Children's right to participate in all matters and decisions affecting them has gained recognition in society. Its promotion is recommended from an early age -- namely, in early childhood education settings -- and it is described as benefiting children, adults and the community in general. Given the complex and polysemic meaning of participation,…

Developmental theorists use their research to generate philosophies on children's development. They organize and interpret data based on a scheme to develop their theory. A theory refers to a systematic statement of principles related to observed phenomena and their relationship to each other. A theory of child development looks at the children's…

Recent articles have introduced ideas from Physics, specifically, negentropy, to the social sciences. Applications have been primarily in higher education, online learning, and organizations. This article applies negentropy to PK-12 school contexts, discussing the principles for application of systemic school reform and improvement. Negentropy is…

Knowing humor development can be rather beneficial in terms of providing opportunities to better know children and evaluate their development. This study aimed to explore the process of humor development in preschool and primary school children in line with McGhee's humor development theory. The study employed a single screening model,…

The exploration and/or manipulation of objects and materials, referred to as object-oriented play (OOP), is one of the most prominent activities children engage in during early childhood. Especially within early childhood education, it is important to be able to assess and understand OOP, its developmental trajectory, and developmental value. This…

Adopting the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this sequential mixed-methods research investigates Hong Kong kindergarten teachers' reported beliefs and practices regarding early visual arts education (EVAE). The qualitative part (Phase 1) is an interview study of 19 kindergarten teachers in two focus groups, aiming to develop a conceptual…

The author seeks to expand the notion of the "play cycle," first introduced in 1998, to include the "functional cycle," with its "perceptual cue," touted by Jakob von Uexküll. He also discusses Simon Nicholson's theory of "loose parts" and James J. Gibson's notion of "affordances." He outlines the…

This book concisely explores the distinguishing features of scientific knowledge and research in early childhood education and care (ECEC). It has a dual-level focus of containing and relating the concrete practices of conducting research with the more fundamental conceptual discussions around research -- the Bildung of the researcher. The book…

Approaches to Learning (AtL) is an umbrella construct describing children's attitudes, habits, and learning styles as they engage in learning. First introduced by the National Education Goals Panel to indicate a child's readiness to learn in school, AtL includes openness to new tasks, initiative, task persistence, and imagination. Over the years,…

False memories are well established episodic memory phenomena. Recent research in young adults has shown that semantically related associates can be falsely remembered as studied items in working memory (WM) tasks for lists of only a few items when a short 4-second interval was given between study and test. The present study reported two…

This systematic literature review examines research on U.S. professional development (PD) in which practicing teachers are asked to engage explicitly with race and racism. Using Kennedy's PD theories of action, this review examines 64 studies published from 1981 to 2019 and analyzes race-related PD goals, pedagogical approaches, and documented…

This article asks the question of what documentation is doing, rather than what documentation means in the context of early childhood education. By focusing on the documentation of a young child's playful exploration with water that inhabits a classroom wall, new materialist theories are put to work to ponder documentation's agentive capacities…

In a time when the pursuit of quality is high on the Swedish ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) policy agenda, teachers' responsibilities for evaluating educational practice, based on documentation of individual children's development and learning, is emphasised. To aid teachers in this work, the Swedish National Agency of Education…

This paper explores the context of a Kindergarten team in a suburban P-3 school in Wisconsin developing literacy coaching support. Facing recent neoliberal accountability reforms that have greatly expanded teacher competition, dismantled teachers' unions, and added the role of the coach to the school, "confidence" is an issue that the…

Purpose: This paper seeks to understand how teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) is developed during a lesson study regarded as a professional development process that places particular emphasis on teachers' knowledge of tasks, representations and students' learning. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the networking…