Challenging student behaviors are a prominent factor in the development of teacher stress and burnout. When classroom-based teachers of preschool children with disabilities were surveyed to identify their training needs in one North Carolina county, the most frequent request was how to address behavior challenges of preschool children with disabilities. This study examined how instructional support to teachers of preschool children with disabilities and challenging behaviors affected three teachers' classroom practices. The teachers received training and mentoring in classroom behavior management strategies and engaged in an online community of learners discussion group. Interviews and interactions from an online learning community were used to disclose whether the participants had implemented effective intervention strategies in their classrooms following the training. Teachers felt more competent in managing challenging behaviors after the online interaction with their colleagues. Teachers' online interactions were a highly effective way to impact teacher efficacy. Therefore, special education preschool programs should consider providing more opportunities for the teachers to build their own learning communities to interact and support one another.Keywords Preschool Á Special needs Á Challenging behavior Á Community of learners Challenging student behaviors are a prominent factor in the development of teacher stress and burnout. Stressed teachers were found to spend more than 20% of time in negative interactions and only 5% of time in positive interactions with children who had challenging behaviors, thus contributing to the ongoing cycle of ensuing challenging behaviors (Alvarez 2007;Stormont 2002). Data from the National Prekindergarten Study during the 2003 and 2004 school year indicated that 10.4% of state-funded prekindergarten teachers across the nation expelled at least one preschooler from their program. This rate was 3.2 times higher than the rate for kindergarten through twelfthgrade children. Expulsion is the most severe disciplinary action that can be given because it means that the child can never return to that school. Not unexpectedly, teacher stress was related to higher rates of expulsion even when class size and child age were controlled (Gilliam 2005).When classroom-based teachers of preschool children with disabilities were surveyed to identify their training needs in one North Carolina county, the most frequent request was how to address behavior challenges of preschool children with disabilities. The need for similar training regarding working with children that exhibit behavior challenges has been recognized in the field of early childhood. Teachers view children with behavior problems as more challenging to work with than children with any type of disability (Alvarez 2007). Several issues related to addressing the challenging behaviors of preschoolers in a classroom setting include not only teacher training, but also teacher perceptions, teacher stress and support (Alvarez 2007;Gilliam 2...

This article explores the author's multiple relationships with the Head Start staff and children at Wood River. The text is presented in a story-narrative form. Interspersed are the Head Start teacher's comments about an earlier draft of this article. There are three aspects of these relationships that the author explores. The first is the relationships among researchers' multiple community memberships when conducting research. The second is the relationships with mentors who guide researchers in how they conduct their investigations. The third entails the author's relationships with the Wood River staff and children. These relationships do not follow a smooth path; rather, they shift over time and from one moment to the next based on the context at hand.

This paper presents definitions of child care quality from focus groups conducted to develop a research design to assess the quality of Minnesota's regulated child care system. Eleven individual interviews and 38 focus groups involving 333 people were held in communities throughout Minnesota between 1-11-00 and 6-14-00. The focus groups represented the various stake holders interested in child care quality including parents, legislators, child care staff and administrators, licensed and unlicensed family child care providers, family and center based child care licensors, child care resource and referral staff, and teacher educators. Beginning first with the traditional definition of child care quality (what is good for the child) and related quality indicators, the author presents Katz's (Multiple perspectives on the quality of early childhood programs) four dimensional definition of child care quality and the associated research investigating these dimensions. The similarities and differences in various stake holder groups' definitions of child care quality are then presented and compared with Love, Schocket, & Meckstroth's review of child care research. The paper ends with a discussion how stake holders' definitions of child care quality may inform researchers and policymakers about child care quality.KEY WORDS: child care quality; stake holders; four dimensions of quality.

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