Collaboration is an important aspect of social activity associated with young children's digital gameplay. Children organise their participation as they communicate with and support one another, through sharing knowledge and problem-solving strategies, displaying their expertise, encouraging others and creatively exploring possibilities for…

This article proposes utilising the theory of practice architectures to uncover and make explicit the beliefs and implicit theories of early childhood educators, as well as to examine the conditions out of which they have emerged. The beliefs and implicit theories of early childhood educators influence many early childhood practices and play a…

Building on the rich tradition of 'teacher as researcher' in mathematics education, I describe a study undertaken whilst working as a mathematics specialist in an Australian primary school. The focus of the study was on examining whether explicitly teaching students test-taking strategies ('test-wiseness') improved their performance on a…

The author provides an overview of several theories of numeracy acquisition that, despite criticisms, have withstood the passage of time and continue to influence policy and practices in schools. These are followed by a brief review of some recent research in the domain of numeracy learning and teaching. The article ends with some of the current…

Early childhood education settings are characterized by the use of play-based learning and the assessment of children's play by teachers to promote further learning. A problem with technology use in early childhood settings is that little is known about how children learn to use technologies through play. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult…

If you think of play as "the work of children" (Whitebread, Basilio, Kuvalja & Verma, 2012) then toys are surely the "tools of their trade". The involvement of scientific principles in how they work makes certain toys ideal stimuli for science investigations. This article describes a practical investigation suitable for…

This paper examines the potential of posthumanism to enable a reconceptualisation of young children's literacies from the starting point of movement and sound in the more-than-human world. We propose movement as a communicative practice that always occurs as a more complex entanglement of relations within more-than-human worlds. Through our…

The Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test (GHDT) is a non-verbal assessment designed to infer young children's levels of intellectual development and understanding via the collection of three human figure drawings (HFDs)--one each of a man, a woman and a self-portrait. This paper presents findings from a research project that applied the Rasch model for…

Internationally, cultural renewal and language revitalisation are occurring among Indigenous people whose lands were colonised by foreign nations. In Australia, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are striving for the re-voicing of their mother tongue and the re-practicing of their mother culture to achieve cultural renewal in the…

Otitis Media (OM) is an important global issue that can have a long-lasting impact on a child's life. There is no easy fix! For a family who has a child with OM, the ramifications can be short term and have minimal consequences, or they can be very complex and involve medical, educational, behavioural and wellbeing issues, and may even be…

Ear infection or otitis media (OM) occurs in many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children at a young age and tends to persist over a long period of time. Chronic OM is associated with conductive hearing loss that reduces a child's access to sounds. This can have a negative impact on development of listening and communication skills. Primary…

Although children with developmental language disorder demonstrate poor inferential comprehension, few studies have evaluated the effect of interventions to improve inferencing. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of a small-group intervention designed to improve oral inferential comprehension of narrative discourse. Thirty-seven 5- to…

Parent and family engagement has long been a significant element in early childhood (EC) education. Lack of family involvement can lead to a number of consequences in children's physical and emotional development. However, attempts and strategies used by early learning centres and childcare centres to resolve this issue are often unsuccessful.…

In Australia, children with developmental delay and disability, who have an IQ less than 70, are eligible to attend a specialist school. These schools are called special schools or special developmental schools. Teachers, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists work in these schools together with integration aids. Children with…

Research-informed immersive professional learning in schools is another avenue for pre-service teachers (PSTs) to develop their understanding and reflection about theories, methods, and practices of teaching and learning. From a collaborative research project that aimed at developing the intercultural capabilities of Prep level students in a…