The dominant sustainability ethos and discourse within early childhood education pursue a normative ontological and epistemological direction aimed at empowering children's agency and thus, building certain predefined moral values, knowledge, and skills. Likewise, mainstream early childhood teacher education programmes strive to build early…

Early childhood education is foregrounded in change. In Australia, this has encompassed the introduction, review and updates of national quality and curriculum frameworks from 2009, and changes to qualification requirements. Within the state of Victoria, further impacts have occurred due to the simultaneous introduction of a parallel curriculum…

In a small village in the Ecuadorian Andes called Racar, plastics are intimately woven into social and ecological structures. These entanglements move beyond human control and generate toxic dependencies between humans, plastics, and others. This requires a pedagogical shift in how early childhood educators understand and respond to plastics.…

Early childhood teachers' environmental perceptions can influence young children's learning about environmental issues. Yet, to date, there is minimal research focusing on the perceptions of environmental sustainability held by early childhood teachers. This qualitative phenomenographic study collected data via individual semi-structured…

This study analyzes the mathematical knowledge of 40 preservice Chilean Early Childhood and Primary Education teachers when designing mathematical tasks on patterns, in the context of teaching early algebra. Based on the domains of the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) model, we have adopted a descriptive qualitative methodological…

Three Australian Government commissioned reports from 2011-2017 convey a longstanding child development theory-practice gap in early childhood education. This study explores what informs mentors' discussions of theories of child development with early career preschool teachers. Grounded in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, themes relate to…

Early childhood teachers are well-positioned to maximise preschoolers' development in oral language and emergent literacy; both of which are vital predictors of academic success at school. Research investigating their pre-service training in language and emergent literacy remains limited. This issue is addressed in the present study, with the…

This study theoretically aligns with research that purports that nature play positively contributes to sustainability stewardship. Early childhood teachers can plan for and nurture children's capabilities and dispositions for sustainability stewardship. Initial teacher education programs contribute to the professional learning of preservice early…

As the pedagogy of teachers depends partly on their earlier life experiences, investigating the prior reading practices of student teachers is crucial. This study investigated Finnish and English student teachers' (N = 353) own reading, the importance of their own reading to their reading pedagogy, and the relationship of these to teachers'…

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of question prompts on the process of journal writing by comparing unstructured and structured journals from pre-service teachers in the context of a Teaching Practicum course. Four early childhood pre-service teachers in their final year of undergraduate study constituted the case of this study.…

This study investigated a heutagogy-informed teacher professional education model designed to assist Indonesian teachers in achieving the competencies established by the Indonesian government to address teacher quality issues. The critical concepts of the model include self-determined learning, metacognitive reflection, collaborative learning, and…

Provision of quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) supports children's learning with strong agreement that early childhood teachers (ECTs) are central to quality provision. In many countries, it is mandatory that ECEC services employ ECTs. However, Australian ECT employers report that early childhood graduates are not always…

Evidence-informed practices play vital roles in teaching and learning in inclusive schools; however, limited research has been conducted to explore inclusive early childhood teachers' perspectives on research-informed teaching. This study, which was informed by the Cognitive Apprenticeship Theory (CAT), used structured and online focus groups to…

An upward national trend in challenging behaviour amongst young children in Australian schools has prompted widespread concern and garnered frequent media scrutiny. Scholars have established that child-teacher relationships are central to understanding and mitigating challenging behaviour; however, exploration of teacher perceptions of children's…

In 2017, a new Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) curriculum was introduced into all of Western Australia's classrooms. The aim of this study was to investigate how teachers transitioned to that new HASS curriculum. Using case study methodology, the experiences, opportunities and challenges faced by the early childhood (EC) staff in two Perth…