Scientific Influences on Early Childhood Education
From Diverse Perspectives to Common Practices

Scientific Influences on Early Childhood Education offers a new framework for examining the diverse scientific perspectives that shape early childhood education.

As the field takes on an increasing role in addressing children?s educational, developmental, and environmental needs, it is critical to more fully understand and appreciate the diverse scientific roots of contemporary early childhood education. This edited collection brings together leading researchers to explain and unpack perspectives that are not often associated with early childhood education, yet have made significant contributions to its development and evolution.

Essential reading for anyone working with young children, this critical and insightful text illuminates the connections between our social values, science, and research in the field.

1. Characterizing the Scientific Influences in Early Childhood Education 2. Systems Science and its Impact on Early Childhood Education and Care 3. Policy and Political Influences on Early Childhood Education 4. Bioecological Systems Influences on Early Childhood Education 5. Psychological Sciences Impact on Early Childhood Education: Developmental Influences 6. Psychological Sciences Impact on Early Childhood Education: Child’s Mind in Society – A Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education 7. Anthropological Contributions to Early Childhood Education: On Culture, Context and the Construction of the Child 8. A Sociology of Early Childhood Education: Learning to be Civilized 9. The Contributions of Economics to Early Childhood Education and Care 10. The Importance of the Pedagogical Sciences to Early Childhood Education 11. The Critical Contributions of Assessment Science to Early Childhood Education 12. Medical Sciences Influences on Early Childhood Education 13. The Influences of Neuroscience on Early Childhood Education 14. Building a Research Framework – Models, Approaches, Neglected Areas and Next Steps

Dominic F. Gullois Professor of Early Childhood Education and Director of The Lisa and John McNichol Early Childhood Education Lab at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

M. Elizabeth Graueis Sorenson Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of the Center for Research on Early Childhood Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.