Early Childhood Curriculum: A Creative Play Model (4th Edition)

Carol E. Catron, author and consultant, is former director of the Early Childhood Education Teacher Licensure Program and faculty member in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She also is former director of the University of Tennessee Child Development Laboratories. She was born and raised in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she developed a special love and understanding for young children through her relationships with seven nieces and nephews. She graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, with a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Her master's and doctoral degrees are in early childhood education from George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Prior to teaching and directing in university settings, she taught kindergarten in public and private schools, taught preschool in parent cooperative and university laboratory settings, and organized and directed the first preschool program in the Nashville, Tennessee, metropolitan school system. With her sister, Barbara Catron Parks, Dr. Catron has published three storytelling books: Super Storytelling, Cooking Up a Story, and Celebrate with a Story.

Dr. Catron's areas of expertise are in play therapy, curriculum development, staff development and evaluation, and storytelling with young children. She also is involved in child advocacy efforts through professional organizations and agencies and has served as a mentor and validator for The National Association for the Education of Young Children's Academy of Early Childhood Programs.

Jan Allen is associate dean for PhD programs at Columbis University in New York City.  She was born and raised in Oakdale, Louisiana, graduated from Oakdale High School, and attended Louisiana Tech University. She graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Oklahoma. After working in Head Start from 1975 to 1977, she returned to school for a master's degree (the University of Oklahoma) and a doctoral degree (Purdue University) in child development to try and figure out what her Head Start children were trying to teach her abou how young children develop and learn.

Dr. Allen has been a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, from 1982 to 2002 where she taught undergraduate and graduate classes in child development, early childhood education, and children and stress. There she conducted research on child care and policy, preschool children's political socialization, and children and stress. She also directed the University's College of Human Ecology's Child Care Resource and Referral Office, a clearinghouse for research, policy, parent education, and technical assistance and consulting. She currently is conducting research and writing about the children, now in their 30s, that she taught in Head Start and about their lives 25 years later. 

In 1993, Dr. Allen was chosen as one of UT's first two Chancellor's Teacher-Scholars at UTK; in 1997, she was appointed assistant dean of the UT's Graduate School. With her colleague Sky Huck, she directed the university's Graduate Teaching Assistant Mentoring Program: Developing Future Faculty as Teacher-Scholars, an initiative of research, training, and support graduate students in their instructional role at a research university. From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Allen was associate dean of the Graduate School at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she also taught undergraduate and graduate classes in child development. For the pat 10 years she has also conducted research about mentoring, ethics, and the responsible conduct of research.