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…

This quantitative study examines the connection between the years that children spent in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and their social orientations and main objects of attention. The data were collected within the Progressive Feedback project by observing children: 20,457 observations of 972 six-year-olds from 360 child groups in…

This article examines the unfolding joy in young children's literacy practices in a Finnish early years classroom. We focus on the unfolding of joy in intra-action among children, adults and materials during literacy learning endeavours by thinking with "new" materialist theories, and the data from an early years multiliteracies project…

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…

The Finnish education system has garnered significant international interest due to its consistently high rankings for decades. However, the same level of interest has not been extended to the country's early childhood education system. In Finland, early childhood education and care are regarded as the cornerstones of the Finnish education system,…

Early childhood forms the fundamental basis for developing various social-emotional skills and represents a unique opportunity to lay the foundation for healthy development. Insensitive learning environments in early childhood may lead to social-emotional difficulties, increasing the risk of developing severe behavioral problems. However,…

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…

Finland has traditionally had a universal early childhood education and care (ECEC) system like the other Nordic countries, but in the last 15 years this system has undergone considerable marketisation and privatisation suggested to enable parental choice of ECEC. Much of the existing research on parental ECEC decisions has been conducted in…

This study seeks to understand how children express themselves socially and emotionally in play negotiations in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. It addresses the following research questions: What strategies do children employ in play negotiations? How do these strategies manifest themselves socially and emotionally? The study…

Only a very few studies to date have comprehensively assessed children's knowledge of sexuality. In this study, we examined the level of sexual knowledge among children aged 3-6 years in Finland. We analysed children's explanations of what they saw in drawings related to genital naming, conception and childbirth, safety skills, and adult sexual…

This study was conducted to determine how total fundamental movement skill (FMS) score and, separately, locomotor skill (LMS), and object control skill scores in children 3-8 years old predicted their specific-intensity physical activity 3 years later. Overall, 441 Finnish children (51.7% female, baseline mean age of 5.6 years) participated in the…

In this conceptual paper, the affective intensity of joy is approached as becoming. Following a relational ontology, joy is attended to both as performed in relation to others (human and more-than-human) and as a performative agent. This paper is based on an empirical exploration of the remarkableness of young children's everyday lives in a…

Today, digital games are considered important tools for learning, but using them in early childhood education and care (ECEC) has raised the question of educators' roles when children play an educational digital game. The aim of this study was to explore how ECEC educators differed in their attitudes and perceptions toward and ways of supporting…

Purpose: This prospective longitudinal study aimed to explore (a) the development of social-pragmatic understanding of children with bilateral hearing aids (BiHAs), bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs), and typical hearing (TH) between the ages of 4 and 6 years and (b) group differences between children with BiHAs, BiCIs, and TH. Method: The Pragma…

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…