This study investigates the conceptualizations of childhood in the Iranian culture through a linguistic analysis of three Persian lexical items for a child ("bache, kudak, tefl") and their implications for Early Childhood Education (ECE). Employing a corpus-based approach supplemented with ethnographic insights, the study investigates…

As textiles continue to feature heavily in discussions of sustainability, and young students continue to be positioned as saviors of the planet, this paper joins the call for assemblage thinking in early years research that decenters humans and foregrounds relationships. What follows is a subset of a larger study, where one preschool classroom…

Singing together fosters connections across social contexts. While this activity is expected to flourish in kindergartens and nurseries, studies from multiple countries have highlighted a growing decline in confidence in singing among both kindergarten teachers and students. To address this, Kulset and Halle [(2020). Togetherness!: adult…

A pervasive and widespread shortage of early intervention (EI) teachers is preventing vital services from reaching infants and toddlers with disabilities during their most critical period of brain development. To better understand the EI teacher shortage, this qualitative study examined the career decision-making of 11 EI teachers from the…

How does a researcher investigate phenomena that continually emerge through, with and as various practices? This paper explores this question, drawing on transformative reflections on the unfolding process of an empirical research project investigating professional practice in Dutch early childhood education. The project initially applied an open,…

Multiraciality and mixed-race students have long been overlooked in K12 education discourse despite a significant increase in the number of students identifying as more than one race. Research that does address Multiracial students tends to focus on multiracial identity development of college students. However, educators and K12 school leaders…

This essay uses the concept of the white imaginary to reflect on Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) in education. It examines the field's value but also its limitations, specifically its preoccupation with converting white people as the solution to systemic racism. The conversion approach ignores the fuller structural nature of whiteness and often…

To our knowledge, no studies have used Bourdieu's theoretical contributions to frame investigations on how early childhood education (ECE) teaching materials construct body differences in a way that justifies gender inequality. For Bourdieu, the power to classify and grant properties and signs to subjects, does not reside only in the power to…

What are the attitudes, mindsets, and capacities that promote the full flourishing of individuals as well as our collective society? Based on a review of the literature on democratic education, the researcher posits a humble theory (i.e., a local theory in educational research) of the dispositions of democracy and then asks educators from…

There are two ways of understanding child development. The first places emphasis on the human cultural dimension. The essential component of culture is a system of cultural norms known as "ideal forms," wherein the adult acts as a bearer of these ideal forms or culture. From this standpoint, the child acquires already established forms…

Effective inclusion of English Learners (ELs) in multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) is necessary for this growing subset of students to access the intended outcomes of MTSS, specifically improved academic outcomes. Facilitating MTSS systems that are appropriately responsive to the heterogeneous needs of ELs may be particularly challenging. In…

In this research, feminist post-structuralism and queer theory were used to examine Australian early childhood educators' views on children's gender identity development, and the content on gender in the Australian Government's Early Years Learning Framework. The methodology and study design were based upon qualitative phenomenological research…

The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore what happened when preschool teachers engaged in multimodal meaning making around notions of literacy through visual art making. Eight participant preschool teachers attended 3 six-hour long multimodal workshops designed around social semiotic theory of multimodal communication…

Prevailing heteronormative discourses in early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand present difficulties for upholding the right of gender diverse tamariki ("children") and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer-parented families to experience belonging in equitable, inclusive early childhood settings. The purposeful…

Inspired by Audrey Osler's call for the development of novel approaches to intersectionality in human rights education praxis, this article presents an undergraduate module on Children's Rights, examining processes of teaching and learning about rights through the topic of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). The module, designed for future…