Background: Studies indicate that access to nature may increase general human health and wellbeing. As a learning environment, the outdoors can also positively influence children's personal and social growth, healthy development, wellbeing and learning abilities. To maximise the potential offered by outdoor learning, it is necessary to gain deeper…

Young children's voices have been nearly absent in the study of belonging during the early years. In this article, we propose a more inclusive understanding about "how" to study belonging, as well as "what else" must be studied in early childhood education. The importance of conducting research "with" young children…

This article bewilders dominant discourses about child-animal relations by acknowledging and challenging the work of Gail Melson who positions animals as providing emotional, social and pedagogical support for children. Melson's psychological approach rests upon implicit assumptions that shape and support anthropocentrism whilst also critiquing a…

This paper addresses the entanglements of the earth's becoming in a multi site cross hemisphere study of the infinite moments of young children's world making, recorded in multimodal videos, still images, and children's productions. The postqualitative project was informed by new materialist and posthuman theorising. The researchers conducted…

Background/Context: There are recent trends of bringing highly defined, teacher-directed pedagogies into early-childhood contexts in Australia, the United States. and other Western contexts. While the justification for these moves is often the improvement of outcomes for young children, they ignore the large body of research that attests to the…

Digital technologies are increasingly present in young children's lives. How can early education systems get the best out of digitalisation while minimising its risks? This is especially urgent as the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated our reliance on digital tools -- tools that enabled young children to continue learning when early education…

This study sought an answer to the question whether the digitalization of play is technological mutation or digital evolution. To this end, 14 studies published over the last five years were reviewed and discussed under four themes, namely digital technology and children, parents', and teachers' perceptions of digital technology, screen effects,…

With the increasing acknowledgement of the benefits of early childhood education, there is a need to ask critical questions about whether ample leadership exists for guiding ambitious systemic change in the field. This review of leadership in early childhood educational contexts between 1995 and 2015 examines the epistemological assumptions…

Learn how exemplary countries are dealing with the challenges and joys of advancing the development of their youngest citizens. In this book, Sharon Lynn Kagan and her contributors systematically examine how six diverse countries go about envisioning, designing, and implementing their services to young children and their families. "The Early…

The first years of life lay the foundations for a child's future development and learning. Many countries have increased their financial support for provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) over the past years. More recently, the focus of debate has been shifting from expanding access to affordable ECEC to enhancing its quality. A…

This book demonstrates clear links between play and Australian education policy and framework documents, including the Early Years Learning Framework and National Quality Standards. It provides clear and in-depth coverage of essential theories, including good coverage of the Reggio Emilia approach and provides real life examples of professional…

In practice, pedagogical leadership cannot be considered on its own. It has to be considered within the full extent of leadership roles and responsibilities expected of today's early childhood leaders. This is not possible without an adequate understanding and theorizing of the foundational concepts of leadership and pedagogy. Here, the authors…

This paper presents a model of the approaches open to government to ensure that early childhood services are affordable to families. We derived the model from a comparative literature review of affordability approaches taken by government, both in Australia and internationally. The model adds significantly to the literature by proposing a means to…