Enhancing preschool-kindergarten educator implementation of interactive reading instruction through vertical teaming: Exploring collaborative enquiry

Using data from a 2-year empirical project in an urban school within the United States, this article describes how educators of preschool, transitional-kindergarten and kindergarten (PreK-TK-K) altered perceptions and practices as a result of participating in a purposefully crafted professional learning community using collaborative enquiry. Emergent thematic findings highlight shifts in educator understanding and application of interactive reading practice and alignment across classrooms of young learners. This vertical professional learning community provided space and time where educators constructed meaning through collaborative enquiry, video observations and reflection, which informed educator thinking and enriched student interaction for literacy learning.

Teacher Noticing of Mathematical Thinking in Young Children’s Representations of Counting

Counting is fundamental to early mathematics. Most studies of teaching counting focus on teachers observing children count. The present study compares mathematical ideas that 12 PK, transitional kindergarten (TK), and kindergarten teachers noticed from observing their own students count during a classroom session of Counting Collections with ideas that they noticed outside class time in the same students’ representations of counting on paper. Inviting teacher noticing in representations (a) drew attention to distinct conceptions that children required to represent counting; (b) increased the number of mathematical ideas that participants perceived in students’ thinking; and (c) helped participants perceive different levels in, and their own uncertainties about, students’ understanding. This study suggests that teacher noticing in children’s representations of counting can deepen teachers’ understanding of students’ mathematical thinking.

How Much Regulation? A Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Student Literacy Skills in Prekindergarten vs. Transitional Kindergarten

A growing body of research provides evidence that quality early childhood experiences can affect a host of life outcomes. Equally well documented is the variation in the quality of prekindergarten (pre-K) programs offered to children. In this study, I use a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach to evaluate the efficacy of transitional kindergarten (TK) on student outcomes in the San Francisco Unified School District. TK is a highly regulated, state-funded, early education program. Importantly, universal pre-K was already established in San Francisco, making this study a comparison of pre-K opportunities. This study tests whether a more highly regulated pre-K program, situated solely in schools, can provide benefits to young five-year-olds over a modern, robust universal pre-K market. I find that students who attended TK outperform their peers on a variety of foundational literacy skills, with some evidence the gains are larger for minority children. TK, however, had little effect on the rate of absences in kindergarten and first grade.