There has been much debate about the profile of the child who is ready for primary school. Thirty-three teachers from pre-primary and primary schools in Jamaica participated in a series of focus group discussions as part of a discursive approach to understanding children's readiness. Four themes emerged which were guided by the research questions:…

The Swedish preschools have evolved to be more diverse in terms of language and culture amongst the attending children. Previous research on newly arrived children in the Swedish preschools focusses on, amongst other things, how to provide for the best reception or education, but less is known about the newly arrived children's own communicative…

Storytelling and drama are well-known teaching tools that can be used throughout the curriculum for the active participation of students in their own learning process. The introduction of robots in storytelling and drama activities provides students with a meaningful, multisensory, hands-on learning experience. This paper explores the potential…

This study aims to introduce inquiry-based play activities and to examine their effectiveness on young children's conceptual understanding of the shape of the Earth and the day-night cycle. The inquiry-based play activities for preschool children were designed to support children to learn the concepts of the shape of the Earth and the day-night…

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the delivery of face-to-face (F2F) therapeutic interventions and neuroimaging assessments for children with autism spectrum disorder has been disrupted. To resume interventions and assessments, many services are now using telehealth-based online platforms. Using the Zoom conferencing platform, our…

Teacher performance assessments are positioned as a high stakes assessment that are aimed to ensure that preservice teachers are ready for professional practice in education contexts. The move to incorporate them in institutions has its origins in concerns that teacher education is a policy problem with varying standards of preparation across the…

Several researchers have found that media exposure through books or electronic media contribute to preschoolers' development. However, research with behavioral measures and during the first years of life have not been carried out in Latin American contexts. The aim of the following research was to evaluate the relations between media exposure…

Grief is a complicated equalizer and a personal reaction to loss. Losing a loved one is a universal experience, but fear keeps grief quiet and misunderstood. When teachers not trained in death education, it can affect children's grieving process. When grief is not processed in a healthy way, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated,…

We propose a novel model for learning environments to target the characteristics of digital natives and to improve informal learning practices, i.e. the exploration, discovery and self-monitoring of learning content and the reflection on learning activities. The Mobile Playful Learning Environment (MPLE) model is defined as consisting of seven…

Research has established the importance of play-based experiences for young children's development and learning. Yet, facing the mounting pressure of accountability and standardized testing, some educators have turned to didactic methods of instruction. Guided play (Weisberg et al., 2016) provides a middle ground between play and instruction for…

The purpose of this study was to gain insights into how a PreK teacher's beliefs on readiness shaped how she adopted/adapted to a new practice that was intended to provide responsive mathematics education. To explore these issues, I constructed one descriptive case study of a teacher's beliefs and practice based on data from a broader research…

Building on the idea that the culture of an organisation has an extremely deep influence on the personalities, minds and identities of people who participate in it (Hofstede 2015) -- we reflected on how the US and Polish cultures' specific values and beliefs were represented and symbolised in the early childhood settings. We focused our analysis…

Culturally responsive teaching strengthens infants' and toddlers' sense of identity and belonging while building trust that enhances their relationship with caregivers. In this comprehensive book, child behavior expert and award-winning author Marie Masterson discusses early learning in the context of children's families, cultures, and lives,…

For early childhood educators, few individuals have more historical significance than Friedrich Froebel. Froebelian approaches traveled across the Atlantic and inspired early childhood educators in the United States during the progressive era. Although early childhood professionals in the United States still celebrate the inventor of kindergarten,…

Recess can be a valuable and significant experience in children's lives, providing opportunities for outdoor free play and engagement with peers; however, children experiencing disability often withdraw or are excluded during recess. The recess context has received little attention from an inclusion perspective and the voices of children…