Janet Gonzalez-Mena – författare

50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families, 3rd edition by Janet Gonzalez-Mena is unique in its practical approach to improving teaching skills of early childhood educators by offering the most practical strategies for partnering with families to support, enhance, and maximize the quality of care and education of young children. It presents a plethora of ideas for creating the trust necessary for true collaboration between families and the early childhood professional, and guides on how to develop useful programs that include all families and individuals. Extensively revised, it reflects the most current themes, trends research and ideas in the field today, making it the most diversity-centered text on the market for courses covering diversity and the relationships between teachers and families in early childhood education classrooms and centers.

Note: This is the bound book only and does not include access to the Enhanced Pearson eText. To order the Enhanced Pearson eText packaged with a bound book, use ISBN 0134290046.

With its focus on the socialization of the child, this book helps readers understand how the child develops in a variety of contexts, including the family, community, and early childhood institutions. Child, Family, and Community gives readers the tools they need to work effectively with both children and parents in ways that support children to be healthy, secure, and socialized members of their families, and eventually society. Guidance strategies are presented, as well as child rearing strategies that parents, parent educators and other professionals and practitioners can put to immediate use. The author relates the many contexts in which the child exists–family, school, and community–to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, which divide’s a person's environment into five different levels: the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem, and the chronosystem. The Enhanced Pearson eText features embedded video and assessments.

Improve mastery and retention with the Enhanced Pearson eText*The Enhanced Pearson eText provides a rich, interactive learning environment designed to improve student mastery of content. The Enhanced Pearson eText is:

*The Enhanced eText features are only available in the Pearson eText format. They are not available in third-party eTexts or downloads.

*The Pearson eText App is available on Google Play and in the App Store. It requires Android OS 3.1-4, a 7” or 10” tablet, or iPad iOS 5.0 or later.

Bridging Cultures in Early Care and Education: A Training Module is a resource designed to help pre-service and in-service early childhood educators, including infant-toddler caregivers, understand the role of culture in their programs. It is also intended for professionals who work with children and their families in a variety of other roles, such as social workers, special educators, and early interventionists, and for use in college courses focused on early childhood education and child development.The module explains and illustrates how early childhood educators can use the organizing concepts of individualism and collectivism as a means of understanding cultural conflict and difference. These concepts have been shown to be highly useful in improving home-school understanding across cultures. Based on real-life examples of cultural dilemmas in early care and education settings, participants engage the concepts of individualism and collectivism to solve a variety of scenarios in a dynamic and engaging manner.*Chapter 1 introduces the Bridging Cultures for Early Care and Education approach, provides a brief history, and explains the training module. It presents the conceptual framework of individualism and collectivism, which is at the heart of the training.*Chapter 2 provides the information needed for a two-hour workshop, including a script and notes to the facilitator. The script is not meant to be read word for word. Rather, it is offered as a guide, based on a pilot-tested approach. Appendices at the end of the book contain transparency masters for the overheads referenced in the script, and masters for suggested handouts.*Chapter 3 offers ideas for augmenting the basic two-hour training by expanding it over a longer time period. It also identifies additional diversity resources that can complement the Bridging Cultures training.*Appendices providing additional information, data, and bibliographic resources are included. This module originated as part of the Bridging Cultures Project at WestEd--a nonprofit research, development, and service agency working with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.

Bridging Cultures in Early Care and Education: A Training Module is a resource designed to help pre-service and in-service early childhood educators, including infant-toddler caregivers, understand the role of culture in their programs. It is also intended for professionals who work with children and their families in a variety of other roles, such as social workers, special educators, and early interventionists, and for use in college courses focused on early childhood education and child development.The module explains and illustrates how early childhood educators can use the organizing concepts of individualism and collectivism as a means of understanding cultural conflict and difference. These concepts have been shown to be highly useful in improving home-school understanding across cultures. Based on real-life examples of cultural dilemmas in early care and education settings, participants engage the concepts of individualism and collectivism to solve a variety of scenarios in a dynamic and engaging manner.*Chapter 1 introduces the Bridging Cultures for Early Care and Education approach, provides a brief history, and explains the training module. It presents the conceptual framework of individualism and collectivism, which is at the heart of the training.*Chapter 2 provides the information needed for a two-hour workshop, including a script and notes to the facilitator. The script is not meant to be read word for word. Rather, it is offered as a guide, based on a pilot-tested approach. Appendices at the end of the book contain transparency masters for the overheads referenced in the script, and masters for suggested handouts.*Chapter 3 offers ideas for augmenting the basic two-hour training by expanding it over a longer time period. It also identifies additional diversity resources that can complement the Bridging Cultures training.*Appendices providing additional information, data, and bibliographic resources are included. This module originated as part of the Bridging Cultures Project at WestEd--a nonprofit research, development, and service agency working with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.

This text's primary theme is that of respectful, responsive, and reciprocal adult-infant-toddler interactions. That theme informs the text's framework of Ten Principles, introduced in Chapter 1. The Principles are referred to in every chapter and are reinforced through a recurring Principles in Action feature that demonstrates individual principles. This text features well-established practices related to sensitive care and program planning, designed to promote well-being and identity formation in infants and toddlers. The focus of Infants, Toddlers, and Caregivers is on action - putting theory into practice. The authors appreciate that even people with considerable understanding of early development may struggle unless they have also learned to apply that theory. Appreciating diversity, cultural and linguistic differences, and inclusion have grown in significance with each edition, and are reflected in positive, non-biased terminology throughout the text and its support resources.

Holly Elissa Bruno, MA, JD; Janet Gonzalez-Mena, MA; Luis Antonio Hernandez, MA; and Debra Ren-Etta Sullivan, EdD, are acclaimed keynote speakers, authors, and experts on a variety of topics in early childhood.