A lack of evidence bridging the chasm between professional learning practices and commonly used, publicly available resources such as YouTube videos, remains a long-term challenge in both research and practice. The study introduced a YouTube video club for female early childhood teachers in Hong Kong (N = 29) to view, analyse and discuss STEM…

This paper critically examines the tensions arising between Reception teachers' professional beliefs and knowledge, and the school readiness agenda in England. It scrutinises how the increasing academic expectations placed on children to ensure they are 'ready for school' may conflict with teachers' understanding of how young children learn, their…

This study examined the impact of an intensive professional development series on early childhood educators' content knowledge of engineering and their self-efficacy towards teaching engineering. Seventeen early childhood teachers participated and responded to questionnaires, surveys, and focus-group interviews before and after the professional…

Educators' preparedness to include children with disability in day-care is key to the success of early childhood inclusion. This study examines the relationship between attitudes and self-efficacy as key predictors of preparedness for inclusion. The study was conducted in Switzerland, a country with a young tradition of inclusive early childhood…

The early care and education (ECE) workforce is experiencing concerning levels of stress and depression (Elharake et al., 2022; Jennings et al., 2020). The well-being of these workers affects staff turnover and their interactions with children (Kwon et al., 2020; Smith & Lawrence, 2019). Research has shown that racial concordance (or matching)…

Despite the acknowledged complexity of early childhood educators' work, little is documented about how early childhood educators actually spend their time at work. A typical way of studying time at work is through the use of time-use diaries. Recent developments have shown the benefits of using randomized sampling electronic time-use diaries. This…

Background: The professional development (PD) of early childhood teachers is of strategic importance in higher education and the profession given the need to improve responsiveness and progress towards millennium goals. Aim: The purpose was to analyse classroom practices and teachers' experiences of PD programmes, through the theoretical lens of…

Community partnerships are essential for vitality in neighborhoods. A growing demand exists for training programs to attract and prepare a highly qualified workforce to serve young children and their families. Personnel across different stages of their career can help address our teacher shortages. Service learning is a useful strategy in…

Partnerships between parents and professionals in early childhood education and care (ECEC) are widely acknowledged as important for children's well-being, learning, and development. As children with immigrant backgrounds often experience cultural and linguistic differences between their home and ECEC-environments, bridges between these two…

This study examined how a video-based professional development (VBPD) initiative influenced early childhood teachers' practices. A purposive sample of 22 early childhood education teachers voluntarily participated in this study. The confidentiality of all participants was assured and their informed consent was obtained prior to the study. The…

Computer science is often integrated within early childhood education (ECE) through the use of educational robots. This requires adequate preparation of ECE teachers to program and debug, which can be done with scaffolding. In this paper, we use a QUANT + qual mixed method approach incorporating lag sequential analysis, ICAP framework coding,…

In this mixed methods case study, we explored the extent to which novice teachers in one institution were prepared to respond to homework-related concerns, be these in favor of or against the practice. We queried three sources of information: teacher educators, methods course syllabi, and national/state accreditation standards for teacher…

Networked approaches to professional learning have been shown to offer broad influence and unique benefits to teachers' continuing development. However, despite decades of research into the professional learning community (PLC) approach within single schools, there is a paucity of research about network PLCs and a lack of models for effective…

In early childhood centres, decontextualised talk is often associated with literacy activities. In this study, however, we investigated toddler-educator conversations across various activities with a focus on those about topics that were not related to the immediate context. We examined the communicative purposes and linguistic features of these…

Work climate affects the quality of early childhood education and care activities. The aim was to explore how the staff describe demands and resources in their jobs, and whether different profiles could be distinguished among those with turnover intentions and those without. The research was based on the Job Demands-Resources model [Bakker, A. B.,…