Over the last two decades, early childhood education (ECE) has come to the top of the political agenda in New Zealand and internationally. The interest of governments and policy-makers in ECE has been driven by the thinking that an 'investment' in ECE is a key for a country's future social and economic development (OECD 2007, "Policy Brief:…

For Jean Herbison, learning in her early 20th century childhood world was relatively uncomplicated and predictable. Life was shaped by unambiguous family, faith and settler colonial prescriptions about how children "should" behave and what they should become. Approaching the centenary of her birth, children today must navigate a very…

Anglophone societies in which the sovereign individual is primary vis and vis social relations, and policy focuses on economic competition and consumption in education, find it hard to grasp non-pecuniary outcomes in higher education. These include the self-formation of students as persons and collective goods like knowledge, technological…

Schools are important in nurturing social skills and behaviours. Research consistently demonstrates that movement into/out of school (transience/mobility) disrupts positive social skill development, especially for students who frequently move. The impact of attending a highly transient school on "non-mobile" students is not as…

Parents have the option of enrolling their children in the first stage of early childhood education (from 0 to 3 years of age). However, not all parents decide to do so, waiting until the second stage of early childhood education to enrol them in the education system (from 3 to 5 years of age), or even until compulsory education when their…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore primary teachers' perspectives of implementing cooperative learning (CL) to accomplish social and emotional learning (SEL) in Aotearoa New Zealand physical education. Method: A qualitative case study design gathered data from 21 teachers at four primary schools using interviews, focus groups, and…

Parents' elaboration plays an important role in autobiographical memory and socioemotional development. Two types of coding approaches have been used to assess parents' elaboration: a frequency-based coding (absolute frequencies of different types of elaborative utterances) and a scale-based coding (a 5-point scale based on relative frequencies of…

Handicapped, special, or diverse? Segregated, mainstreamed, or included? The field of disability and difference within education, is vast and wide-ranging. This review of the literature highlights how, although we have come far in the last 40 years, there is still much to learn about effective inclusion of disabled children in early childhood…

This study aims to develop a more fully theorised concept of biocitizenship as part of the teaching of intersex in critical approaches to sex education. It advances a perspective in which the options of students, as future parents and as biocitizens, are not limited to compliance to biomedicine, but one in which formal education experiences might…

Studies support the effectiveness of evidence-based practice to improve social communication. Specific interventions must be trialled to determine their efficacy for learners with autism. Successful implementation of such evidence-based interventions relies largely on variables such as teacher expertise and the fidelity by which they adhere to…

The recent refugee crisis has put many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries under considerable pressure to accommodate and integrate large numbers of refugees. Refugee students are a particularly vulnerable group due to their forced displacement, but their needs are not always met by education systems, which can…

We assessed the effects of an outdoor education programme (Tihoi) with no access to electronic media among 14 year-old boys. We compared creative thinking, socio-emotional wellbeing, and materialism with their peers attending regular classes at their normal school. Students at both locations were assessed in the second week of term and after…

A sense of belonging and wellbeing at school influences educational and health outcomes. Here we widen the traditional focus of Assessment News to focus on the use of student wellbeing data in schools. We discuss the Wellbeing@ School (W@S) toolkit that is freely available to support schools to self-review as they examine and monitor student…

This paper explains various good practices and perspectives of Early Childhood Education across the nation. A good number of reviews across the globe has collected from various sources, research projects, PhD thesis and so on which put categorized as knowledge base, developmentally appropriate practice, observation and assessment, positive…

This article presents the findings from a collaborative action research (CAR) study undertaken by a small group of early childhood education teachers working in a New Zealand setting with children aged 3-4 years. The teachers' shared aim was to explore and improve their teaching practices to more effectively support children's prosocial behaviour…