The socio-emotional experiences of infants during transitions to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and across their first year in these out-of-home contexts are not well known. In an international project across five countries (New Zealand, Finland, Australia, Scotland and the United States), observational data, video of key moments, plus…

This article reports on the findings of a follow-up study, which examined parents' and teachers' perspectives regarding the quality of childcare for 3- to 5-year-old children in the United States, Russia and Finland between 1991 and 2011. The study aims to address a gap in early childhood education (ECE) research by examining how the quality of…

The goal of early childhood programming is to provide children with high-quality early care and to support educators' understanding and ability to implement high-quality practices on behalf of children and their families. Quality in early childhood care is an ambiguous concept, relative to various social and context-specific factors, making it…

This article aims to show how parent-teacher cooperation has evolved over the past two decades from the perspectives of child care center directors in the USA, Russia, and Finland. When analyzing the phenomenon of educational cooperation in the studied contexts, it can be noted that significant societal changes have affected parenting and early…

The first years of life lay the foundations for a child's future development and learning. Many countries have increased their financial support for provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) over the past years. More recently, the focus of debate has been shifting from expanding access to affordable ECEC to enhancing its quality. A…

A great change is coming over childhood in the world's richest countries. Today's rising generation is the first in which a majority are spending a large part of early childhood in some form of out-of-home child care. At the same time, neuroscientific research is demonstrating that loving, stable, secure, and stimulating relationships with…

The purposes of this study were to determine the state of current practice in early intervention in Finland and to compare them to American data. Professional women (N = 52), representing child care, elementary school, healthcare, and social work, completed the Families in Natural Environments Scale of Service Evaluation, a 34-item questionnaire…

This paper presents a model of the approaches open to government to ensure that early childhood services are affordable to families. We derived the model from a comparative literature review of affordability approaches taken by government, both in Australia and internationally. The model adds significantly to the literature by proposing a means to…