Aspects of preschoolers' ecological understandings were explored in a cross-age, quantitative study that utilised a sample of seventy-five 3- to 5-year-old children. Specifically, their concepts of feeding relationships were determined by presenting physical models of three-step food chains during structured interviews. A majority of children,…

Research Findings: Digital play is now commonplace in many young children's lives, but not in preschool settings. This situation is likely due to the fact that the existent literature seldom highlights what digital play looks like, the various ways it can be situated, and what young children do when they play together with digital devices in the…

The purpose of this research is to examine the digital storytelling experiences of preschool pre-service teachers. In the study, an action research from qualitative research designs was used. Furthermore, collaborative action research from the types of action research in the research was used. The research group of the study was formed in the…

Many state-funded prekindergarten (preK) programs are implemented through school-community partnerships, which has been promoted as a way to increase preK access, to meet the needs of families, and to ensure program quality (Schumacher, Ewen, Hart, & Lombardi, 2005). In spite of the potential benefits of such partnerships, there are also…

This study examines how acceptable play was framed for a class of pre-Kindergarten children by their teacher and classroom aide. Using comic subjectivity theory [Zupancic, A. (2008). "The odd one in: On comedy." Cambridge: MIT Press], the author explores how children's playing at pretend violence (bad guy and pretend gun play) is…

Regular engagement outside may promote healthy physical and psychological development as well as a respect and appreciation for nature. This exploratory study compared biophilia and attitudes toward nature between young children living in an urban area to those in a rural area. Urban and rural areas may offer different opportunities for exposure…

Research Findings: The National Association for the Education of Young Children's guidelines for developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) have been imported and researched by others across the globe. A central issue that has arisen for these international early childhood educators is whether these best practices are sensitive to the…

We explore early childhood teachers' lived experiences learning and teaching mathematics with young children, adding finer-grained context and detail to broader research descriptions. We interviewed ten early childhood teachers in a university laboratory school about their mathematics training, classroom mathematics curriculum, who controls their…

The present study examined (1) whether children notice different causes for contagious illnesses, non-contagious illnesses, and injuries and (2) what information adults provide to children and to what extent this information is related to children's causal awareness. Studies 1 and 2 explored preschool teachers' and mothers' explanations of…

The aim of this research is to analyze opinions of teachers who work in preschool education institutions concerning precautions that should be taken for indoor and outdoor security. Study group of this research is determined by criterion sampling from purposeful sampling techniques. The study group of this research is consist of eight preschool…

In an effort to promote best practices regarding mathematics teaching and learning at the preschool level, national advisory panels and organizations have emphasized the importance of children's emergent counting and related competencies, such as the ability to verbally count, maintain one-to-one correspondence, count with cardinality, subitize,…

This paper examines our use of knowledge-creation activity as a way of developing evidence-informed practice among a learning community of 36 early years practitioners in one London borough. It also seeks to illustrate how we approached the idea of measuring evidence use and our engagement with, and adapted use of, two separate measurement scales:…

School gardening has become increasingly popular as a context for learning in which children construct new knowledge, learn cultural and societal values related to ecological awareness, and develop and practice authentic or real-world skills (Blair, 2009; Bowker & Tearle, 2007). The present research was a longitudinal case study of children's…

Much attention during the past decade has been given to the need to develop a well-trained early childhood education workforce. In order to address this need, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) awarded Early Childhood Educator Preparation Program Innovation (EPPI) grants to institutions of higher learning. The IBHE funded partnerships,…

The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) provided Early Childhood Educator Preparation Program Innovation (EPPI) grants to 20 partnerships comprised of two- and four-year institutions to further develop models for early childhood educator preparation and build capacity in key areas of need. Recipients used grant funds to design and implement…