This article presents an applied educational program for early years children with three thematic objectives, i.e. empathy, disabilities and visual arts. The program took place in Children's Museum of Thessaloniki and focused on the reflection between the text and image generally. The participants were twenty children from 4-8 years old, as the…

This guide to understanding school readiness in young children is essential reading for early years practitioners. It explores the concept of school readiness by unpicking what the term means for children and how we can define it in the context of the characteristics of effective learning. This includes ideas for promoting playing and exploring,…

The rate of digital media usage among eight to 18-year-old students, since late 1990s, has risen by over 30%, yet the official acceptance of such technology for educational outcomes remains limited. Due to such a remarkable growth of digital media usage in absence of formal educational recognition, researchers began to explore how specifically…

With the emergence of more narrative-focused video games, this study attempted to better understand how college students construct meaning through these interactive experiences as a means of understanding social and cultural differences and perspectives. This study explored how playing narrative-focused video games may interconnect with college…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the practical use of video cameras during a study with young children. Design/methodology/approach: This paper investigates the use of video cameras in a research study of young children's utilisation of semiotic tools to communicate during play interactions in a Francophone preschool classroom in…

The main aim of this study is to examine the perceptions of university graduate working mothers who have 36-60 months-old children of the quality of the time spent with their children. In the study, the phenomenology design was used among qualitative research techniques. The study group consisted of 32 mothers selected by using a maximum variation…

Mothers' provision of utterances with internal state words has been shown to influence infants' acquisition of internal state vocabulary and has been proposed to foster preschoolers' theory of mind development. In this article the authors examine maternal internal state speech during free play with infants at 13, 17, and 21 months. The study…

Background: Literature reveals that guided play promotes the development of visuospatial abilities essential for learning to read, write and do mathematics. However, most of these findings have focused on older children who are already literate, and the tests and the instruments used were designed for children in Western contexts. Aim: As there is…

Assessment of communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is challenging in an unfamiliar clinical environment due to their limited verbal output and inadequate motivation to communicate. To analyze whether the communication sample recorded at clinic represents the child's competence and performance, this study compared…

This article examines the research literature to determine whether the provision of quality early childhood education (ECE) lowers the risk of a child developing special education needs (SEN) and mediates the intensity of support for children with an identified exceptionality. Schools play a crucial role in reducing developmental gaps assessed at…

Inspired initially by Elias's (1994) work on 'civilising processes', this article draws on a project in which an English and a Swedish researcher examines ethnographic data on mealtimes from two of their respective studies undertaken in early childhood settings. Despite the differing contexts, the data show a marked similarity in the way…

There has been considerable distress in early childhood classrooms due to a cultural bias of Cartesian dualism, which has led to the bullying and disappearance of Body in education. Efforts of bringing about shifts in pedagogical practices toward holistic, bodily views of the self must be supported and developed. However, with classrooms that are…

This paper details a multimodal practice of response and transmediation, called a Thought Chronicle, which I employ in my undergraduate work with preservice teachers. I position this intervention in relation to the theoretical discourses of multimodality, social semiotics, and psychoanalytic ideas of dreaming and play.

Enhancing immediate and contingent responding by caregivers to children's signals is an important strategy to support social interactions between caregivers and their children with autism. Yet, there has been limited examination of parents' responsive behaviour in association with children's social behaviour post caregiver-mediated intervention.…

The proliferation of information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the way we live and this also has implications on how it is used for learning and entertainment. However, technology and digital media are more often seen as gateways to entertainment and the attraction is a very strong one. This is true for adults and children…