This article documents the initial work and encounters of a pedagogista with a group of educators on the west coast of Canada. The article retraces the complexities and vulnerabilities of such encounters, and presents them as generative and rich conversations that were carried along by, and not despite, their difficulty. They followed a practice…

Growing a nature kindergarten that can flourish takes a community, careful planning, and sustained support. In 2011, the Sooke School District in British Columbia, Canada undertook the project of creating a nature kindergarten when outdoor programs of this kind did not exist in the Canadian public school system. Inspired by the well-established…

Policy makers around the world increasingly mandate play-based learning in kindergarten classrooms, a pedagogical approach backed by research espousing not only the developmental appropriateness of play-based learning for this age group but also the benefits to students' academic achievement. Despite these mandates, researchers continue to see a…

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…

Two Anishnabek kindergarten teachers discuss four principles of Indigenous pedagogies in a project with a university researcher that created a context for children to engage in activities to learn their Anishnabek language and culture, and create positive identities. The university researcher sent a rabbit puppet named Niichii (Friend), who was…

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…

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…

This article presents a study about the impact of COVID-19 on childcare center educators in Quebec (Canada). Regulated childcare services were closed due to the pandemic between March 16 and May 31, 2020, in areas considered "hot" (highly affected by the pandemic). During this time, some centers were transformed into "emergency…

Kindergarten education is changing. Current reforms have increased accountability structures requiring teachers to integrate assessments throughout their instruction to support academic learning while retaining developmentally appropriate pedagogies such as play-based learning. Despite these reforms, comparatively little research has been…

In this essay, I reflect on my lived experiences as a girl child growing up in my home country of Botswana, and also as a mother in a foreign country, Canada. I am experimenting with my personal essay and making connections with academic articles that will help me understand my behaviors, attitudes, and responses to challenging situations that…

Cultural stories provide us with a repertoire of narratives through which we interpret and construct our understandings of the world, including our gendered understandings of the early childhood teacher. Through her notion of "écriture feminine", Cixous [1976. "The Laugh of the Medusa." Trans K. Cohen and P. Cohen. "Signs:…

This study aimed to examine the unique and interactive contributions of the quality of mothers' and fathers' relationships with their toddlers to the prediction of children's subsequent executive functioning (EF). The sample included 46 low-risk middle-class families. The quality of mother-child and father-child interactions was assessed…

The integration of technology into classrooms at all levels of education is ubiquitous, however, some educators are experiencing challenges in implementing technology into their instruction. This study sought to identify ways to support Kindergarten educators (teachers and Early Childhood Educators [ECEs]) to enhance reading instruction with…

Research Findings: Research has demonstrated the developmental and educational benefits of play. Despite these benefits, teacher-directed academic instruction is prominent in kindergarten. There is increasing acknowledgment in curricula and policies of the challenges presented by a lack of play in classrooms and the need to support academic…

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…