Increased emphasis on academics has led to play becoming a controversial and topical issue in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Although play has been extensively researched we still lack consensus on what play is and how play is actually implemented and used in ECEC classrooms. The present cross-cultural study aims at…

Play, and especially free play, offers a unique opportunity for children to act with agency. Yet the regulated and routinized structure of early childhood education and care settings, impedes children's agentic action which is limited by adult-imposed rules. The present cross-cultural study aims to explore the extent to which Early Childhood…

Drawing on kindergarten teachers' and University departments' reactions to the Greek government's initiative to adopt an integrated Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system, the present study aimed to explore how various ECEC professional groups working in the two main preschool programs operating in Greece define different aspects…

Acknowledging the fact that parental engagement is more beneficial during early childhood compared to other developmental stages many countries have institutionalised parental engagement. In Nigeria, the government has taken initiatives in order to involve parents in their child's development by encouraging the establishment of School Management…

Although Greece has a dichotomous system both in terms of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services and in terms of ECEC workers' preparation programmes, in 2016 Greek government's Organization for ECEC organized an open colloquy about the adoption of a 'Unified National Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care', causing a heated…

The present study, employing the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey, aims to compare and explore possible differences to the levels of burnout reported by the two main professional groups working in the early childhood education and care sector in Greece, that is kindergarten teachers and childcare workers. The correlation between the…

Though a host of research has explored the association between beliefs and practices, limited research has been undertaken exploring the association between beliefs and intentions. Considering the potentially important influence of teachers' beliefs on their practices, the present study aimed to examine what, if anything, Greek and Cypriot…

The continuum of beliefs reported by Greek pre-service kindergarten teachers and how those beliefs relate to classroom practices are explored in this article. Considering the potentially important influence of teachers' beliefs on their practices, the level of early childhood teachers' beliefs about developmentally appropriate practices (DAPs) and…

Early childhood education and care is a multifaceted institution. Based on children's age, a number of different settings operate, which have usually two distinct aims. Kindergartens provide mainly education whereas day care centres provide care. Yet, in recent years, the need to establish programmes which provide both education and care to…

Early childhood education is a profession which requires the professional staff to spend considerable time in intense involvement with other people. The pressure from the demands this profession has can create a sense of physical and emotional exhaustion that often leads to burnout. Thus, previous research has linked perceptions of the work…

The experiences children have and the attachments they form early in life have a decisive, long-lasting impact on their later development and learning. The present study aims at exploring the continuum of the beliefs reported by Greek pre-service kindergarten teachers and how those beliefs relate to their intensions about the importance of…

Although a host of research has explored the association between beliefs and practices, limited research has been conducted exploring the association between beliefs and intensions. The present study aimed to explore Cypriot pre-service kindergarten teachers' self-reported beliefs and intensions about the importance of teacher/child interactions…

The study reported here examined Greek parents' perceptions of barriers to men entering the early childhood education and care profession and their recommendations for recruiting more males into the field. Parents were asked to respond on a Likert scale to statements regarding males' decision to enter the profession, possible benefits for male…

The present study is aimed at examining the level of quality and care provided by Greek preschool programmes, from the researcher's and early childhood educators' perspectives and verify whether they evaluate with the same way. Research results indicate that according to the researcher's assessment both preschool and infant/toddler classrooms…

Though quality in early childhood education and care has attracted last decades enormous research interest there is still not a unanimous agreement about its definition. Yet, almost all definitions attempted include interaction, group size, adult:child ratio and early childhood educators' level of education, as important indices of quality.…