There is currently a debate as to whether academic content at kindergarten crowds out time spent in creative arts, free play, and physical activity. Analyzing kindergarten teachers' reports of their instruction from the ECLS-K:2011, this study examined whether core academic content or advanced academic content in math or English language arts…

Scholars have argued against a post-COVID return to normality on the grounds that the pandemic offers an opportunity to break with the past and imagine a different, more just future. In this analysis of pre-kindergarten teachers' reflections on teaching during COVID-19 in the state of Michigan, we take up the notion of the pandemic as a portal to…

Creative drama has great potential and its implementation in education from pre-school education requires research, as evidenced by the number of scientific studies that have been registered in international research databases over the last ten years. The aim of the research was to examine the use of creative drama methods within kindergartens in…

This article explores children's self-initiated outdoor play and holistic learning in a Norwegian kindergarten. While children's self-initiated play is valued in Nordic ECEC, it is rarely analyzed in relation to holistic learning. To explore how children's self-initiated outdoor play contributes to children's holistic learning in ECEC, we observed…

Young children encounter uncertainty and challenges on a daily basis; through their intuitions, experiences and experimentation they construct knowledge, skills and dispositions towards probabilistic concepts. The aim of this exploratory ethnographic study is to identify how young children engage with probabilistic thinking and reasoning while…

Early language experiences are vital to children's future success in school and quality language-rich interactions can be promoted at home and around the community in many creative ways. Project ELLO (Everyday Language and Learning Opportunities) is a research-based public engagement campaign that began as a novel and efficient way to address…

Informal science educators' (ISEs) work with young children has received limited attention in the literature. We investigated ISEs' goals for preschool-aged audiences (3- to 5-year-old children), methods they describe for achieving these goals, and how ISEs understand young children as "doing science" in their venues. We interviewed 35…

Music education provided in the pre-school period serves many purposes such as distinguishing sounds, using their voice correctly, expressing themselves, let children get familiar with different musical cultures, gaining a sense of music and rhythm, and supporting the creativity of children. Developing all these skills is only possible by making…

This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children's "Bildung." The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild "Bildung." It explores the role of "Bildung" and self-cultivation in preschools…

Italian makerspace is based on the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach founded by Loris Malaguzzi, in which the environment plays a critical role in children's development. Malaguzzi believed that the makerspace is the third teacher (joining family and classroom teachers), and children express themselves through a "hundred…

Defining categories of musical actions in improvisation with young children is challenging due to the spontaneous, creative and emergent nature of interactions. Following a literature review, two new constructs were proposed to circumscribe and classify different types of events in improvisation, Creative Musical Agency (CMA) and Socio-Musical…

This study aims to determine the opinions of preschool pre-service teachers on the adequacy of online drama lessons throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. A descriptive survey model of the qualitative research methods was used and online drama lessons were run over a 12-weekperiod. Participants of the research were 64 pre-school prospective teachers…

The aim of this research is to investigate multi-dimensional self-efficacy beliefs of prospective teachers towards creative drama activities in terms of various variables. The study group consists of 288 prospective teachers attending preschool education and classroom teaching degree undergraduate programs of a private university located in…

The present study explored pre-primary students' investigative activity during a longitudinal, integrative technology education project: the Power Creatures project. Investigative activity refers to the way young children act in a learning context that combines inquiry-based activities with creative hands-on activities, such as designing and…

This article aims to use the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) framework to analyse the participation of an early childhood teacher in children's creative play, in order to enhance and support creativity. The study is grounded on Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, and highlights teacher's play involvement and the arts as a cultural…