With the aim to provide teachers with more specific, frequent, and actionable feedback about their teaching, we explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to estimate "Instructional Support" domain scores of the CLassroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), a widely used observation protocol. We design a machine learning…

The following study examines two researchers' perspectives on play in the lives of children from diverse cultural contexts. Two questions guided this study: (1) how do researchers conceptualize children's play and (2) what shapes their understanding of play. In order to answer these questions, a critical discourse was established between two…

Early childhood practitioners' professionalism is a contested concept, with interpretations that include professionalisms based on qualifications, on accountability, on relational skills and on critical advocacy. Understandings of professionalism as situated in ecological frameworks rather than within individuals have led to the concept of a…

This paper describes the process of school capacity building in Hong Kong's early childhood education at a time when there was a quest for quality education. A local preschool was selected for the study, which took part in a university-school support programme through which consultancy was hired from a university to provide school-based support.…

In this article, the authors use an explanatory narrative of participation and transformation across two consecutive early childhood communities of practice to chronicle the evolution of a teacher leader, Michelle. This narrative illustrates how the continuity of experience spawned her development from apprentice toward an agentic teacher leader,…

In this study we investigated the perceptions and interpretations of 14 various stakeholders in the field of teacher preparation and early childhood education regarding what and how Jewish education should be learned and taught, in general, and to preschool children in contemporary Israel, in particular. The present study, carried out in the…

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the relation between utterance complexity and utterance position and the tendency to stutter on function words in preschool-age children who stutter (CWS). Two separate studies involving two different groups of participants (Study 1, n = 30; Study 2, n = 30) were conducted. Participants were…

Child assessment practices in English and Korean preschools were compared by analysing data from interviews with educators, examples of child assessment, and official documents from each country. Child assessment in England was systematically implemented and characterised by several methodological and procedural strengths, whereas assessment in…

The article investigates the discursive constructions of preschool girls and points to how girls are positioned, assessed and constructed by adults in parent-teacher conferences in Swedish preschools. Using transcripts of audio-taped episodes from parent-teacher conferences, the analysis reveals that gender is an important aspect of the adults'…

Purpose: This study examined the efficacy of a professional development program for early childhood educators that facilitated emergent literacy skills in preschoolers. The program, led by a speech-language pathologist, focused on teaching alphabet knowledge, print concepts, sound awareness, and decontextualized oral language within naturally…

Imagine an active happily engaged, communicative, curious group of four-year-old children investigating and discovering as they play together in an early childhood classroom. Imagine yet again, the teacher beckoning them to gather on the rug to listen to a story. What happens next? Are the children allowed to continue in this curiosity-seeking,…