This article examines the professional identities of early years educators who develop their professional activity in baby rooms, in a nursery school context. In addition to conceptualising professional identities, it outlines the political, legislative, training and professional practice contexts in Portugal, where the research was conducted.…

Purpose: This research aims to understand the learning with regard to didactic knowledge of an early childhood teacher who participated in a Lesson Study (LS) on the topic of patterns, as well as her perspective about LS as a teacher education process. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative case study of an early childhood teacher who…

Education systems around the world, faces the major challenge of including all children in schools. Differentiated instruction (DI) is proposed as a pedagogical approach that support social, emotional and academic success for all students in the context of heterogeneous classrooms. Although, recent research draws the attention to the inconsistent…

Educators' acts and verbalizations toward children during daily routines can promote children's early participation, self-agency, and self-esteem. In this study, we investigate the association between the educator's type of Verbalizations (Number of Suggestions, Directions, Orders, Positive and Negative Feedback, Teaching, Questions) and the…

This study aims to explore preschool educators' attitudes towards to information and communication technology (ICT), its factors and implementation of ICT tools in preschool education by the educators. To this end, a mixed-method research approach was applied, comprising qualitative and quantitative data, collected using survey and field…

It is well established that the amount of time children spend playing reflects on their learning, quality of exploration, and relationships. However, little is known about what the main benefits for adults are. In this study, we explore the association between the adults' daily time spent playing with their children (in minutes) and the adults'…

This study explores how brief in-service training influences preschool teachers' awareness of competences relevant for building high-quality teacher-child relationships. A pre- and post-test design was used, with a 5-h training session in-between. Thirty-four in-service preschool teachers completed a video-based task before and after training.…

Literature and research have shown that professional development constitutes an essential dimension in constructing both work and professional identity. An important aspect in such development is training. In the field of adult education, different authors (Pratt, 1993; Mezirow, 1985; Schön, 1996; Silva, 2007) emphasize the importance of placing…

In recent years, there has been considerable investment at the European Union level in expanding early childhood education and care (ECEC) facilities. In line with this quantitative substantial initiative, research and social policies are increasingly focusing on the quality of such facilities. High quality depends, among other things, on…

Children's exposure to screens has been increasing in recent years and so has the concern about its impact on children's development. This study aims to analyze preschool teachers' and parents' views on the influence of screen-time exposure on children's development. Semi-structured interviews with preschool teachers (n = 9), as well as data from…

Research Findings: This study examined whether teacher-child interaction quality varied as a function of type of activity in toddler classrooms in four European countries (Finland, Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal). It also investigated whether specific activity settings, namely levels of adult involvement, use of whole group, and children's…

This paper examines the role of professionalism in teachers' change in practice related to dialogue and argumentation. Data were collected from 14 pre-primary and primary school teachers who participated in a professional development programme with an emphasis on promoting values such as tolerance, empathy, inclusion and social responsibility…

Work-family conflict constitutes an important source of occupational stress predicting teachers' burnout, and cognitive variables have shown to be core structures in explaining human adaptation to stress. Nevertheless, the role of cognitive appraisal needs to be fully analysed to comprehend how it can mediate the relationship between stress and…

This study aimed to examine the unique and joint contributions of behavioral and emotional self-regulation to key but understudied emergent literacy and early social skills, disentangling sex-differentiated paths. The participants were 231 Portuguese preschoolers (50% boys; M[subscript age] = 59.5 months; SD = 8.5) enrolled in 47 classrooms. In…

Within the enhancement of technology and its ongoing integration into formal education setting, learning environments have been challenged to operationalize and arrange systems that engage pedagogy and technology together. The nature of this ongoing transformation is closely related to the paradigms that reign in the twenty-first century, in a…