This paper is based on the exploration of township preschool teachers' perspectives of the act of caring. Caring has always been associated with women as they are seen as nurturers. Their role as mothers is regarded as a natural part of their being. This study explored preschool teachers' understanding of caring as well as its implementation.…

Children engage in a multitude of reciprocal relationships of care within Early Childhood Care and Education settings; they act as both care-receivers and care-givers. In order to better understand the ways in which children construct care (i.e. as they receive it and provide it to others), this study investigated how 15 three- to five-year-olds…

Over the past 200 years, early childhood provision in Germany has primarily been oriented towards the goal of work-care reconciliation. Even though there is a long tradition in Germany of education-oriented approaches, the primary goal has always been care. The extensive development of early childhood centres for children under three years of age…

A number of studies have identified childcare environments as significant resources for children's development, learning through play, and contact with nature. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how, from a child's perspective, specific outdoor physical environments in preschools stimulate children's cognitive play. Emphasizing on the…

Swedish preschool teachers must systematically document activities in the preschool in order to evaluate the quality of these activities. Pedagogical documentation is one form of documentation that is proposed. The aim of this article is to discuss and create knowledge of structures and tools based on different communicative aspects of pedagogical…

This study examines how acceptable play was framed for a class of pre-Kindergarten children by their teacher and classroom aide. Using comic subjectivity theory [Zupancic, A. (2008). "The odd one in: On comedy." Cambridge: MIT Press], the author explores how children's playing at pretend violence (bad guy and pretend gun play) is…

This article aims to explore young children's (from one to three years old) perspectives of the role and pedagogy of educators in play in an Icelandic preschool. The intention is to explore the meaning that children put into involving educators in their play and whether the children experience educators' actions as a resource for their play. The…

This case study examines the development of self-regulation, socially, cognitively and emotionally, through the use of play in the curriculum in five preschool classrooms for children ages 2-5 years old at a university laboratory school. Five teachers were interviewed about their deliberate use of play to support the development of self-regulation…

This paper focuses upon the micro level of the pre-school classroom, taking the example of the Indian Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS), and the discourse of "child-centred" pedagogy that is often associated with quality pre-schooling. Through an analysis of visual data, semi-structured and film elicitation interviews drawn…

For preservice teachers in early childhood education, having a rich exposure to multiple forms of literacy in diverse communities is an essential dimension of their teacher education. In this study, 10 Australian preservice early childhood education students, in the first year of their course, visit two early childhood settings in a large city in…

This article critically reflects on the participation of young children aged 3-4 years in an ongoing outdoor learning project started in 2004. The aims of the research are to investigate children's dispositions within the outdoor environment, to elicit children's perspectives of their outdoor experiences and to investigate the relationship between…

This paper reports on a small-scale study of the social interactions between six children labelled with special educational needs and their peers in their respective early years settings. Data from play observations, photographs and staff interviews is used to examine the dynamics of the connections that they make with other children. The position…

Capitalizing on preschoolers' inherent enthusiasm and capacity for learning, the authors developed and implemented a dual-language program to enable young children to experience diversity and multiculturalism by learning two new languages: Spanish and American Sign Language. Details of the curriculum, findings, and strategies are shared.

In the past several decades the global village has witnessed a rapid decline in the number of indigenous languages. This study was a narrative inquiry within a qualitative methodology. Two research questions were used to analyze the narratives of Choctaw Nation Head Start teachers concerning technology usage for increasing, and revitalizing the…

This paper qualitatively examines the implementation of an intensive weeklong robotics curriculum in three Pre-Kindergarten classrooms (N = 37) at an early childhood STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) focused magnet school in the Harlem area of New York City. Children at the school spent one week participating in computer…