As diversity grows in schools, educators must consider how to create environments where students develop respect and empathy toward others. Integrating high quality multicultural literature provides meaningful experiences for students to investigate society and acknowledge and interrogate their own beliefs and biases. While many teachers…

Fatigue is often defined as a mood state, a subjective feeling of tiredness or exhaustion that reduces our desire to continue working on a task (Bess et al., 2020; Hockey, 2013). Fatigue is ubiquitous, something most adults and children experience when struggling to complete a long or challenging task. Most of the time, all that is needed to…

This article focuses on the impact of the physical environment and construction of play culture in kindergartens. Based on a case study, we explore employees' perception of indoor physical environment and children's play. The findings revealed that gender is interwoven in the physical environments and materials. Children's play practices are…

The Early Childhood Education Quality (ECEQ) initiative is a pioneering approach toward supporting ongoing, self-organized professional development in the private kindergarten sector in Japan. The purpose of this study is to examine how kindergarten teachers and ECEQ coordinators experience this approach and view the ECEQ process. Online…

In the last decade, interactive touchscreen devices have become ubiquitous in young children, and toddlers first experience touchscreen technology before two. Although parents have a vital role in developing the home environment as a stimulus for development, they also have conflicting views on the appropriateness of using apps to deliver…

Numerous studies on reading comprehension with monolingual children have shown that oral language, such as vocabulary, is an important factor in predicting reading comprehension success. However, few studies have looked at the reading comprehension performance of bilinguals, and less is known about the contributors to its success, linguistic or…

Current research has established that inclusive schooling alone cannot ensure the social participation of all children -- a central goal of inclusive education. Therefore, this study examines whether the participation of students is dependant on the type of difficulty they experience (learning vs. behavioural) and the degree of class cohesion.…

The National Quality Framework is used across Australia to drive quality improvement in early childhood settings. Unique to Western Australia, the National Quality Standard is also used in schools to improve quality in classrooms up to Year two (seven to eight years). However, the literature suggests the National Quality Standard is too broad with…

School textbooks are media of communicating a large amount of knowledge and teachers rely their teaching practices and schedule their instructions upon them. Except for knowledge on school subjects, textbooks also promote various ideological messages, including gender representations. This study explores gender representations in the Greek primary…

Boys and girls sit together in most classrooms, but do they interact? Based on forty-year-old evidence, coeducational classes may not be coeducational but instead be segregated by gender, which may undermine student success. Our goal is to answer this question in today's classrooms. We used longitudinal data to assess gender segregation in 26…

Teacher expectations influence how children fare in education. However, we know little about how 4- and 5-year-old children in Aotearoa New Zealand perceive their curriculum experiences. This qualitative study utilised interviews to explore the perceptions of 12 children (attending kindergarten and school) regarding their teachers' expectations of…

In this study, we are looking for insights into children's learning in Japanese kindergartens from the perspectives and experiences of kindergarten teachers and children. Combining research on early childhood education in Japan and the capabilities approach, the findings indicate that children's learning is situated within a dynamic praxis,…

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected U.S. schools since March 2020. K-12 schools have put in place various forms of remote learning to continue the education of students. In trying times like these, young students face unique unprecedented challenges. Often, they need parents' and/or guardians' supervision and guidance at home. How can…

Children's early numerical competencies are of great importance for later academic achievement. Young children gain these competencies in the context of the home numeracy environment (HNE). Additionally, child characteristics and families' socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with children's competencies. In this study, we investigated…

This study examines young children's understanding of environmental issues in Malta. Informed by a socio-cultural perspective and adopting a qualitative methodology, this case study was conducted with 10 children (ages 3-7). The data were obtained through children's interpretation of photographs depicting environmental issues. The results showed…