PRESCHOOL TEACHING EXPERTISE IN THREE COUNTRIES : JAPAN, CHINA, AND THE US
(with Akiko Hayashi)

Funding: Spencer Foundation

We are re-interviewing the teachers who were featured in the Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, showing them videos made in their classrooms in 2002, and asking them how they have changed over time. We are also interviewing experienced preschool teachers and directors in each country, asking them what distinguishes beginning from more experienced teachers and to define the core characteristics of expertise in preschool teaching.

KINDERGARTENS FOR THE DEAF IN THREE COUNTRIES: US, FRANCE, AND JAPAN
(with Thomas Horejes of Gallaudet and Joseph Valente of Penn State)

Funding: Spencer Foundation

This is a study of how deaf kindergartens that emphasize sign language function as key sites for enculturating deaf children into Deaf culture. This is first study of the enculturation practices of early schooling for the deaf to employ a cross-cultural, comparative, ethnographic approach and the first to include both as a research tool and as a final product videos showing typical days in kindergarten classrooms in schools for the deaf.

The project is in a sense doubly ethnographic, as we are studying enculturation into Deaf culture in Japan, France, and the US within the larger cultures and socio-political contexts in which these Deaf cultures and schools are embedded.

CHILDREN CROSSING BORDERS
http://www.childrencrossingborders.org/

Funding: Bernard van Leer Foundation; Spencer Foundation; Russell Sage Foundation

This is a study of how the early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems of five countries are serving the children of recent immigrants and of what parents who recently have migrated from another culture want for their children in ECEC settings. The five countries in this study (England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States) were chosen for their strikingly different approaches to serving children of immigrants. All five countries are democracies, but with significant differences in notions of citizenship, nation, federalism, public services, and civic responsibility and with very different systems of early childhood education.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN PRESCHOOLS IN THREE COUNTRIES:
JAPAN, CHINA, AND THE UNITED STATES