This paper introduces researchers and scholars to psychosocial qualitative methods when researching affective aspects of classroom pedagogy. It theorises affect as felt processes that defy representation circulating in teaching and learning. Turning to the psychoanalytic field of infant observation, the author outlines the immense potential of…

Approaches to Learning (AtL) is an umbrella construct describing children's attitudes, habits, and learning styles as they engage in learning. First introduced by the National Education Goals Panel to indicate a child's readiness to learn in school, AtL includes openness to new tasks, initiative, task persistence, and imagination. Over the years,…

The use of touchscreen mobile devices in early childhood education has gained considerable attention. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the impacts of touchscreen mobile devices on children's cognitive and affective development. Researchers have further indicated the need to probe in which contexts children can learn effectively…

The teaching of foreign languages to young learners is growing in popularity around the world. Research in this field, particularly of English as a second/foreign language education in East Asia, is a relatively new area of empirical inquiry, and it has the potential to make significant contributions to child second-language acquisition…

Reports results of a study to examine the extent to which young English children volunteer prepositions in a simple but structured task of spatial description. Results show that children 3 to 7 years have an extensive and often inventive grasp of locative prepositions. (Author/KC)

Two theoretical models of visual attention and contingent learning were presented to provide a framework for the consideration of how observed individual differences in infant behavior may interact with nonsocial stimuli and caretaker-mediated stimuli to influence the individual's development of patterns of visual attention and contingency…

This project explored the learning interchanges which took place between early childhood student teachers and young children, provoked by three-dimensional installations within a children's art exhibition. The exhibition, comprising both two- and three-dimensional artworks, contained over 280 artworks from 15 early childhood programs in the…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether children remembered information more efficiently if they were provided with an explicit purpose for learning. In the first experiment, 96 5-year-old children watched a simple science demonstration and were told either to remember the names of the depicted items from pictures for a memory test…

This paper reviewed research that sheds light on the relation between motor and ideational learning and suggested a cognitively oriented role for physical education in the early years. (Author/RK)

Presents a case study, through observation of a child named Hawk Weisman, that demonstrates a child's use of drawing to find meaning. Discusses Hawk's motivations for drawing, the recurring themes that encompass both humanistic and scientific concepts, and his homemade books. Addresses the educational implications. (CMK)

Much has happened since the first edition of this book in the arenas of policy development, research and practice. Early childhood education is at the heart of policy-making agendas in England and many other developed and developing countries. Concerns with the quality of provision have sparked a massive international research endeavour, which is…

The "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 crystallized the concern for accountability in education. National testing was mandated as a way to improve the "broken" educational system. Publicly funded early education programs were not spared from such testing. While the positive effects of high-quality early education on children's…