"I think I can, I think I can' puffed "The Little Engine That Could." The American folktale taught the value of optimism and hard work reflecting a growth mindset belief about abilities. A growth mindset positively impacts academic achievement, motivation, and children's agency for learning. Few studies have explored how early…

This study examines a child's personal experiences with peer relationship building in the classroom and is guided by Vygotsky's cultural historical concepts of the social situation of development and cultural tools and Hedegaard's (2012) model for learning and development. Hedegaard's (2012) dialectical-interactive approach was adopted to analyse…

This study examined the piloting of a literacy, arts and wellbeing (LAB) project in a rural school in Queensland, Australia. The research involved a Year 1 class (n = 24) participating in co-designed lessons with their classroom teacher and two visiting researchers from a regional university. These lessons were developed with literacy learning…

Mathematical reasoning, which plays a critical role in students' capacity to make sense of mathematics, is now emphasised more strongly in various curricula internationally. However, reasoning is sometimes difficult for teachers to recognise, let alone teach. This case study considers video of one teacher's implementation of a problem-solving…

Children's multiplicative thinking as the recognition of equal group structures and the enumeration of the composite units was the subject of this research. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Multiplication and Division Investigations project. The results were obtained from a small sample of Australian children (n = 21) in their first…

Previous research has emphasised the importance of active citizenship in the early years for the development of tolerant and cohesive societies. This paper reports data from 174 children, aged 6-7 years, who were interviewed in the first year of a longitudinal study. Children were presented with two scenarios about inclusion of others in play. One…

This article presents research focused on establishing ways that dialogic talk between teachers and students promotes mathematical reasoning in early years classrooms. Data are drawn from recorded and transcribed Year 1 mathematics lessons. Conversation analysis provides close examination of the talk-in-interaction practices of teachers and…

Self-efficacy has been associated with benefits to everyday life such as resilience to stress and adversity, healthy behaviours, improved performance, and academic achievement. Research into self-efficacy development is scarce in early childhood, yet self-efficacy is associated with numerous skills and competencies taught in the early years of…

Purpose: Using data from 1,868 children from the US, Australia, and Sweden who took a 10-word spelling test in kindergarten and a standardized spelling test in Grades 1, 2, and (except for the Australian children) Grade 4, we examined two questions. First, does the quality of a child's errors on the kindergarten test help predict later spelling…

Digital technology has long been ubiquitous in many communities within Australia and internationally, thereby requiring suitable digital proficiencies. While a majority of Australian children experience digital literacies as part of their everyday lives, limitations in access disadvantage others. In educational settings, there is a clear need for…

Technology can play a pivotal role in mathematics education. Qualitative methods were used to report on how a Year 1-2 teacher incorporated "Conveyance technology" (iPads), to support the teaching and learning of mathematics through student reasoning and problem-solving. The study was conducted in Australia. A single case was chosen,…

This study explored whether Year 1 school children exposed to a 12-week classroom-based gross motor program progressed differently than Year 1 children undertaking their regular school program in motor proficiency, mathematics, and reading outcomes. Fifty-five Australian Year 1 school children (25 boys, 30 girls, mean age 6.77 ± 0.40 years) were…

Getting it Right from the Start (GIRFTS) is a research study that aims to implement a response to intervention (RTI) framework in early primary school (Foundation and Grade 1) to improve oral language and reading. RTI is a multi-tiered conceptual framework that supports student learning through delivery of high-quality classroom instruction, early…

This article considers how teachers' encounters with a newly built learning space are complicit in the practices performed in that space. It builds on previous research into the relationship between learning spaces and pedagogical change by highlighting the acoustic aspects and how they were perceived by teachers in a primary school. Over two…

In the context of a multiplicative problem, our study investigated young children's ability to visualise and draw equal groups. This paper reports the results obtained from 18 Australian children in their first year of school (age 5-6 years). The task "12 Little Ducks," taught by their classroom teacher, provoked children to visualise…