Early literacy is largely acquired through child-led learning, yet current ways to support and enhance it may present problems of coercion and adult control. The "Following in our Footsteps II" intervention sought to circumvent such problems by teaching parent and educator pairs of 46 preschoolers how to make everyday literacy and…

This study examined the affordances of an embodied humanoid robot to engage children in play and learning from the perspective of embodied cognition in two studies as part of multiyear design research. In Study One, we observed how the robot's embodiment, accompanied by its sensors and movements, elicited embodied reactions of eleven children…

This article reports on two studies designed to examine the landscape of online streamed videos, and the features that may support vocabulary learning for low-income preschoolers. In Study 1, we report on a content analysis of 100 top language- and literacy-focused educational media programs streamed from five streaming platforms. Randomly…

This article reports on the study of differential change trajectories for early childhood approaches to learning. A large sample (N = 2,152) of Head Start children was followed through prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade. Classroom learning behaviors were assessed by teachers through the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale twice in Head…

Theory-driven and practice-driven research are often separated, but in this article we shall argue for a research approach that is theory-driven but practice-oriented and shares features with the specific kind of early childhood education pedagogy this research approach has generated, what we refer to as developmental pedagogy (Pramling Samuelsson…

The component selection procedure developed by Hale and Morgan was used to assess children's use of selective attention at six levels of learning ranging from undertraining to overtraining. This function was examined at each of ages 4, 8, and 12. (SBT)