The actions carried out by children are a mechanism that enables them to come into contact with their environment, assimilating it, acting on it, and thereby transforming it. From this perspective, an exploratory study has been designed to analyse the actions carried out by 87 children aged 1-3 years old in two task-situations involving the…

This article examines the life of Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten in the 1840s. It describes how the kindergarten and its impact in Germany and the United States. It spread at the international level of education because German kindergarten teachers relocated it to other countries when it was banned in Germany. In the years from…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how positive pedagogical practices are implemented by early childhood education (ECE) teachers in Finland. A survey was conducted among 625 teachers, enquiring about specific positive pedagogical practices in ECEC. It was found that the correlation between the sum variables and principal components were…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Social Affairs has launched an initiative to revive traditional play so as to increase children's knowledge of the UAE's rich culture, traditions and heritage. Inspired by the initiative, this qualitative study is a synthesis of locally written historical accounts interlaced with 52 Emirati kindergarten…

Technology plays a large role in the daily experiences of young children. Presently, technology is used both to support and enhance 'educational' activities and in the context of children's play. The aim of the present study is to understand how much time teachers in early childhood centres across 8 countries implemented technology into their…

The purpose of this article is to explore the way preschool teachers teach reflective care in Japan. The article builds on a two-month ethnographic study conducted in Japanese kindergartens and nurseries among children aged 3-6 years. The data were analysed using concepts of age and gender. The results show that care in Japan, in contrast to…

Emotion talk plays an important role in the social and emotional development of preschoolers, but not much work has shown how teachers talk about emotions in the classroom. We recorded preschool teachers' (N = 13) emotion talk in naturalistic observations. Teachers expressed 633 emotion-related utterances, about 3 per hour (range fewer than 1 to…

Early childhood education changed in the twentieth century, from mother-at-home-care in the 1950s, to professional early education today. Theoretical and social-political choices of pioneers in ECE had a profound impact on the way children's education is conceptualized. We argue from a social constructivist perspective. The oral history method is…

Implementing a play-based curriculum presents challenges for pre-service and in-service teachers given the current climate of standards and didactic pedagogies. This study highlights the value of playful learning and its rightful place in early childhood classrooms for children of all ages. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the…

Parenting education needs assessment surveys were collected from a large group of the parents or caregivers of 698 0-5-year-old children in southern Nevada. Survey questions addressed parenting education interests, family characteristics, and preferred delivery methods of parenting education. Cluster analysis was used to empirically determine if…

A feasibility study was conducted to test a storybook intervention to increase early reading skills of 25 young signing deaf children of ages 4-9 in grades K through third grade. The children had wide ranges of hearing losses, non-verbal IQs, and signing skills. All were at risk for developing early reading skills, reading below the first grade…

Many studies propose that chess is a game requiring cognitive skills and has positive effects on mental development. In recent years, chess training has also been emphasised as important during the early childhood period. However, no studies have been done with six-year-old children. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not…

Previously we found in preschool that child-directed pretend play in small playing groups importantly improves cognitive competence in mixed-age environment and that the effect is based on close coupling between affective and cognitive domain. To foster affective and cognitive intertwining, it is reasonable to select the most favored pretend plays…

In the current global push to explore the diverse and complex ways in which the school culture contributes to the shaping of young children's gender identity, early childhood teachers' role in this process is an area of concern which has received limited attention. Furthermore, the schooling experiences of early years children in developing world…

This study describes children's awareness of what it means to teach a game to a peer where the act of teaching becomes expression of the child's possible awareness. Awareness is defined as the attention to different aspects of the teaching process shown by the teaching child, sometimes through their own verbal reflection. This implies an…