ABSTRACT
What does it mean to be part of an early childhood classroom community where all of the children feel included and cared for? How do children's ways of being with their peers and their teachers reflect these feelings? What do teachers do within their everyday classroom practices to build and facilitate an inclusive social community for children with diverse learning needs? Theoretically at the heart of the early childhood curriculum and of great concern to early childhood teachers, these issues are often left unaddressed in the most widely used methods of differentiated instruction for young children with disabilities in early childhood special education (Safford, Sargent, & Cook, 1994).
