The contributors to Developmentalism in Early Childhood and Middle Grades Education: Critical Conversations on Readiness and Responsiveness challenge dominant discourses and practices in the fields of early childhood and middle grades education that are based on the last century’s grand developmental theories. Editors Kyunghwa Lee and Mark D. Vagle and the other contributors examine the notion of development in their own work by employing various alternative frameworks, including Bakhtinian ideas, Buddhism, cultural psychology, and post-structuralism. Exploring issues related to developmentalism within and across the fields, the contributors invite the reader to participate in the cross-field dialogue which provides new language and perspectives for the education of young children, young adolescents, and teachers in both fields.

Maximizing Our Resources and Potential by Integrating Economics

Dr. Cheryl Fields, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, and Alex Cuenca, Social Studies Education doctoral candidate, received a 2010 Teacher Quality grant titled “Maximizing Our Resources and Potential by Integrating Economics” (MORePIES).  The grant funded a project focused on providing professional development to middle school teachers to integrate economic standards and concepts into social studies instruction. This project is a partnership between Griffin-Spalding County Schools, UGA-Athens, UGA-Griffin, and the Georgia Council of Economic Education.  The project began with a three-day summer 2010 institute held at the UGA-Griffin campus’ Student Learning Center facility.  Teachers received a refresher course on ECON and TRADE 101 and participated in demonstration lessons representing a wide-variety of pedagogical approaches such as simulations, Place-as-Text, discussion-based strategies, and cooperative learning.  During the 2010-2011 school year, Dr. Fields and Alex Cuenca will provide professional development for the teachers by facilitating their self-study and action research projects.