Government guidelines are demanding greater educational outcomes and intentional teaching in Australian preschools. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study of how children incorporate concepts into child-initiated play. A cohort of 18 children (aged 3.0-5.8, mean age of 4.8) were digitally observed over seven weeks…

Research into pedagogical approaches used in early years' nature education, more specifically European and UK forest schools, remains according to Leather, 'undertheorised.' In a similar situation in Australia, the bush kindergarten programmes (referred to as 'bush kinders'), have had limited research attention. Influenced by European and UK…

Background: The forest school and nature kindergarten approach to early childhood education and care (ECEC) has been established for well over 50 years in the United Kingdom and across parts of Europe including Scandinavia. One example where the nature kindergarten approach has recently taken a foothold is the Australian 'bush kinder'. Bush…

Undertaking infant-toddler practicum during initial teacher education is critical to ensuring preservice teachers (PSTs) are well prepared for their future role as early childhood teachers. PSTs, however, can face challenges in infant-toddler practicum given the demands of this unique teaching and learning context. A knowledgeable, experienced…

An expansive view of care is vital to understanding children's sense-making of their care experiences in early childhood education. Yet, scant literature explores how toddlers enact and express understandings of care in their play with objects and others. This article identifies play situations where toddlers enact and express understandings, and…

This paper considers the pedagogical collaborations between early childhood teachers in kindergarten (4 years) and the first year of school (5 years) in one Australian State. We report on a year-long project that brought these early childhood teachers together as we asked them to design STEM learning ecologies that would not only support new…

Australia has made tremendous progress in building a better early childhood education and care (ECEC) system to serve all Australian children and families. Substantial data already exists about ECEC services in Australia, including access, participation and quality. Large-scale data sets are held by governments (state and federal), research…

This article considers opportunities and risks arising from the prominence of the belonging motif in Australia's Early Years Learning Framework and, more implicitly, in the National Quality Standard, against which the quality of the early childhood education and care services is assessed. A vignette constructed from case study data generated in…

Bush kindergartens are a new practice in the Australian early childhood learning context and one that is rapidly becoming part of the kindergarten experience. Children leaving the confines of the bounded space of a kindergarten has been practised through excursions to outdoor places like zoos but the notion of conducting regular, ongoing…

This article offers a methodological reflection on how "baby-cam" enhanced ethically reflective attitudes in a large-scale research project that set out to research with infants in Australian early childhood education and care settings. By juxtaposing digital images produced by two different digital-camera technologies and drawing on…

This article reports on a qualitative pilot study which documented the ways in which young children and their families "notice," "explore," and "talk about" mathematical concepts and processes as they participate in family shopping experiences. Six families, with children ranging from 12 months to 10 years, were…

The concept of "perezhivanie" has gained theoretical attention and is beginning to feature in empirical studies of young children, where the role of emotion is foregrounded (e.g., Ferholt, 2010). However, the idea of a "collective perezhivanie" of adults and children in early childhood settings has not yet been researched. In…

In most majority countries, early childhood educators' work occurs in a context increasingly dominated by neoliberal logic. A large body of literature emphasises that neoliberalism flourishes in society by fuelling mutual distrust and competition among people to pursue individual performance and material gain. This system has crept into education…

Drawing on the work of Martin Nakata, this paper brings into focus the everyday complexities involved in the cultural interfaces that educators, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, negotiate in order to promote children's engagement with formal education processes. Analysis of emergent data from a recent evaluation of a preschool education…

Problem Based Learning (PBL) has been used with increased frequency in Higher Education settings since first introduced by Barrows and Tamblyn during the 1980's. Since this time PBL has been used in medical, engineering and education faculties to support pre-service students in the acquisition of skills and content knowledge relevant to their…