Developmental Play Assessment for Practitioners (DPA-P) Guidebook and Training Website: Project Play offers a comprehensive assessment of naturally occurring play activities for evaluating young children’s developmental progress accurately, so that useful interventions can take place as early as possible. It can be used by practitioners in a wide range of educational and therapeutic settings and is designed to support developmental progress through planning interventions in play, and using what we know about a child’s progress in play to plan play-based interventions in cognition, language, motor, social-emotional, and self-help skills. The guidebook and training website provide a comprehensive introduction to how to successfully use the assessment with infants, toddlers, and young children with disabilities or at risk for disabilities. The comprehensive guidebook offers an overview of the DPA-P and Project Play, defines play, discusses the background literature on play, and explains why this assessment is needed. Clear guidance helps practitioners and family members understand play, how to evaluate play, and how to use play for different purposes. The guidebook offers: an introduction to the comprehensive training website and how to use it understanding of the categories of play assessed and their definitions guidance on how to administer the assessment and prepare a summary evaluation of a child’s performance clear instructions for the coding sheets and scoring guidelines for constructing sets of toys guidance on taking the results of the DPA-P evaluation of a child’s progress in play to develop a plan of activities for intervention explanation of how you evaluate activities at the absence, basic, emergence, and mastery levels for developing a plan suggestions for assembling sets of toys for intervention, based on toys available in children’s homes and early childhood settings procedures for facilitating or teaching play activities to children who are developing more slowly than their peers technical aspects of the assessment To make the DPA-P as flexible as possible for all practitioners, it also offers guidance on adaptations for administering the test, in the coding sheets, with toys to enhance cultural appropriateness for gathering the observations, and for supporting interventions in play. The Developmental Play Assessment for Practitioners (DPA-P) can be used in natural settings and takes 30 minutes to complete. It is a valuable tool for all those who serve, or are training to serve, young children in early childhood settings, schools, service agencies, colleges, and universities. It will be of great benefit for early intervention personnel, speech-language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and psychologists. Please visit https://www.routledge.com/Developmental-Play-Assessment-for-Practitioners-DPA-P-Coding-Sheets/Lifter-Mason-Cannarella-Cameron/p/book/9781032190310 to purchase sets of the Developmental Play Assessment for Practitioners (DPA-P) color-coded coding sheets.

This edited volume offers cross-country and cross-cultural applications of Dialogical Self Theory within the field of education. It combines the work of internationally recognized authors to demonstrate how theoretical and practical innovations emerge at the highly fertile interface of external and internal dialogues. The Theory, developed by Hubert Hermans and his colleagues in the past 25 years, responds fruitfully to the issue of educational experts hitherto working in splendid isolation and does so by combining two aspects of Dialogical Self Theory: the dialogue among individuals as well as dialogical processes within individuals, in this context students and teachers. It is the first book in which Dialogical Self Theory is applied to the field of education. In 13 chapters, authors from different cultures and continents produce theoretical considerations and a wide variety of practical procedures showing that this interface is an ideal ground for the production of new theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches that enrich the work of educational researchers and specialists. Academics, practitioners, and postgraduate students in the field of education, particularly those who are interested in the innovative and community-enhancing potentials of dialogue, will find this book valuable and informative. Ultimately the work presented here is intended to inspire more self-reflection and creative ways to engage in new conversations that can respond to real-world issues and in which education can play a more vital role.

Stabilizing indigenous languages is the proceedings of two symposia held in November 1994 and May 1995 at Northern Arizona University. These conferences brought together language activists, tribal educators, and experts on linguistics, language renewal, and language teaching to discuss policy changes, educational reforms, and community initiatives to stabilize and revitalize American Indian and Alaska Native languages. Stabilizing indigenous languages includes a survey of the historical, current, and projected status of indigenous languages in the United States as well as extensive information on the roles of families, communities, and schools in promoting their use and maintenance. It includes descriptions of successful native language programs and papers by leaders in the field of indigenous language study, including Joshua Fishman and Michael Krauss.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.