Now, more than ever, children need to develop autonomy and decision-making skills. Too often in Early Years settings, opportunities for learning through risky play are missed. In this book, Zoe Sills and Sarah Watkins support you to overcome the barriers to embedding and allowing space for risky play in your setting. (1) Know the value of Risky…

Early childhood education is regarded as key to help ensure long-term positive outcomes for children, and high-quality provision crucial for long-term developmental outcomes. However, how settings are inspected for the quality of their services varies substantially across countries. In England, the inspection body Ofsted has been heavily…

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with poorer health and educational outcomes. With over 20% of children experiencing multiple ACEs, interventions must target protective factors to improve outcomes among these students. Teacher-student relationships (TSRs) integrated with the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child…

The call to transform education must begin with the youngest children. The world is not on track in meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2 committing countries to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education by 2030. There is solid scientific evidence that early…

This qualitative inquiry uses the methodology of portraiture to investigate the relationship between founding holistic school leaders and the schools they lead. The guiding question of this investigation is, how do founding holistic school leaders embody their pedagogy through their approach to leadership within holistic schools? Through an…

To assist Teach For All network partners in understanding their successes and challenge areas, RAND researchers conducted evaluations of Teach For All partner programs in two developing countries. The first evaluation examined Teach For Nigeria. In the second evaluation (the focus of this brief), RAND researchers conducted a one-year mixed-methods…

In this paper, Christian Morgner provides a critical reading of Niklas Luhmann's thinking as ignoring human beings or even as antihumanist. Here, he presents an alternative view that centers on Luhmann's idea of the child or human being as a medium. To explain Luhmann's use of these ideas to conceptualize the child and the consequences for…

Early childhood education builds the foundation for students' academic careers, but perhaps more importantly emphasizes developmentally appropriate practices that encourage social and emotional learning and prosocial behaviors. Similarly, humane education addresses students' capacity for empathy, compassion, and perspective-taking through…

For optimal child development, play time has been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child. But access to free time has been reduced due to the impact of one or other factors such as current lifestyle, changes in family pattern, increased academic pressure, and unsafe spaces for children until and…

Executive functions (EFs) embrace a range of cognitive control processes that allow us to control and direct our own behavior, thoughts, and emotions and to develop complex responses to difficulties. Standardized tasks commonly used to investigate EFs are reviewed. Here, a study is reported of the first challenges that children set for themselves…

Young children in many parts of the world are spending more time in formal education and care settings. As children have the right to be heard on matters that affect them, their views about the early childhood environments they inhabit, need to be included in the process of placemaking. Early childhood environments have the potential to shape a…

This truly accessible resource shows primary school practitioners how to help every student feel valued and included in school so that they develop confidence, resilience, love of learning, a positive sense of self and healthy relationships. Sue Roffey presents a visionary and unique approach to education underpinned by clear principles that can…

Education faces barriers all over the world, which sometimes makes it difficult to look after children's rights and their individual development. Hence, society is clamoring for new practices, and different approaches are emerging, Montessori among them. Despite the fact that this approach was developed to attend to the poor strata, nowadays it is…

Caregivers of young children play a significant role through a child's early childhood. External factors such as environment, socio-economic status, and support system, impact children's early development experiences. This study explored how caregivers perceived their role in the early child development of 3-4-year-old children in an…

Children show marked improvements in executive functioning (EF) between 4 and 7 years of age. In many societies, this time period coincides with the start of formal school education, in which children are required to follow rules in a structured environment, drawing heavily on EF processes such as inhibitory control. This study aimed to…