Early childhood is an important time for the development of resilience. A recently completed study has followed three cohorts of resilient children and young people living in disadvantaged areas in Victoria, Australia, through different transitions in their educational careers. This paper focuses on the early childhood cohort, where we have…

The research described in this paper was carried out in an Australian early learning centre providing pre-school programs for children aged three years to six. The centre has specialist programs embedded and one of these is a music program led by a musician. A recent project, consisting of a staff singing group, was aimed at integrating the…

A gender-diverse workforce is becoming the global goal for high-quality early childhood programming. Having a balance of female and male early care and education (ECE) professionals supports greater flexibility in the gender role expectations of young children and helps girls and boys avoid stereotypic assumptions about gender. This article lists…

Family day-care (FDC) educators work autonomously to provide care and education for children of mixed ages, backgrounds and abilities. To meet the demands and opportunities of their work and regulatory requirements, educators need access to context-relevant and high quality information. No previous research has examined how and where these workers…

Components of early number sense, as identified in two Delphi studies and in the number sense literature related to mathematics difficulties, were assessed for 176 children in preschools and childcare centres across one local government area in Sydney, Australia, using tasks or modifications of tasks reported in the number sense literature. In…

Migration flows are profoundly changing the composition of classrooms. Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Between 2003 and 2015, the share of…

Children who enter school with limited proficiency in the language of instruction face a range of challenges in negotiating this new context, yet limited data have been available to describe the early developmental outcomes of this subpopulation in the Australian context. The Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) is a teacher-rated checklist…

In many countries playground design is driven more by safety than developmental benefits. As risk minimisation strategies become more stringent, many researchers and practitioners are questioning whether young children are able to take sufficient risks in play in order for their play experiences to be interesting and developmentally challenging.…

How can we better understand childhood learning in its historical development? How do institutions (including family) influence and shape what is possible in early childhood? As part of a wider study in an Australian community pre-school, this paper focuses on how cultural-historical methodology can be used to understand institutional influences…

Children have immense curiosity, a thirst for knowledge and a questioning attitude. They are innate scientists. The challenge for early childhood educators is to fuel this curiosity through the provision of appropriate learning experiences and an engaging environment within early learning centres. This paper presents a detailed case study of how a…

In an effort to better understand how Americans' mobility outcomes compare with those of their counterparts in other nations, the Pew Economic Mobility Project partnered with the Russell Sage Foundation and the Sutton Trust to commission a multi-country study on economic mobility, "Cross-National Research on Intergenerational Transmission of…

This study examined the previous and current range of educational, therapy, medical and CAM interventions used by a clearly described Australian sample of 84 families of preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorders who were enrolled in a controlled trial of early intervention services. With regard to educational and therapy…

PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) was inaugurated in 2001 as a follow-up to International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's 1991 Reading Literacy Study. Conducted every five years, PIRLS assesses the reading achievement of young students in their fourth year of schooling--an important transition…

Governments, schools and communities throughout Australia are working to improve school attendance among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students using strategies such as incentive programs, improvement to literacy and numeracy skills, school-family partnerships, transport to school, attendance monitoring, ensuring that school is a welcoming…

Governments, schools and communities throughout Australia are working to improve school attendance among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students using strategies such as incentive programs, improvement to literacy and numeracy skills, school-family partnerships, transport to school, attendance monitoring, ensuring that school is a welcoming…