The quality of early childhood experiences is crucial to a child's development and educational success. Yet few early childhood education and care services in the world today offer a consistently high level of educational quality. In particular, educational quality depends on the context's characteristics. The aim of this study was therefore to…

Educators strongly influence young children's behaviors, and their perspectives regarding physical activity (PA) and screen-viewing (SV) may influence their provision in childcare. This study gathered early childhood education (ECE) candidates' perspectives regarding: (1) the importance of their role(s) in promoting PA/reducing SV; (2) how their…

In this conceptual article, I argue that there is a difference between codified ethics and the ethical. I begin by situating code of ethics in the broader professionalization movement in early childhood education. Drawing upon Gunilla Dahlberg and Peter Moss (2005), I discuss the dematerialization of early childhood educators (ECEs) and the…

The 2016 wildfires in Alberta, Canada, created numerous challenges for families with children under five years of age, due to the limited postdisaster access to early childhood development (ECD) programs, resources, and supports. In the immediate aftermath of the wildfires, families struggled to balance recovery activities with childcare…

This book provides significant information regarding the policies and provisions for early childhood teacher education programs in universities in fourteen different countries. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is expanding rapidly across the globe with unprecedented numbers of children attending EC centres, requiring the investment in…

In the Canadian province of Ontario, the early childhood education and care workforce continues to be undervalued, underpaid and burdened with challenging working conditions. Drawing on Fairclough and Lazar, this study employed a feminist critical discourse analysis to explore the discourses of care work present in the 2018 childcare platforms of…

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity to examine the initial policies developed by Australian, Canadian, English, German, Greek and Irish governments to limit the spread of the virus. This has revealed governments' conceptualisation of the early childhood sector and its workforce. This paper argues that neoliberal ideology and…

Drawing on our analysis of focus group and narrative data, together with a review of initial educator/teacher education programs designed for northern Indigenous educators/teachers, we propose culturally appropriate programs that address the unique needs of northern Ontario Indigenous educators and teachers. The professional trajectories and…

This study investigated the implementation of a full-day kindergarten programme in Ontario, Canada. Key to the implementation of this programme has been a new kind of educator team consisting of a certified teacher and a registered early childhood educator and a complementary partnership in which each team member contributes equally. Our research…

We examined whether the moderating role of cortisol in the relation between physical peer victimization and physical aggression was better accounted for by a diathesis-stress model or a differential susceptibility model using a multi-informant approach (direct observations, teacher reports, and parent reports) of 198 preschool-aged children…

The Investigating Quality (IQ) Project was conceptualized as a multiple systems approach to transforming early childhood education, care, and development (ECE/ECD) in British Columbia, Canada. Those systems extended from provincial government to local programs, from innovative policies to new approaches to practice. Fortunately, the tenure of the…

In most majority countries, early childhood educators' work occurs in a context increasingly dominated by neoliberal logic. A large body of literature emphasises that neoliberalism flourishes in society by fuelling mutual distrust and competition among people to pursue individual performance and material gain. This system has crept into education…

This study investigated teachers' experiences of closeness during interactions with the group of children in child care. Structured interviews were conducted with 24 female teachers who were teaching children between the ages of three and five (mean age = 3.9) regarding their perceptions of closeness with the group of children in the class.…

In recent years there have been significant changes in education across the globe, largely as a result of changing demographics, technological developments, and increased globalization. Relatedly, the changing needs of societies and families, along with new research findings, provide new directions in early childhood education. Consequently, early…

This paper aims to describe the quality of play as offered by early childhood educators working with four-year-olds within an educational childcare service. It also aims to identify the correlation between the quality of play support and a child's cognitive, language and socio-emotional development. Finally, it focuses on the factors associated…