The article presents an investigation of how Early Years leadership is conceptualised by frontline staff in the context of a social enterprise nursery group in London, England. Moving beyond academic splits in the conceptualisation of Early Years leadership, it considers how those in practice make sense of leadership in the complex and fragmented…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) aims to assist all young children and their families in meeting educational, developmental and behavioral outcomes to enhance their quality of life. However, in the United States (US), the field of ECEC lags behind in policies and practices to develop and sustain quality ECEC leadership. Although…

This study is part of larger South African project funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training and EU which focused on how practitioners listen to young children in early childhood care and education to encourage a sense of belonging and participation. The study was conducted at two early childhood care and education centres, one…

Based on videodata of play situations between children and professionals, a qualitative analysis of gender socialisation of boys in German EEC (Early Education and Care) institutions has been conducted. The theoretical and methodological framework of this research is an attempt to describe gender identity as an interactional phenomenon, which is…

This paper reports the findings of a narrative review of international research literature about babies' and toddlers' engagement with the outdoor environment whilst attending ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) settings. Based on the in-depth review of 21 papers, it identifies four dominant themes in the literature: the outdoors as a space…

Lately, pedagogical coaches have been deployed in childcare as a form of continuous professional development (CPD) with the aim of improving the quality of childcare. While we have a clear understanding of what coaching should involve to be effective and how it improves the learning outcomes of young children, research has failed to capture the…

In this article, we intend to illustrate the notion, practice, and evaluation methods and results related to building an effective, efficient, and equitable early care and education (ECE) system. We point out the dominant approach, in practice and evaluation, of focusing on a single ECE program to improve ECE, propose a model of developing an ECE…

In this paper we examine the role of the Educational Leader in early childhood education and its day-to-day pedagogical leadership enactment. The aim of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of, and insight into, the role of the Educational Leader in an Australian setting. We use shadowing as a research methodology, along with observation,…

The main aim of this paper is to reconstruct the process of becoming a caregiver working in early childhood and care (ECEC) daycare centres for children up to three years of age in Poland. The theoretical framework is the concept of becoming, through which the formation of professional identity, within the social world of the nursery, is…

Parental involvement (PI) is one of the major narratives in educational reform. When exploring the literature on PI, we observed that it is unclear (i) how parents themselves are viewed within these conceptualizations and (ii) to what extent parents are being included in the conceptualization of PI. In this study, we explored both questions by…

This study explored options for pedagogical photo documentation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) practices to hear the voices of children, parents, and guardians in ways that make developing the documentation manageable for practitioners. Two Japanese kindergartens participated in an action research project entitled 'Wall Newspapers…

This study explores young children's possibilities for influence in situations of child--educator disagreement in Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC). Data were gathered from observations conducted in four ECEC groups of under three year-olds. A total of 112 child--educator disagreements were analysed qualitatively using reflexive…

This article examines the professional identities of early years educators who develop their professional activity in baby rooms, in a nursery school context. In addition to conceptualising professional identities, it outlines the political, legislative, training and professional practice contexts in Portugal, where the research was conducted.…

There is increasing concern about the ways in which neoliberalism is impacting Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), particularly in relation to infants and toddlers. The neoliberal agenda positions the outdoors as risky and a place to be physically active, potentially excluding the youngest children from these spaces. Drawing upon case study…

The present study applied Video Enhanced Reflective Practice (VERP) to promote and assess Finnish professionals' interactional competence by means of stimulated recall during three group-based shared review discussions. A VERP trainer guided the professionals to reflect on children's, their own, and colleagues' actions and mental states based on…