Head of MED Program in Early Childhood Education, Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Clodie Tal is a developmental psychologist who has been involved throughout her professional life in early childhood education. The preparation and in-service “training” of caregivers and teachers working with young children are perceived by her as an ongoing preventive intervention: a way to improve the life conditions of young children coming from diverse backgrounds, and to improve the odds of those from underprivileged backgrounds to build meaningful lives. She currently heads the Master’s degree program in Early Childhood Education at Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel, and previously headed the Bachelor’s degree program in Education there. She has been extensively involved in service training in communities throughout Israel. Her main areas of research interest are teacher-child and teacher-parent relationships, teachers’ values, promoting children’s social competence, classroom management, and teacher-children dialogic discourse, in general, particularly focused on children’s picture-books.