy projects that have both a participatory focus and include participants from marginalized groups. In these contexts, research findings reveal family childrearing practices which may be supported and built upon to enhance social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development of children in Head Start programs. Practice based on the findings has shown Head Start programs can build rapport through an informal, non- threatening environment, in which staff help parents to feel welcomed and comfortable so that they share the important sociocultural meanings in their lives. This non-threatening environment which enhances multidirectional participatory learning is seen in family literacy groups working in partnership with Head Start.  相似文献   

20.
Because of the increased popularity of child care programs, preschools, and other early childhood programs, playgrounds for two- to six-year-olds have, in recent years, become a popular commercial endeavor. Manufacturers of these new playgrounds have responded to the new market, designing equipment that meets the needs of this age group.Francis Wardle is Director, Adams County (Colorado) Head Start/Day Care/Food Programs, as well as a playground consultant and designer.  相似文献   

设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号