Suchergebnisse

Peer culture reflects the unique social worlds children construct out of everyday experiences with one another. This study explored the peer cultures of children with diverse abilities, backgrounds, and needs—focusing on 10 children with significant disabilities—in six inclusive preschool programs. Using a multi-method approach that included both qualitative and quantitative measures, themes were generated that portrayed how children with disabilities (1) expressed the desire to participate in peer culture through a range of social-communicative and symbolic behavior; (2) experienced inclusion in peer culture by coordinating social activity and establishing reciprocal relationships; and (3) experienced exclusion from peer culture through different forms of neglect, social-communicative breakdown, conflict, and rejection. Case vignettes and quotes serve to support and illustrate themes. The findings are discussed in terms of related sociocultural influences, implications for educational practice, and future directions in research.

This paper estimates the rate of return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, an early intervention program targeted toward disadvantaged African-American youth. Estimates of the rate of return to the Perry program are widely cited to support the claim of substantial economic benefits from preschool education programs. Previous studies of the rate of return to this program ignore the compromises that occurred in the randomization protocol. They do not report standard errors. The rates of return estimated in this paper account for these factors. We conduct an extensive analysis of sensitivity to alternative plausible assumptions. Estimated social rates of return generally fall between 7-10 percent, with most estimates substantially lower than those previously reported in the literature. However, returns are generally statistically significantly different from zero for both males and females and are above the historical return on equity. Estimated benefit-to-cost ratios support this conclusion.