Despite a focus on successful transitions to school, transition to School Aged Care (SAC) has largely been overlooked. This paper shares insights into transition programs provided for children commencing in SAC, at or close to their transition to school. Educators working in SAC programs in Victoria, Australia, participated in an online survey…

Participation has been discussed as a multi-layered concept with varied outlooks on children's lived experiences. Children's participation occupies a complicated terrain in that whose participation counts and how it manifests itself within complex adult-child relations are enduring questions in the early childhood field. This qualitative study…

In this study, we reconstruct the types of work performed by early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals working with children up to three years of age from an interactional perspective. The theoretical framework of the investigation is social organization of work defined by Strauss and colleagues in regard to medical sector. Analysis…

The present study seeks to address the dearth of research focussed on childminding (family day care or family childcare) in Ireland, despite its significant role in national childcare provision. One overarching aim was to explore childminders' cultural models of praxis and pedagogy in the Irish context. This research was conducted within the…

The provision of childcare has been prioritized by the South Korean government as a primary means of decelerating the dropping fertility rate and boosting women's employment by reducing the childrearing burden. Drawing on a Bakhtinian perspective, this study examined how discourses on professionalism and the professional identities of the…

The focus of this article is on understanding Early Intervention as a discourse; how it is generated and reproduced and how it makes possible certain processes and practices and limits others. In particular the research study considers the dominant discourse of neuroscience associated with the notion of early childhood and how this is translated…

Ability to reflect on practice is a key element of early childhood professionalism and is positively associated with the quality of educational services. "Observation-Projet" (Fontaine 2008, 2011b) is a method designed to support practitioners' reflection through the observational process. The method adapts the required scientific…

This article presents a study conducted in Federation Wallonia-Brussels (FWB) to identify factors that motivate men to enrol in training programmes and work in a field where women are the majority, in a context in which few proactive measures are taken to overcome gender stereotypes. Comprehensive interviews conducted with male childcare…

Based on an everyday quasi-experimental situation with multiple materials, the behavior of male and female early childhood education (ECE) workers is recorded and compared. The research is based on a sample of 41 female and 41 male ECE workers, who in each case work together in tandem in a kindergarten class, as well as a control group of 12…

In a single intensive nursery case study, using in depth interviews, group discussion and self completed daily diaries, this article reports on staff accounts of the emotional aspects of their interactions with young children. The findings show how much the staff achieved through their empathy for children and families and the establishment of…

Although differential ratings by multiple informants are an important issue in survey design, few studies test the degree of difference between informants. This study examined differences in caregiver and teacher ratings of school readiness of children from a disadvantaged urban community in Ireland. School readiness was assessed using the Short…

Family day-care (FDC) educators work autonomously to provide care and education for children of mixed ages, backgrounds and abilities. To meet the demands and opportunities of their work and regulatory requirements, educators need access to context-relevant and high quality information. No previous research has examined how and where these workers…

In Finnish early childhood education and care, partnership has been introduced as a general approach in the parent-practitioner collaboration. Based on qualitative interviews with practitioners, the article studies, from a social constructionist and discourse analytic perspective, whether partnership is actualised in parent-practitioner…

This paper reports on the second phase of the Froebel Research Fellowship project "Ownership and Autonomy in Early Childhood" (2003-5). Based on the first phase of the project (Robson and Hargreaves, 2005), a questionnaire survey of 80 professionals working in the Foundation Stage (age 3-5) in England was conducted to obtain an overview…

Deconstructs case studies of parents' and teachers' experiences as children started child care. Argues that mothers and teachers defined their roles against the background of dominant societal discourses about motherhood and early childhood teaching. However, while teachers spoke about themselves as less powerful than mothers in influencing…