The SAGE Handbook of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education

This is a comprehensive and impressive Handbook covering a breadth of topics within the most central areas of developmental psychology and early childhood education. The topics of the chapters are all highly relevant to researchers, practitioners and even politicians working within early childhood education. Each of the chapters provides state of art knowledge and reviews of successful applied approaches in the field, including well-researched interventions or other implementations. This Handbook is of great interest and help for all concerned with children’s development in the early years, being an extensive resource of up to date research and knowledge.

Whitebread and his co-editors have put together a truly international collection of chapters, written by scholars from the UK, continental Europe, North and South America and Australasia.  This volume provides extensive coverage of research in developmental psychology which has important applications in early childhood education. This is a timely publication as many developed and developing countries worldwide are significantly increasing their provision in this area. Collectively, the chapters published here provide a uniquely evidence-based guide to the provision of high quality early childhood education worldwide.

Despite obvious connections between developmental psychology and thinking about early childhood education, there have been few previous attempts to explore these in any systematic way. This text redresses this lack in truly comprehensive fashion. David Whitebread and colleagues have assembled an impressive array of international authors to cover the full range of developmental work as it bears upon initial education. The end result is a Handbook worthy of that title, which will serve as a central reference work for the area for many years.