Friedrich Froebel is often positioned in contemporary landscapes of early childhood education as a 'pioneer', strongly associated with an emphasis on self-directed activity and learning through nature. While Froebel's philosophy has clearly had an impact on how we think about young children today, in this article we argue that we need to…

During the 2020-21 school year, remote instruction due to COVID-19 significantly limited children's access to school-based social interactions. As schools return to in-person instruction, we ask: Can poetry and metaphor be used to develop theory of mind (ToM)/reflective functioning and emotional literacy in the early elementary setting? This…

Presented here are fragments of my book "The cartography of inner childhood" in the translation from Russian. The main hero of this book is our childhood experience. Or, rather, the book is about our remembrances of our childhood experience. Some people would exclaim, "These remembrances are extremely subjective, utterly personal…

With an average annual salary of just over $16,000, the work of early childhood education professionals is grossly undervalued and leads to high turnover rates. And yet, the quality and consistency of the care they provide to infants and young children has a lasting impact on their brain development and social-emotional well-being. This article…

The Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive, Relationship-Focused Practice Promoting Infant Mental Health® (Endorsement®) recognizes knowledge, skills, and reflective experiences that promote quality service when working with or on behalf of infants, toddlers, and families. Developed by the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health, the…

This article comprises some critical reflections on the teaching of a second year undergraduate module called "Children's Cultural Worlds" in which students are required to engage with original studies which are then used to stimulate self-reflection and engagement with wider issues relating to our understanding of children's place in…

Jean Piaget became a veritable institution unto himself in education and psychology, largely as the result of his developmental-stage theory advanced over the second quarter of the twentieth century. Not until Piaget was 73 did he make mention of John Dewey's work at Dewey's laboratory school, founded in 1894 at the University of Chicago. But here…

Schön's concept of "reflection in action", particularly when interpreted from a sociocultural perspective, is often used as frame with which to consider the relationship between theoretical and tacit knowledge in the work of teachers. This paper presents an alternative interpretative frame for Schön which makes use of the ideas of…

In this commentary, Spangler evaluates the Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele report that arguede that reflective functioning in adolescence could not be predicted by quality of early infant attachment, but was associated with maternal (but not paternal) attachment representation, assessed before the adolescents' birth. Assuming that parental…

In this commentary, Soares and Baptista state that the Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele (2016) article contributed with an informative study that adolescents' reflective functioning (RF) is predicted by maternal attachment representation, which was assessed even before the youth were born by using the Adult Attachment Interview. The authors assert…

We start our paper with a critical exploration of the current 'back to basics' approach in South African foundation phase teacher education with its emphasis on strengthening the teaching of subject knowledge. We claim that such a proposal first demands an answer to the question 'what is foundational in foundation phase teaching?' We propose an…

Approximately 300,000 child soldiers serve in various armed groups around the world, and become directly implicated in the perpetration of kidnappings, killings, and torture. Considering that children construct moral concepts and a sense of themselves as moral beings in the context of their everyday interactions with others, the concern with how…