Parents` significance in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is emphasized in the research, but primarily from the perspective of ECEC professionals. Drawing on discursive institutionalism, we analysed what parents of young children in Finland constructed as essential in ECEC from the child`s point of view in their discussions concerning the…

Environments or learning spaces in school classrooms contribute to the improvement of educational processes. Specifically, in the Early Childhood Education, teachers can design learning spaces, which fosters an environment of safety and autonomy for the students of the Early Childhood Education. This study explores the teachers' narratives…

Risky play, accompanied by thrilling feelings with real or perceived risks, is beneficial for children's development. Playground quality and teachers' attitudes about risk can influence preschoolers' risky play opportunities. In this study, 10 U.S. preschools' outdoor environments were rated using the Seven Cs Scale. Playgrounds scored lowest in…

Classrooms should be spaces where every child feels safe to bring their whole self to school. This book shows how to set up preK-grade 6 classrooms that support student agency, independence, and choice. The results of classrooms designed with these goals in mind include: (1) Greater student engagement with curriculum; (2) Students who know…

Books introduce children to social life and provide them with the opportunity to expand their imaginary worlds. Pre-school children are influenced by books more than adults. Children can identify themselves with the heroes in the books and choose to act like them. Therefore, the features of the heroes in children's picture books, what they go…

The objective of the research was to analyze the scientific production regarding accident prevention in early child rearing institutions. An integrative literature review, referring to the years between 2011 and 2021, whose research was carried out in May 2021 in seven information resources, raised the following issue: it was found that not all…

An estimated 10 out of every 1,000 children in preschool are expelled from childcare programs. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental multiple case study was to explore the experiences of childcare directors with preschool expulsion and their perceptions regarding the why and how the phenomenon and the nature of their role in supporting…

Physical touch between educators and children in preschool settings is a sensitive issue in many countries. The aim of the study is to examine how future and newly graduated preschool teachers relate to touch between preschool teachers and children in the Swedish preschool context. The study was conducted using: 1) a questionnaire study (n = 204)…

This occasional paper is the ninth in a series on the National Quality Framework (NQF). The Education and Care Services National Law and National Regulations govern the minimum standards and requirements that all providers of NQF regulated services must meet, including health and safety requirements. Quality Area 2 of the National Quality Standard…

When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020, the lives of families all over the world were disrupted. Many adults found themselves working from home while their children were unable to go to school. To better understand the potential impact of these educational disruptions, it is important to establish what learning looked like during…

Little research in education has focused on school neighborhoods. We employ a novel systematic social observation tool--the internet-based School Neighborhood Assessment Protocol (iSNAP)--within Google Street View to quantify the physical characteristics of 291 preschool communities in nine U.S. cities. We find low to moderate correlations (r =…

In recent years, surveillance cameras have become common in the education system, in early childhood child-care centres as well as in preschools and schools. Public opinion regarding the usage of security cameras in early childhood institutions is constantly increasing due to a growing number of incidents exhibiting child abuse by caregivers.…

Only three out of five children are enrolled in preschool globally, and only one out of five in low-income countries, yet the expansion of preschool education came to a near standstill in 2020. To restart it, we propose a policy instrument called the Preschool Entitlement. It entails the right of every child to 600 hours of quality…

While the majority of children in Sweden attend preschool, children of immigrant background have lower enrollment rates. Limited research has explored why immigrant families do not attend preschool. This study helps to fill this void by exploring the perspectives of 10 skilled immigrant mothers who do not send their children to preschool. Data…

Countries in East Asia and the Pacific were among the first globally to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the first wave, however, the pandemic was kept mostly under control. During subsequent waves in 2021, virus variants, including the highly contagious Delta variant, elevated several countries in the region to hotspots for COVID-19,…