This popular text discusses the effect that contexts, such as families, child care programs, schools, media, and communities, have on child development and education. It provides many strategies for professionals to help children and families resolve conflicts, advocate, understand issues and differences, and maximize children’s potential. Throughout the field, this text is known for its excellent coverage of cultural responsiveness and providing many helpful, descriptive scenarios. To respond to shifting needs, this edition includes some key changes:
Broader Theoretical Focus includes Ecological Theory and Family Systems Theory. This edition expands the coverage of Bronfenbrenner’s theory of ecological development and helps students to look at children in the contexts in which they are raised so that they can better address their needs. Family systems theory gives students a framework for understanding family dynamics, which helps them to relate better to children and their families.
Expanded Coverage Includes New Chapter on School-Age Children. Chapter 5 has been added to this edition to accommodate course coverage of school-age children. It includes discussion of children transitioning from the initiative stage to that of industry, how family-centered approaches can ease children’s entry into kindergarten, affirmations and the power of positive adult attention, and teaching morals by promoting prosocial behaviors.
Greater Focus on Strategies for Communicating and Working Collaboratively with Diverse Families. This revision includes new strategy sections in each chapter on “Strategies for Working with Diverse Families” and a more deliberate focus in the prose on including suggestions for working with all types of families in a collaborative way.
Author Janet Gonzalez-Mena is working on an NAEYC project, “Strengthening Family-Professional Partnerships”, which trains trainers and focuses on building relationships and communication strategies between ECE professionals and families.
Janet Gonzalez-Mena taught in the California university and community college systems for 35 years. She was on the full-time faculty at Napa Valley College in the Child and Family Studies Department for 15 years. Janet started her early childhood career in a cooperative preschool as a parent volunteer in 1966. She became a preschool teacher and taught in three types of programs including Head Start, a program for Spanish-speaking children and their families, and a home-based preschool program. Later she became a director of child care programs and helped to open several pilot projects including a therapeutic child care program and an infant-center.
Besides preschool, Janet’s special interests include working with parents, diversity, family child care, and infants. In the 1970s she studied with Magda Gerber, an infant expert from Hungary. Recently she has studied at the Pikler Institute in Budapest where Magda came from. Presently Janet is involved in helping create a training project called “Strengthening Family and Professional Partnerships” with NAEYC. Janet is the author of four early childhood education textbooks, plus a book on diversity and two parenting books. In 2002 she co-authored Bridging Cultures in ECE, a training manual for WestEd. She has been on the faculty of WestEd’s Program for Infant-Toddler Care training trainers since 1991. For the last 10 years she has also been on the faculty of Beginning Together, an organization that trains professionals to include children with special needs in early care and education programs.
Janet lives in a multicultural family in California, a state where there is no longer a majority culture; everyone now is a minority. Janet earned a B.A. in English from University of California, Davis and a M.A. in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College.
