We discuss oral history interviews with academics who laid the foundation of research and pedagogies in daycare for under three-year-olds in Europe and North and South America since the 1970s. Their work is clearly embedded in the social-political context of their country: the left-wing programmes for disadvantaged families in the U.S.A.;…

This article has emerged from a research and development project, The Baby Room, which was designed to examine how babies are cared for in daycare settings. Within the project, a form of professional development was created which designated a central space for dialogic encounter, primarily to enable the baby room practitioners who participated in…

This article reflects on the significance of a series of encounters with a baby doll in an early years' classroom during an artist residency. The article takes an event when a small group of children encounter a baby doll as its starting point. By connecting this shared lived moment with Deleuze and Guattari's idea of machinic production and…

Infants aged younger than 12 months have the highest homicide victimization rate of any single age group in England and Wales. In addition, there are good grounds for believing that the official homicide statistics for this particular age group are an underestimate and subject to distortion. At the same time there is evidence mounting in the…

This article presents results from an interview study of 45 parents/caregivers (representing 27 families) whose infants were correctly identified as deaf during the first phase of the implementation of the national universal Newborn Hearing Screening Programme in England. Average age of children when parents were interviewed was 25 weeks. Two…

Detailed analyses of adult-infant interaction among some European and North American populations have revealed that it resides on characteristics such as synchronous timing, phrasing, pitch contours and variations of dynamic intensity that are essentially musical in nature. Moreover, this musicality of infancy is the medium which enables and…

A response to the article about special education in England and Wales suggests historical similarities with U.S. practices and notes the values of Britian's socialized health systems in identifying newborns with handicaps and of their teacher training/selection procedures. (CL)

The paper presents the social and legislative framework for special education in England and Wales, with implications for services to young children. Information on early childhood assessment, parental involvement and rights, and provision of services is presented. The cultural and administrative environment is discussed as it relates to current…

Reports preliminary findings of the first national survey of services to identify and provide specialist support to profoundly deaf infants and young children in England and Wales. Notes that the resources available for early identification of deaf infants and the quality of professional support to promote habilitation is quite variable.…

Discusses the educational history of kindergarten in England and the United States during 1850-1918. Focuses on kindergarten teacher education and advocates of the program as pivotal promoters for including kindergarten as an accepted curriculum in both countries, in spite of any hinderances from either country's regulatory and government bodies.…

Describes the Home-Liaison Playgroups program for preschoolers and infants with developmental delays. Mothers were intrinsic to the playgroup, which met once a week for two hours. An integrated playgroup and nursery for mainstream and special needs children were also developed. (NH)

Speech directed towards young children ("motherese") is subject to consistent systematic modifications. Recent research suggests that gesture directed towards young children is similarly modified (gesturese). It has been suggested that gesturese supports speech, therefore scaffolding communicative development (the facilitative…

A fundamental question in developmental science is how brains with and without language compute numbers. Measuring young children's verbal reactions in Spain and Finland, we show that, although there is a general arithmetic ability for small numbers that is shared by monkeys and preverbal infants, the development of such initial knowledge in…

This document describes several outreach projects in Hull, England, developed by a head teacher of a state nursery school who believed that parents would feel more comfortable with preschool staff and activities if facilities were provided for very young children. The first section describes the innovation of a mother-toddler club in North Hull.…

Describes a joint history-technology project undertaken with ten- and eleven-year-old students in an English primary school with a view to developing the cross-curricular theme of Economic and Industrial Understanding (EIU). Outlines the classroom course and discusses the principles of EIU in relation to the British National Curriculum. (DSK)