This article explores the German discourse of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) as it has emerged and changed over time. The conceptual elements of the triad of care, child raising and education ("Betreuung," "Erziehung" und "Bildung") are described and illustrated by salient points in the development of…

The Home Learning Environment (HLE) focuses on everyday learning habits in families to support the development of children's early cognitive competencies. A growing number of studies have assessed the HLE by using different conceptual approaches and various assessment methods, often focusing on either the home literacy environment or the home…

In the discourse on children and early childhood education, the concern to 'give children a voice' has become increasingly important in recent years. The starting point for this development is the idea of a 'competent child' whose perspectives, perceptions and ideas are valuable and important. For this reason, ECE has set itself the goal of…

This is a comparative education study that aims to compare the digital documentation systems used in the preschool education programs and institutions in Turkey, Germany and Spain and to reveal the similarities and differences between these systems. The study was planned as a qualitative research in terms of its descriptive aspect, and as a…

Pretend play may be beneficial for young children's social development. However, empirical results to date are inconsistent and limited, which is partly due to a lack of psychometrically sound measures for children's social pretend play competence. The current study aimed to compare and validate different assessment methods for children's social…

Although observational instruments are considered to be the gold standard for measuring toddler childcare quality, large-scale studies often have to rely on interviews or questionnaires. However, it remains unclear whether such reports can serve as reliable indicators for childcare quality. The present study used the ITERS and FCCERS to examine…

We examined a web-based mathematics progress monitoring tool for second graders. The tool monitors the learning progress of two competences, number sense and computation. A total of 414 students from 19 classrooms in Germany were checked every 3 weeks from fall to spring. Correlational analyses indicate that alternate-form reliability was adequate…

The purpose of our research was to examine a web-based tool for mathematics progress monitoring in first grade. The newly developed assessment tool uses several robust indicators and curriculum-based measures forming three competences (Basic Precursors, Advanced Precursors, and Computation) to determine comprehensive early numeracy skills in…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Conference on Education and New Developments 2013, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 1 to 3 of June. Education, in a global sense, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the human being, in the way one thinks, feels and acts. One of the…

Questions of "quality" of pre- and out of school-provisions for children and their families have been raised increasingly in all modern societies since the early nineties. The appropriateness of pedagogical frameworks and approaches have not been the only issues in the debate. Other strands, for instance, have been focussing on adequate…

The Office of Education frequently receives requests for information regarding the educational developments in the Soviet Zone of Germany. This bulletin is issued by the Office of Education as another in its longstanding series of international education publications. Unlike most bulletins in this series that are based on firsthand interviews and…