Research shows that young children's understanding of death varies considerably by culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the concepts of death held by Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong. Eighty-three 4- to 5-year-olds were interviewed about their understanding of six death sub-concepts: inevitability, universality,…

Yinyang philosophy encompasses an essential understanding of the mechanism and laws of nature, cosmos, and human society in Chinese culture, and reaches to many other parts of Asia and around the world. The purpose of this article is to explore how yinyang philosophy can serve as a philosophical underpinning of mixed methods research (MMR). In…

Educational reform in China has brought about many Western educational approaches for teachers to consider as part of their pedagogy. An example of this is the theory of multiple intelligences (MI theory). This paper presents how a theory grounded in a Western context is locally reconceptualised by kindergarten teachers who grew up in a different…

The fertility policy liberalization in China has meant that many firstborn children are stressed by a newborn sibling's arrival. This case study explores creative arts intervention as an innovative stress management approach to alleviate a Chinese girl's maladaptive reactions during her transition to siblinghood. A weekly 17-session tailored…

This study employed an inductive qualitative approach to understanding the effects of local culture on early childhood curriculum development in two Hong Kong kindergartens. A triangulation of interviews, observations and documents was established, and cultural-historical activity theory was employed as the theoretical framework. The results…

The standard educational gesture--in defense of its perceived secondary status relative to the "real world"--is to embed everything within its purview, such that even conceiving education as an art becomes a pedagogic imperative. In Anji County, China, we find an early childhood program (Anji Play) that uncouples play from this hierarchy…

Children's conceptions or interpretations of the relationship between play and learning have not been studied much in the early childhood education studies. To better understand play and learning in the Chinese context, this paper will discuss the outcome of a study which sought to investigate children's understanding and interpretation of the…

There is increasing evidence of the fusion of Western and Eastern early childhood philosophies and programmes within China. Although research has paid attention to this change, less attention has been directed to how culturally different beliefs and practices are experienced by children and teachers. This paper reports on a study of play-based…

Recognising children as active and competent citizens holds promise for early childhood research and pedagogies worldwide. Researchers in China have not previously explored young children's citizenship in detail. The project that is the focus of this article sought to address this research gap. Moss' critical approach and Chen's "Asia as…

This study examines how origami has been implemented, practised, and developed in the early childhood education of Japan over the past 140 years. Historically speaking, paper-folding has been part of Japanese symbolic art, craft culture, and religious ceremonial artefacts since paper and paper-folding techniques were first imported from China…

Internationalisation facilitated through 'sister' relationships establishes transnational, cooperative partnerships and cultural exchanges between institutions within and between geographic locations. This case study describes the long-term sister city internationalisation partnership between two sister universities, one Chinese and one American,…

It has been debated whether the progressive emergence of theory of mind (ToM) in autistic children is compatible with a "delayed" or "different" development model, and whether and how the sequential consolidation of ToM concepts is subject to cross-cultural variations in autistic and typically developing (TD) children. To study…

Two studies with preschool-age children examined the effectiveness of perceptual individuation training at reducing racial bias (Study 1, N = 32; Study 2, N = 56). We found that training preschool-age children to individuate other-race faces resulted in a reduction in implicit racial bias while mere exposure to other-race faces produced no such…

Parental response, physical coercion and warmth and their relationships with childhood aggression were assessed with 277 children (142 boys; M age = 56.5 months, SD = 10.93 months) in Hong Kong. Results indicated that both fathers and mothers reported significantly more intervention strategies in response to hypothetical vignettes of physical…

This study addresses children's Kyoiku (education) as it is explored by two kindergartens in Japan. It reports how the teachers, parents and children defined and experienced children's education and draws on the sociocultural concepts to understand their perspectives. Situated in the personal, educational, and sociocultural landscape of the…