How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

Early childhood is a time of wonder, excitement, adventure and learning. A time to experience social relations and friendships, and all of the emotions involved. The joy, and the excitement – of creating a common world with friends. A world of ‘what if’ and ‘as if’ moments that are accepted and built together, or rejected – leading to frustration, sadness and exclusion – the darker side of friendship. In this book, cultural-historical concepts are used to analyse the everyday lives of children. Inspired by contemporary ideas about moral imagination, Collaborative Pathways to Friendship in Early Childhood theorises friendship as a concept. Traditionally, studies about friendship in early childhood focus on relations built in educational settings. As a point of difference, Dr Adams and Dr Quinones introduce the conditions that are created for, with, and by young children as they move between everyday family life, and transition into education settings. Through narratives of internationally mobile families moving into Malaysia and established families in Mexico, varying perspectives of children, parents, teachers and principals are presented — culminating in a holistic understanding of friendship in early childhood. Providing insight into varied perspectives and processes involved when young children enter into friendships, this book will be of interest to researchers, post graduate students and teacher educators specialising in early childhood education, child psychology or social work.

Based on a year-long micro-ethnography of a nursery school, this book presents a unique approach to childhood socialization by focusing directly upon the social, interactive, and communicative processes that make up the world of young children. It contains micro-sociolinguistic analyses of videotaped peer interactive episodes which are the basis of explanations of children's development and use of social concepts such as status, role, norms, and friendship. Stable features of peer culture in the nursery school are identified, and the importance of interpreting children's behavior from their own perspective is demonstrated. The author also addresses the implications of the findings for early childhood education.

This reader contains source material for an up-to-date study of child development as it applies to major issues in child care and education. The emphasis is on studying early childhood in cultural contexts - in families and in preschool settings. Part 1 elaborates a socio-cultural approach to early development, taking emotional attachment, communication and language and daycare as examples. Part 2 considers how children's emerging capacities for empathy, inter-subjectivity and social understanding enable them to negotiate, talk about and play out relationship themes, both in the family and preschool. Part 3 concentrates on early learning, with chapters on the way parents support children's acquisition of new skills, young children negotiating their role in learner-teacher relationships and toddlers learning to collaborate with each other. Part 4 continues the theme of children's initiation into socio-cultural practices from a cross-cultural perspective, with studies drawn from such diverse contexts as Cameroon, Guatemala, Italy, Japan and the United States. This is the first of three readers which have been specially prepared as readers for the Open University MA Course: ED840 Child Development in Families, Schools and Society.

This book responds to the absence of a comprehensive consideration of the implications of culture for children's peer relationships. Although research in this field has burgeoned in recent years, cultural issues have often been overlooked. The chapters tap such issues as the impact of social circumstances and cultural values on peer relationships, culturally prescribed socialization patterns and processes, emotional experience and regulation in peer interactions, children's social behaviors in peer interactions, cultural aspects of friendships, and peer influences on social and school adjustment in cultural context. The authors incorporate into their discussions findings from research programs using multiple methodologies, including both qualitative (e.g., interviewing, ethnographic and observational) and quantitative (e.g., large scale surveys, standardized questionnaires) approaches, based on a wide range of ages of children in cultures from East to West and from South to North (Asia, South America, the Mid-East, Southern Europe, and ethnic groups in the US).

This important collection examines peer rejections among children.