Susan L. Golbeck - Psychological perspectives on early childhood education: reframing dilemmas in research and practice

Cover

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The RUTGERS INVITATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATION SERIES

O'Donnell/King, Eds. Cognitive Perspectives on Peer Learning

Vitello/Mithaug,Eds. Inclusive Schooling: National and International Perspectives

Golbeck, Ed. Psychological Perspectives on Early Childhood Education: Reframing Dilemmas in Research and Practice

Shimahara/Holowinsky/Tomlinson-Clarke,Eds. Ethnicity, Race, and Nationality in Education: A Global Perspective (In press)

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Psychological Perspectives on Early Childhood Education: Reframing Dilemmas in Research and Practice

Edited by
Susan L. Golbeck
Rutgers University

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Copyright 2001 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

The camera ready copy for this book was provided by the editor.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Psychological perspectives on early childhood education: reframing dilemmas in
research and practice / Susan L. Golbeck, editor.

p. cm. (The Rutgers invitational symposium on education series)
Based on original papers presented by the authors at the symposium on creating environments for learning in the early years, Nov. 6, 1998, in New Brunswick, NJ, at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0805832289 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. Early childhood education-United States-Psychological aspects-Congresses.
I. Golbeck, Susan L. II. Series.

LB1139.22P79 2001

372.210l9-dc21

00057280

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Robbie Case.

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Louise Cherry Wilkinson
Dean and Professor of Educational Psychology
Rutgers Graduate School of Education
November 1, 1999

The profession of education was shaken to its roots nearly two decades ago when national attention focused critically on education and educators. Beginning with the highly publicized Nation at Risk (1993), often contradictory criticisms, analyses, and recommendations on American education appeared from virtually every segment of contemporary U.S. society. Critics and friends have raised basic questions about our profession, including whether educators have successfully met the challenges that the students and the schools present and, even more fundamentally, whether we are able to meet those challenges.

In this explosion of concern and ideas for educational reform, there has been a need for a national forum in which the problems of education can be examined in light of research from a range of relevant disciplines. Too often analyses of complex issues and problems occur within a single discipline. Aspects of a problem that are unfamiliar to members of the discipline are ignored, and the resulting analysis is limited in scope and thus unsatisfactory. Furthermore, when educational issues are investigated by members of only a single discipline, there is seldom an attempt to examine related issues from other fields or apply methods developed in other fields. Such applications may prove to be illuminating.

The national debate on educational reform has often suffered from a myopia as problems and issues are identified and analyses and solutions often are proposed within the limited confines of a single disciplinary boundary. In the past, national discussions have been ill informed or uninformed by current research partly because there are far too few mechanisms for interdisciplinary analyses of significant issues.