Drawing on data from a preschool-based ethnography that examined both teachers and children, this paper explores gendered elements of adult--child interactions in the preschool classroom. The author describes a methodological approach that acknowledges the provision of helpfulness as a common, everyday expectation that the children had of their…

Get an inside look at the discourse interactions of third- and fourth-grade students as they consider various design proposals to solve an engineering problem and negotiate a group decision. The authors present possible factors that impact student teamwork and provide recommendations for teachers to develop students' skills for group engineering…

This article discusses a comparison of the two focal primary school third-grade Korean bilingual students' language use with their previous language use when they were first-graders by examining their heritage language (HL) use at a Korean language school. For children of immigrant families in the U.S., there has been a pervasive hypothesis that…

The present study investigated the role of music education in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in relation to the daily activities of children ages one to three, i.e. "toddlers" (N = 918) in Finnish ECEC units (N = 327). A total of 23,142 random observations were conducted. The observations focused on children's involvement,…

This article reports the findings of a qualitative interpretive research study that explored the social representations children have about the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in elementary schools in Medellín, Colombia. Sixty children in first, third, and fifth grades of public and private schools participated in the study.…

The physical environment in early childhood education and care is crucial. This paper examines the Swedish government's vision of preschool design in the welfare state of the 1970s and the conceptions of children and society upon which it was based. Presenting an investigation of reports, booklets, and study materials published by various branches…

With studies on the physical environment of preschools concentrating mostly on settings in the Western world, before establishing minimum standards of quality, developing contextually appropriate physical environment factors become pertinent in Malaysia as a universal and possibly unaffordable high-quality standard may lead to ill-informed policy…

Purpose: The article investigates how to make a broader understanding of sustainability relevant for early childhood education (ECE) guided by the four dimensions suggested by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: ecological, economic and social/cultural sustainability, and good governance. Design/Approach/Methods:…

One of the key tenets of critical literacy that I operate from is that it works to disrupt normalized social practices. In keeping with this tenet, I have crafted this paper in such a way that it somewhat disrupts the normalized format of academic writing by creating an audit trail comprised of artifacts that represent significant moments in my…

The purpose of this article is to explore family-oriented partnership models to engage families of young children with disabilities in inclusive programmes. Family engagement is important for the education of children of all ages, but it is especially critical for the success of young children with disabilities in inclusive settings. However, the…

Background: Early childhood education (ECE) has recently been introduced in Zambian government schools, leading to a need to examine the quality of mathematics lessons. Aim: This study focussed on guided play lessons on shapes in pre-mathematics classes and examined how they could be implemented and what children could learn in the class. Setting:…

Drawing on field-based research in selected government-run and private preschool centres in three selected districts of the Indian state of West Bengal, this article makes four basic arguments. First, there is a need to both defend public provisioning of early childhood education for equity goals and demand its major improvement on quality…

Polarisation between the least and most active pupils is increasing both in Denmark and worldwide, and the least active pupils often have poorer mental health and low physical self-esteem. However, the least active pupils' perspectives on physical activity in school are underrepresented in the research. This study explores how the least active…

By illustrating how eight Korean English language learners came to understand embedded assumptions from traditional fairy tales and retell the tales through a critical literacy framed English literacy workshop, this qualitative study argues that fairy tales as English reading texts can effectively cultivate English learners' critical stance and…

Integration of technology in schools rests on effective teacher education programmes that help teachers create new teaching and learning methods and adopt them for classroom use. Social learning processes play a key role in this, but there is a lack of understanding of their role in technology adoption and in evidencing them in teacher education…