This book shows how teachers and educators can use stories of their professional experiences to reflect on their own practice, articulate values and beliefs, give shape and form to teaching theory, and better understand decision-making processes.

This book represents the next step in the critical role that lesson planning plays in effective teaching. The authors examine practices from many different areas of education in the U.S. and around the world to create an approach to lesson planning and evaluation that will work in today's diverse school settings. The heart of the book demonstrates collaborative lesson planning for teachers at particular career phases-pre-service, novice, and experienced.

Mary Renck Jalongo Interpersonal relationships present an interesting paradox to the young child. Although human bonds are a source of love, security and joy, they are, at the same time, the context in which children feel intense and complicated emotions such as jealousy, shame, resentment, sorrow, and rage. To illustrate, consider a series of incidents in the life of a young child named Melissa. All of these events were so memorable that they became oft-repeated family stories. At age 4, after Melissa was reprimanded by her mother, she packed a small plastic suitcase and announced that she...

Traditionally, introductory textbooks in early childhood education have been organized by curriculum. The typical introductory text begins with a history of the field and a chapter on developmental theory followed by one chapter on each major subject area-language, mathematics, science, the arts, and so forth. Exploring Your Role in Early Childhood Education takes an integrated approach andis organized around the essential roles and responsibilities that effective early childhood educators must fulfill.

In addition to its organization, the interactive natureof the text sets...