The aim of this article is to examine current national early years' policy reform, which emphasises the importance of service integration, national quality standards and a quality knowledge base for educators concerning the provision of early childhood education and care. Using Queensland, Australia, as an example, a policy discourse analysis…

The article examines the standardization of primary education as one of the development trends of the British school at the present moment in the context of improving its efficiency and quality. It analyses the positive results of the standard-based reforms (modernization of primary education content, improvement of younger students' outcomes,…

The Republic of Ireland is an island situated in north-west Europe inhabited by 4.6 million people, with 2.8% between 0 and 4 years of age with a disability (Central Statistics Office, 2012). The Irish Government funds the Irish health services, which, in turn, directly and indirectly funds disability services. Education and Disability legislation…

This article uses the developmental systems approach, an approach developed by M. Guralnick (2001), with an aim to assess and evaluate early childhood intervention (ECI) practices in Australia. The author explores the Australian national context of ECI and its complexities and conclude with recommendations to address (a) the possibility of a…

This occasional paper is the fourth in a series on the National Quality Framework (NQF). This paper offers detailed insights into education and care service quality ratings for Quality Area 3 (physical environment) of the National Quality Standard (NQS). The focus is on ensuring the physical environment of a service is safe, suitable and provides…

The opposing principles of local control and increased standardization are a prominent tension in the United States' education system. Since at least the early 1990s, this tension has taken shape around the accountability movement, defined by educational reforms that hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for performance on new…

This study examined the association between early childhood classroom quality and preschool children's social skills and emotional problems. Teachers completed the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) and the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment-Clinical Form (DECA-C). Participants included 141 preschool children from 10…

This article provides an overview of the Education Meets Play study that will investigate early childhood educators' use of play-based learning, now mandatory under the "National Quality Standard". By building on what can be gleaned about educators' approaches to play-based learning prior to the implementation of the "Early Years…

Young teachers often struggle with pacing and the ability to cover more than one or two songs and activities in a single 30-minute general music class. Included in this article are lesson activities that show it is not only possible to include many of the National Standards in a single lesson, but also possible to sing, play, and create in every…

The development of standards in early childhood is associated with governments wanting to assert their influence on what young children should know and be able to do before they enter formal schooling. In South Africa the National Early Learning and Development Standards (NELDS), released in 2009, attempts to assert influence in the context of…

This report is the second installment (Wave II) of the longitudinal study examining the perceptions and experiences of services under the National Quality Framework (NQF) with respect to their level of regulatory burden. The Wave II perception survey was conducted in February and March 2014. The findings in this report are divided into two themes:…

This occasional paper is the first in a series on the National Quality Framework (NQF). This paper offers detailed insights into education and care service quality ratings for Quality Area 1 -- Educational Program and Practice, which focuses on ensuring that educational program and practice is stimulating and engaging, enhances children's learning…

Literacy skills acquired during the first years of schooling have been recognised as the key to students' learning success. However, despite the continuing efforts by the New Zealand government and teachers there is still a large proportion of students who struggle to become literate. To address this issue the Ministry of Education funded selected…

Phenomenograhy, as an approach to educational research, began appearing in publications early in the 1980s with the predominant form of data drawn from semi-structured interviews. As a qualitative approach, it is used to describe the variations in people's experiences through their own discourse and for analyzing meaning that people ascribe to…

Creativity is important for young children learning mathematics. Comparing the investment theory of creativity and national standards and principles for early mathematics shows that doing mathematics is more than applying rules and procedures; rather, learning mathematics takes a lot of creativity. However, much literature claimed that creativity…