This paper considers the pedagogical collaborations between early childhood teachers in kindergarten (4 years) and the first year of school (5 years) in one Australian State. We report on a year-long project that brought these early childhood teachers together as we asked them to design STEM learning ecologies that would not only support new…

This paper engages with the early childhood-school relationship. The relationship has a long-standing history of being defined by a series of divisions and separations. Research has identified the divisions and separations to be largely determined by differences around concepts of learning and pedagogy. Discursive analyses of these differences…

Grade R is the year before learners in South Africa start formal schooling and has been part of the General Education Training Band (GET) since 1998. New efforts are being made to enable all five- to six-year-olds to attend a Grade R class. The nine provinces of South Africa approach this problem in different ways. Some of them, like Gauteng, try…

This article reports on three salient socio-cultural and systemic factors that are influential in play in Abu Dhabi Education Council's (ADEC's) kindergarten (KG) framework from the teacher perspective. Anecdotal evidence suggests that during ADEC's progressive educational reform, emphasis has reverted to academic performance outcomes rather than…

This study investigated the extent to which learning readiness, prior-to-school experiences, and child and family characteristics influence children's literacy and numeracy achievement across the first year of primary school. A sample of 104 kindergarten children was recruited from 16 classrooms and followed from the beginning to the end of their…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…

Describes the typical kindergarten day as experienced by one child in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. Illustrates the main goal of kindergarten as preparing children for school rather than teaching reading, writing, or written numeracy. Focuses on the oral language learning approach incorporating teacher- and child-initiated activities.…

Offers a perspective, grounded in theory and practice, on issues of readiness and education during the preschool and kindergarten years. Stresses the role of adult involvement in children's learning, and emphasizes preschool as an essential time for building cognitive skills. Illustrates with images drawn from practice in Korean early-childhood…

Within the current climate of heightened interest in the education of young children, it is essential that consideration be given to different factors which may impact, either positively or negatively, on the achievement of young learners when their academic progress in literacy and numeracy is considered. The research study reported in this paper…

A pilot study examined the reliability and predictive validity of a screening instrument for Dutch kindergartners. Findings indicated acceptable reliability and predictive validity. Parents could accurately screen their child's language proficiency level, pre-arithmetic level, and degree of extraversion at school entry. Teachers could predict…

Argues that the Japanese model of early years education enables children to make comparatively fast progress once they begin elementary schooling. Asserts that the understanding of group behavior and needs of other children contributes to children's sharing of responsibility and positive learning attitudes. Maintains that preschool routines…

Noting that young children are capable of surprisingly complex forms of mathematical thinking and learning, this book presents a collection of articles depicting children discovering mathematical ideas, teachers fostering students' informal mathematical knowledge, adults asking questions and listening to answers, and researchers examining…