The voices of both early childhood education teachers and children tend to be weak in the choir of agents that constitute the aims and practices of early childhood education. In this article, a video that a teacher made of four children playing dragons, followed by open-ended interviews exploring why she found this particular activity of interest…

With the aim of developing new knowledge on inclusive practices for young children in early childhood education, the following research question was explored: what characterises young children's negotiations of belonging and togetherness in a diverse peer group in kindergarten? Data from field work in a young children's group in a multicultural…

The focus of this article is children's self-organisation of peer-groups through play. The play was initiated by encounters with the environment. The use of ethnographic methods in early childhood research has proved helpful to elucidate, interpret, and understand children's experiences and the creation of meaning in their everyday lives. This…

Bilingualism appears to be related to poor language and reading comprehension in the instructional language (L2). However, in the long term, an early age of second language acquisition (AoA) may produce higher levels of second language skills than a later onset of L2 exposure. Most studies on school-aged second language learners (L2 learners)…

Lecturing is often criticized for being a monological and student passive way of teaching. However, digital technology such as Student Response Systems (SRS) can be used to reconstruct the traditional lecturing format. During a series of five two-hour lectures in "qualitative methods" for first year psychology students, we used SRS to…

Extensive exposure to nonparental child care during the first 4.5 years of life has been demonstrated in some American studies to negatively affect children's socioemotional functioning. Data from 935 preschool children who averaged 54.9 (SD = 3.0) months of age, from Trondheim, Norway were used to examine whether such negative effects, would…

The study investigates whether sport is an especially risky environment for sexual harassment to occur. It explores female students' experiences of sexual harassment in organized sport and compares them with their experiences in formal education, by addressing the following research questions: (1) Are there any differences in female sport…

This study compares school-related associations in depressive symptoms among children aged between 9-13 years from four schools in Finland and Norway. A total of 523 pupils participated in the cross-sectional survey. The connections between depressive symptoms and school factors were analysed using hierarchical regression analyses. School…

Despite the rapid increase in immigration all over Europe and concerns expressed for the adjustment of immigrant children and young people, studies on peer victimisation among them are scarce. By combining the predictions of the acculturative stress model with the social-ecological perspective of peer victimisation, this study compared different…

Background: Anxiety disorders are often present at preschool age. Research on older children and studies contrasting preschoolers with high versus low behavioral inhibition (BI) highlight several risk factors, but these have not been investigated in community samples of young children. Child, parent, and peer factors at age 4 were therefore…

This study addresses the relationship between the acceptance of students with disabilities by their peers and their self-concept. Research shows that level of acceptance and self-concept are moderately related. Students with disabilities not accepted by their peers in regular classrooms thus run the risk of developing low self-concept. It is…

This article presents findings from a qualitative case study of informal peer groups (colloquia) in a Law programme at a major Norwegian university. The research question focused on how students perceived and experienced participation in peer colloquia, and the learning potential of such groupings is discussed in light of the formal study…

Pupils with special needs can have difficulties in building relationships with peers in inclusive education. An important condition for developing positive relationships with peers is having the age-group appropriate social skills. It seems likely that pupils with an insufficient set of social skills face a larger risk of being excluded. This…

This article focuses upon greetings and welcomes among one and two year old peers who meet regularly throughout a year in the context of a Norwegian barnehage (day care). The results show that about half of the toddler greetings may be paralleled to well-known forms of distant and close greeting across cultures, 21% were found to be essentially…