The history of education is, and can be, many things. In this article, I argue that the history of education in the Nordic countries is marked by three phases, based on its institutional setting. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the history of education was written by schoolmen for schoolmen. In the post-war era, the…

Theories of learning developed in education and psychology for the past 100 years are woefully inadequate to support the design of schools and classrooms that foster deep learning and equity. Needed is learning theory that can guide us in creating schools and classrooms where deep learning occurs, where learners' full selves are engaged, and that…

In this commentary on the special issue on emotional development, I focus on the papers by Holodynski and Seeger (2019) and by Hoemann, Xu, and Barrett (2019). I suggest that although understanding our emotions is an important part of emotional development; emotional development cannot be reduced to concept development, even when such concepts…

Emotions remain something of a mystery for most of us even when we accept their centrality to development in general and to infancy in particular. I make 2 arguments in this paper. One: that the most crucial thing about emotions is that they allow mutuality of engagement with other emotional beings--not only evoking responses, but also provoking…

An exploration of equity and power in infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) consultation and early childhood education (ECE) relationships requires the examination of diversity, anti-racist values, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and parallel process. Attaining the mission of the early childhood field to support the growth,…

The concept of nature and how humans relate to nature provide the framework for this philosophical discussion on challenges facing the evolving field of early childhood environmental education. Posthumanistic thinking is proposed as an alternative to what is perpetuated through a more typical Western approach to education. This Western approach…

In this paper I argue for a necessary -- and possible -- paradigmatic shift in early childhood scholarship that embraces multiplicity, diversity, ambiguity, uncertainty and shared situated knowledge creation in response to a profoundly changed global context. The contours of the new paradigm are already emerging as three interconnected…

This article, by drawing on examples from sociology, anthropology and geography, argues that childhood studies is generally a multi-disciplinary field rather than inter-disciplinary. It emphasises that childhood studies could benefit from greater dialogue between its sub-disciplines as well as with those outside academia. While advances have been…

In this brief essay, I comment on the constellation of papers published in the current issue. I argue that it represents the new beginning of the new era for the journal, driven by several considerations. Among these, three are key. First, the collection of articles in this issue is explicitly concerned with the multivariate and multidisciplinary…

Liberal-democratic states' commitments to equality and personal autonomy have always proven problematic with respect to state regulation of relations between parents and children. In the parental authority literature, positions have varied from invoking children's interests to argue for limitations on parental efforts to instil identities and…

This article focuses on the "Relational Agency Framework" (RAF), an analytical tool developed for an Australian review and evaluation study of an early years' policy initiative. We explore Anne Edward's concepts of "relational expertise", "building common knowledge" and "relational agency" to explore how…

In this review of research, we offer a meta-analysis of young children's learning and development within and across psychology, education, and linguistics. Engaging with Soja's concept of "Thirdspace," we mapped young children's learning and development transdisciplinarily, seeking to (re)conceptualize early childhood teaching in ways…

This article introduces the new translation by Stanley Mitchell of a very well-known Vygotskyan text, which has become the locus classicus for Vygotsky's concept of the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). It outlines the history of Vygotsky's text and compares Mitchell's new translation with the version found in Chapter 6 of "Mind…

In this paper, we present an examination of the literature on prolonged periods of silence in children from the perspective of two different scientific fields. The aim is to call attention to the inherent complexity of the factors that may be involved in the etiology of mutistic behavior during child development. Medical and linguistic literature…

In this article, I reflect on how ways of reporting research as well as reviewing and commenting on submitted manuscripts could take new directions to promote progress in the discipline of developmental science. I argue for (a) attitudinal openness toward migratory impulses in relation to Stokes's quadrant model of science, (b) the…