This cross-cultural multiple case study investigates the approaches of educators in nature-based preschools in Turkey and Germany towards risky play, exploring factors influencing play behaviours and educator roles. Four educators from Turkey and three educators from Germany participated in the study. Through qualitative analysis of interviews and…

Adaptive learning support is a key element of high quality preschool education and includes the planning of learning situations and teacher-child interactions. The provision of effective adaptive learning support in kindergarten is challenging. This longitudinal experimental study examined the impact of two professional development programs on 132…

This paper examines the role of professionalism in teachers' change in practice related to dialogue and argumentation. Data were collected from 14 pre-primary and primary school teachers who participated in a professional development programme with an emphasis on promoting values such as tolerance, empathy, inclusion and social responsibility…

Regular science practices in preschool are crucial for children's learning in science. Yet, preschool teachers may only offer science learning opportunities if they "are" and "feel" sufficiently qualified to teach early science. The present study investigates the relation between teachers' qualifications, their self-efficacy…

Science is an important domain in early childhood education. Though, initial results indicate that preschool teachers rarely offer science activities. Against this background professional development aims to encourage preschool teachers to provide science activities more frequently. In Germany, professional development is often offered as…

Pedagogical documentation is practised in early childhood centres all over the world as a means to gauge the learning and development of children. From the point of view of teachers, however, documentation must compete with numerous other tasks. This paper explores the strategies teachers employ in order to integrate documentation into their…

Preschool teachers' science-specific competences have been shown to influence their science instruction, which in turn appear directly related to the development of children's science competences. Initial teacher education and in-service professional development may include learning opportunities to acquire science-specific competences necessary…

Normative-theoretical discourse in pedagogy calls for transformation in educational approaches towards multilingualism. The key question in multilingual education remains: Can language ideologies be transformed? The present paper investigates how the field of language awareness can contribute to this process and what practical changes and…

This study investigates early childhood educators' language training competence that is required to support children's linguistic development. Hundred and forty-four early-years-professionals in Germany completed a computer-based assessment. We first tested knowledge of linguistic topics (e.g. morpho-syntax, developmental stages). Second, we…

Immersion programmes in primary schools have gained more and more recognition over the last decades. Every new immersion school faces the problem of providing a concept which will be put into practise with the help of personnel who have normally not been trained specifically for this task. The purpose of this guide is to answer frequently asked…