This study explores the potential health implications for children, parents, carers and communities living in Australia's 'childcare desert' areas. Most families with children aged birth to five years have limited access to early childhood education and care in regional, rural, and remote Australia, creating 'childcare desert' communities. This…

Collaboration is a sophisticated activity requiring knowledge, technical competencies, and interpersonal skills. Many professionals lack experience in collaboration and therefore face challenges in forming and sustaining early childhood intervention (ECI) teams. There is a paucity of research on collaboration within ECI teams, especially within…

Psychotropic medications are increasingly being prescribed to school-age youth to address a variety of emotional and behavioral problems. In this article, we first provide an overview of these medications, their potential effects and side effects, and variables impacting their use. Prevalence of polypharmacy and rates of current and lifetime…

Background: Mothers of children with intellectual disabilities are more likely to show elevated psychological distress, with child behavioural and emotional problems being a significant risk factor. Family Resilience Theory suggests that family relationships are crucial in influencing adaptation to stressors. We investigated whether family…

Joint attention is essential for establishing effective social communication. However, children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often exhibit deficits in joint attention, which hinder their social interactions with peers and adults. Traditional assessment methods predominantly rely on expert observation, lacking objective measures of…

Research has well documented the opportunities and benefits of connecting mathematics instruction with children's literature. One approach to achieving this is through stories that weave mathematical content into creative and engaging narratives. This paper examines the K-2 Mathical Book Prize winners and honorees as texts with significant…

Internationally, there is a growing interest in both intergenerational practice and outdoor learning opportunities such as those provided in Forest School settings. This participatory action research project, planned by a university researcher and early years educators working together as co-researchers, set out to investigate intergenerational…

Early childhood education settings provide opportunities for children to learn what it means to be social and consequently, what it means to be a friend. Friendship-making is multifaceted among peers of similar ages and perhaps even more complex between children with a significant age discrepancy. Mixed-age settings, where children socialise…

This phenomenological study investigated Syrian refugee children's experiences of loneliness in Turkish primary schools through Max van Manen's existential framework--lived space, body, time and others. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 14 children aged 9-12 and 6 weeks of classroom observation in a public school in Ankara.…

What are the psychological consequences of receiving direct and indirect help in childhood? We conducted three preregistered experiments (N = 619, 7-9 years, 80% Dutch, 51% girls, 49% boys, mostly higher socioeconomic status) in the Netherlands (July 2020-July 2022). Children received direct help (correct answer), indirect help (hint), or no help.…

Storytelling has a long tradition in education including language learning and teaching because of its extensive benefits in language development. In second and foreign language education, stories and storytelling have been integrated into school curricula to enhance language development; however, there is scarce empirical evidence about how…

This article presents findings from a qualitative content analysis of 531 Little Golden Books that contain early childhood marginalia--any physical alteration of a book, resulting from an exercise of reader agency by a child from birth through eight years old. The primary goals of the present study were to expand the reach of this methodology by…

Phonological processing is an important contributor to decoding and spelling difficulties, but it does not fully explain word reading outcomes for all children. As orthographic knowledge is acquired, it influences phonological processing in typical readers. In the present study, we examined whether orthography affects phonological processing…

Recognizing character strengths in others, such as kindness and honesty, can encourage children to apply these strengths themselves. Developing character strengths is associated with various positive outcomes, such as improved life satisfaction and connectedness with others. As films are omnipresent in children's lives nowadays, this qualitative…

Self-regulation is a set of skills that are important for development across the life course. Unfortunately, most research in this area has been conducted in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries, which limits our understanding of how these skills develop and can be promoted in other contexts, particularly in…