"Research Findings": The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand parents' perceptions of changes in early care and education (ECE) in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea. Thirty-three parents of young children who attend three different types of ECE programs (i.e. kindergartens, childcare centers, and…

Recently play environments and materials have changed with digital materials becoming increasingly available for young children. Parents' preferences about the importance and appropriateness of digital play may influence the quality and the quantity of digital play opportunities children receive at home. The purpose of this research is to examine…

This study examined weight concerns and body dissatisfaction among female kindergarteners and assessed their relationships to body mass index (BMI) and parental, peer, and media influences. A total of 90 girls in South Korea were recruited and two-step cluster analysis was used to examine body image concerns and their association with diverse…

Background: Recent research suggests that diverse types of copying, including pure copying, copying fluency and delayed copying, contributed to children's spelling of Chinese characters and English words but not to word recognition. This study examined the relations of pure copying, copying fluency and delayed copying to beginning word reading and…

This study examined whether different cognitive correlates are associated with spelling of different target types, such as phonologically consistent and inconsistent syllables, of Korean Hangul among 94 five-year-old first language (L1) Korean children and 41 foreign language (FL) learners who are Hong Kong Chinese college students. Korean…

This paper shares reflections and stories from a collaborative design process between the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and a global network of community-based educators to develop a creative coding app called OctoStudio, which supports children and families to create and share interactive projects on mobile devices. The app…

The purposes of this study were to identify the qualities criteria of constructive play and the teacher's role to enhance the qualities of constructive play. The participants for this study were ninety-seven 5-year-old children (53 boys and 44 girls) attending one kindergarten located in S city, K province in South Korea. Ten research assistants…

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into how Korean temporary migrant mothers conceptualize the nature of parent involvement in the USA. The participants in this study consisted of Korean mothers who were educated in Korea, migrated temporarily to the USA for educational purposes, and sent their children to American schools. Using the…

Does learning to read influence one's visual skill? In Study 1, kindergartners from Hong Kong, Korea, Israel, and Spain were tested on word reading and a task of visual spatial skill. Chinese and Korean kindergartners significantly outperformed Israeli and Spanish readers on the visual task. Moreover, in all cultures except Korea, good readers…

The National Research Council emphasizes using tools of representation as an essential element of spatial thinking. However, it is debatable at what age the use of spatial representation for spatial thinking skills should begin. This study investigated whether young Korean children possess the potential to understand map-like representation using…

This study examines a salient intrasyllabic phonological unit in Korean, the body-coda unit, its role in literacy skills in Korean, and a possible source of the salience of body-coda units in the spoken language. Data were collected from Korean-speaking, monolingual beginning readers (41 kindergarteners, 40 first graders). The results indicate…

This article draws on data from two recent studies of young children in early childhood settings. One study was of children in a Korean private kindergarten, the other of children in a UK reception class. In each study, the data discussed include both evidence from "home" (including parent interviews) and evidence from "school"…

This study investigated how teachers help children participate in and contribute to group discussion on problematic moral situations in their kindergarten classrooms and what meaning the group discussion has in a Korean cultural context. Participants were students (N=90) in three kindergarten classes located in Seoul, Korea, and their teachers.…