The communicative potential of young children's drawings was explored through case studies of 14 children aged four - six (eight girls, six boys) at a rural English school. Informed by socio-cultural theories, the research queried "what" and "how" the children communicated through drawing, as well as "influences" on…

Currently, kindergarten education is shaped by two priorities: (1) the recognition that early learning must maintain a developmental orientation and support socio-personal growth; and (2) a growing emphasis on standards-based curriculum and the use of assessment to support children's learning. While some researchers have argued these two…

The aim of the present study is to assess the relationship between the young child's attention in a word learning interactive context with the educators in nurseries during shared-book reading and child's subsequent vocabulary growth. The participants in the study were 24 infants from eight nurseries. Each infant was first observed during five…

Playtimes in English primary schools are a perennial and mainly enjoyable event. They are, however, largely overlooked in educational reform and have experienced 'benign neglect'. The paper presents the findings from a research project which investigated the playtimes of primary school children. Questionnaire data gathered by pre-service teachers…

Existing data describe the positive relationships across children's play/physical activity, mental wellness, physical health, and intellectual success (Carter, 2016; Crnic & Kondo, 2019; English 2019; Tomporowski, Davis, Miller, & Naglieri, 2007). This current mixed-method study identifies ways in which classroom teachers describe…

Increasing demands of accountability and academic readiness across U.S. preschools are often accompanied by decreased play and time outdoors during the school day. The nature preschool movement, grounded in a desire to foster connection to the natural world while also supporting important developmental processes and school readiness, counteracts…

Family engagement is considered to be a cornerstone of successful universal prekindergarten (PreK) implementation. Using data from interviews with mothers, this study investigates the different ways families are engaged in their child's PreK experience. Multiple themes emerged from the interviews, including: family engagement, parents' knowledge…

Supported playgroups are a common form of intervention offered in Australian early childhood education. This study used interviews and quantitative measures to examine whether attending supported playgroups benefits culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) parents' or carers' social support, connectedness, and parental self-efficacy (PSE).…

This research aims to examine the predictive effect of gender, culture, and shyness on reticence and solitary play behaviour. Fifty children at two U.S. nursery schools and 55 children at a Turkish nursery school were included in the study, with a total of 105 children aged 36-72 months (61 boys, 44 girls). Parent questionnaires were used to…

In recent years, a programme for young children called Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) has risen to simultaneous popularity and controversy. This article, written collaboratively by an education scholar and a drag queen involved in organizing DQSH, contextualizes the programme within the landscape of gender in education as well as within the world of…

We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and how it impacted on a focus group of 3 and 4-year-old children's creativity. The questions that guided the design experimental method were: (1) how do young children develop and demonstrate creativity when learning through play with digital coding…

By bringing everyday phenomena into the classroom, teachers can more readily engage students in authentic scientific inquiry. When working with young children, the best phenomena are those that students can directly experience and investigate. Meaningful phenomena can be identified by watching children at play, listening to the conversations they…

Children are born to play and are born as intuitive scientists and use numeracy and literacy in their play. Playing is an essential apprenticeship for developing scientific (STEM) literacy. Observing children spontaneously playing reveals that they are experiencing STEM in action. They are observing phenomena, asking questions, solving problems,…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to gain more knowledge about the phenomenon of the inner child in relation to health and well-being as reflected in play experienced by schoolchildren. Design/method: Participants were 20 schoolchildren recruited from a primary school in a medium-size city in central Sweden. The children who agreed to…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specific register that adults use to address infants, and it is characterised by prosodic exaggeration and lexical and syntactic simplification. Several authors have underlined that this simplified speech becomes more complex according to the infant's age. However, there is a lack of studies on lexical and…