Integral to the global nature play movement, nature play programs have flourished over the last decade, both in Australia and internationally. Internationally, there are two prominent schools of thought in this movement, Danish Nature Kindergartens, and British Forest Schools. The underpinning philosophy of Danish Nature Kindergarten programs has…

Studies into early mathematics education have reported that play, and active exploration, provide promising settings for early mathematics education (Ginsburg, 2006) as the early years is a time to engage children in a range of mathematical ideas to develop their mathematical capability (MacDonald, 2018). More recently, the Australian Association…

As an effective tool used within the evocative method of phenomenological inquiry, this article details the use of the written anecdotes of Godly Play storytellers in Australia to understand children as a means of grace. The phenomenological framework out of which the evocative method emanates is described, and four examples from the author's…

Humans are living in damaged landscapes within a new geographical epoch known as the Anthropocene. The COVID-19 outbreak fuels uncertainty, instability, and ambiguity for humans. This viral disaster has been blamed for losing and further exacerbating ecological imbalance, and prompts a need to re-examine multispecies relations and, in particular,…

It is widely acknowledged that communicating mathematical thinking is complex, difficult, and often messy. In this article, the authors explore how mathematical thinking is communicated, providing examples of strategies for teachers and students to use in the mathematics classroom.

In this "Reflection on Practice" paper we reflect on an early childhood Work Integrated Learning course redesign that explored new ways of developing and applying playfulness theory to higher education instructional approaches. Our experience was that the higher education students required more support to deepen their understanding of…

Drawing from principles of ethical research derived from our review of national and international policy documents, in this paper we reflect on our research experiences working in partnership with Indigenous educators in a project to support young Indigenous children's oral and written language development through collaborative action research.…

Teacher performance assessments are positioned as a high stakes assessment that are aimed to ensure that preservice teachers are ready for professional practice in education contexts. The move to incorporate them in institutions has its origins in concerns that teacher education is a policy problem with varying standards of preparation across the…

This post-inquiry paper looks to the intimate matter of young children and their worlds outside of school. With new materialism, water and art as philosophical muse, a new kind of 'sustaining nature' for environmental education emerges, problematizing 'sustainability' as an aim. We gathered and exchanged short videos and field notes (iPhone…

Play is a universal human experience. Often regarded as the unique purview of children, an emerging body of research points to the importance of playfulness in adulthood. This article reports on the research and observations of two teaching artists working in Connected, a Sydney Theatre Company adult-literacy-through-drama programme. This article…

The chapter is a reflective discussion of an educator who has made efforts to incorporate heritage language practice in child play in the real-world everyday setting of early childhood education. This combination between heritage language and child play has hardly been explored before in the relevant discourse. As children in Australia possess…

The Early Learning STEM Australia (ELSA) pilot was a year-long investigation involving 300 educators and 4 500 four-year old children in one hundred learning centres across Australia. This paper reports on a pedagogical and design framework that was constructed to promote children's STEM engagement across digital and non-digital learning…

Young children aged 4-5 years are online in rapidly increasing numbers. This is due to the accessibility of the internet afforded young children via touchscreen technologies. In Australian, the United Kingdom and United States of America, calls have been made for cyber-safety education to be provided for young children in their early childhood…

At MERGA, I presented a paper entitled "Mathematics in the Pre-School," which was a summary of tentative ventures into this emerging field. The role of the prior-to-school years in children's mathematics learning was not yet under serious consideration but an understanding of the importance of play in children's experiences was building.…

Global flows and their geopolitical power relations powerfully shape the environments in which children lead their everyday lives. Children's images, imaginations and ideas of distant places are part of these global flows and the everyday activities children perform in preschool. Research explores how through curricula young children are moulded…