Background: Toddlers spend a significant portion of their time within the childcare setting being sedentary. Therefore, interventions are needed to improve toddlers' physical activity (PA) within this setting. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a 10-week activity program on toddlers' time…

The number of family child care (FCC) providers in the United States, or providers who are licensed, certified, or registered to provide care in their home, fell by nearly half between 2005 and 2017 (NCEQA, 2020a). This has implications for families who prefer FCC settings. Understanding providers' motivations for starting their program may…

This paper examines inequality among children, demonstrating its gradual emergence within the folds of daily routines in early childhood education (ECE). Employing Rob Nixon's (2011) concept of slow violence, our focus is on the cumulative impact of practices involving exclusion. Synthesizing Nixon's framework with Deleuze (1994) and Guattari's…

Over the past thirty years, there have been notable changes in child care ratios and group sizes. Child care ratios refer to the number of children one caregiver is responsible for, while group size refers to the total number of children in a classroom at an early care and education setting. The current analysis examines the current licensing…

While the issue of teacher stress is widely recognized, little is currently known about childcare teachers' stress, its impact on teaching, and the relationship with professional activities. This study utilizes ecological momentary assessment (EMA) techniques with 50 early care teachers to examine the relationship between childcare teachers'…

The study investigated the perceptions of stakeholders on the assumed impacts of English as a dominant language in some selected ECECC in Yoruba-speaking states. 617 stakeholders, 247 preschool teachers, 204 School owners/heads, and 166 parents and community members across the seven states, were randomly selected for the study. Four research…

Decades of research has documented the negative effects of physical punishment, including spanking (Heilmann et al., 2021). Since 1998, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has endorsed the use of time out from positive reinforcement (TO) as an alternative to corporal punishment (Sege et al., 2018). Despite urging at the federal level…

Infants, toddlers, and two-year-olds with disabilities or developmental delays often participate in center-based childcare. Just like other care and education settings, childcare for very young children should provide high-quality inclusion. To date, minimal research has been conducted on practitioner perspectives about inclusion in childcare for…

The 'schoolification' of early childhood education and care programs, seen as readying children for formalised schooling, has had an impact on the education of younger and younger age groups. While the focus of past research has mainly focused on 4-5-year-old children, this study shifts the focus to 2-3-year-old children and the literacy focus of…

Research Findings: A growing number of stakeholders in early childhood education (ECE) rely on self-assessment to assess and improve the quality of ECE. In this systematic review, we investigated the reliability and validity of self-assessment in ECE, summarizing findings from 27 publications. We meta-analytically synthesized findings from 25…

We examined how early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers supported families during the COVID-19 lockdown and whether the extent and type of support were associated with parental burnout. An online survey was filled out by 521 Finnish parents (88% mothers), and the data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U-test and analysis of covariance…

Attracting and recruiting qualified, high-quality teachers is a global challenge. In Finland, the recruitment of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teachers has been particularly problematic, especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area. This paper investigates the incentives used in job advertisements to attract ECEC teachers in Finland…

There has been a marked increase in attention to educators' well-being since the pandemic. The majority of this research activity, however, has been focused on the well-being of early childhood teachers while the challenges of early childhood leaders have gone largely undocumented. Using a holistic conceptualization of leader well-being along with…

Team-based leadership is increasingly recognized as valid for raising workplace quality. Developing effective teams of leaders, though, is barely understood, scantly researched and not simple or straightforward. Mentoring has been recognized as valuable within teams and with the support of critical reflection can assist in augmenting team-based…

Today, digital games are considered important tools for learning, but using them in early childhood education and care (ECEC) has raised the question of educators' roles when children play an educational digital game. The aim of this study was to explore how ECEC educators differed in their attitudes and perceptions toward and ways of supporting…