This study explored young children's perceptions of engineers and engineering through their drawings and narratives. Twenty-six children ranging from four-to eight-years-old participated. Results indicated that although children in this group had limited knowledge of engineers and engineering, most of them, regardless of gender, not only drew…

Understanding children's attitudes towards mathematics provides insights into their lived mathematical experience and engagement. Despite the considerable amount of research into students' attitudes toward mathematics, limited research has been conducted into "young children's" attitudes toward mathematics (YCATM). Within this limited…

Drawing is an ideal technique to understand children's responses to fictional narratives, including digital ones. In this case, a gamified narrative with augmented reality (AR), based on a picturebook, was designed and used in an intervention in 8 Early Childhood Education classrooms (N = 113), aimed at enhancing their literary competence. This…

Background: There is a long research tradition on students' images of scientists based on their drawings. However, the dimension of scientists' emotions, as a critical aspect of these images has not been thoroughly investigated. Purpose: The present study aims to investigate scientists' emotions as depicted in children's drawings to shed light on…

We investigated the perceptions of children aged 48 to 72 months regarding father involvement. The research employed a qualitative method and a phenomenological design. The subjects comprised 12 children aged 48-72 months who attended early childhood education. We collected data through semi-structured individual interviews and the draw-and-tell…

Background: Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) has been one of the most used instruments to study conceptions of scientists and science. It has been especially useful for charting the conceptions of younger children who might lack the skills to express themselves in writing. However, recent studies suggest that instead of children's conceptions of the…

Even though environmental sustainability (ES) efforts are becoming a critical concern in education (UN, 2015), there is sparse empirical research into children's views about ES. This qualitative case study explores young Maltese children's (aged 3-7 years) perceptions of how ES can be achieved. Data were generated from semi-structured interviews…

This study aimed to determine the "engineer" perception of 48- 72 month-old children in pre-school education. Phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The study group of the research consist of 52 children between the ages of 48 and 72 months attending pre-school at one private and one…

Teaching music often focuses on developing musical concepts, through comparisons and discriminations. This paper contributes to the discussion on concept development in music through recognition of common elements in a situation and a shift from a local to a general level, considering theoretical approaches to mathematical generalisation. It sets…

Early childhood/educational environmental imaginations transmit national, global and planetary views of the world through texts, visual representations and material objects. These representations produce politics, including nationalism and globalism, and play a part in policy making as well as in how children learn to view and relate to the world.…

The UK-based article develops a quantitative method for measuring 8-9-year-old children's Gender Ability Beliefs through drawings, assessing the reliability and validity of the measure and its association with respondents' self-reported gender. The measure, originally used in the US by Beilock et al. (2010), required respondents to draw two…

'We're not useless, we know stuff!', said a four-year-old when asked why adults should ask him what he thinks about his experiences at his early learning centre. This paper describes the literature and methods used to gather children's voices in early childhood and education (ECEC) settings across Stage 1 and 2 of the 3 stage national Learning…

"Schooling for Refugee Children" is a collaboration between five authors who explore their interactions with refugee children displaced from Syria to the Lebanese borders and London. Through a programme of carefully tailored research activities, they analyse the children's representations of their personal journeys and current…

This qualitative study contributes theorised and empirically enriched insights from local practices into children's agency. The authors trace a converging interest in multimodal literacies, postcolonial philosophies and early childhood pedagogy to document and critically engage with children's agency in stories experienced by Malawian children in…

Brain breaks are often used during lessons to replenish childrens' attention, but children may respond differently to the variety of brain breaks they are offered. Therefore, two studies were conducted to identify both teachers' current use of brain breaks (Study 1) as well as the types of brain breaks children prefer (Study 2). Study 1 consisted…