Pedagogical documentation is practised in early childhood centres all over the world as a means to gauge the learning and development of children. From the point of view of teachers, however, documentation must compete with numerous other tasks. This paper explores the strategies teachers employ in order to integrate documentation into their…

Our paper presents the methodological approach of group discussions and documentary method to investigate team beliefs in Early Childhood Education and Care facilities. The research addresses the question of how team beliefs on multilingualism and language education are shaped. To reconstruct team beliefs, we used group discussions and the…

Metacognition is a crucial prerequisite for self-regulated learning and refers to the knowledge and the regulation of cognitive processes. Several authors argue that children at preschool age can use initial metacognitive control strategies and monitor their learning activities. This fact will create the conditions for promoting metacognitive…

Although observational instruments are considered to be the gold standard for measuring toddler childcare quality, large-scale studies often have to rely on interviews or questionnaires. However, it remains unclear whether such reports can serve as reliable indicators for childcare quality. The present study used the ITERS and FCCERS to examine…

Over the last few decades, research has consistently shown that process quality in child care centers and family child care varies substantially, but is mostly at a mediocre level. Based on the NUBBEK sample (National Study on Education, Learning and Upbringing in Early Childhood), an expanded model of process quality tests the influence 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…

Although there are many studies on the use of childcare, most German research has focused on the role of socio-economic factors such as parents' level of education, household income, or migration background. Little is known about the role of child characteristics such as health or temperament. Using longitudinal data from the National Educational…

The aim of the study presented in this article is to find out whether the documentation practices in German early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres are compatible with the notion of participation by children. Children's participation has to be seen as a general educational issue in the context of democratic and inclusive education, but…

Over the past 200 years, early childhood provision in Germany has primarily been oriented towards the goal of work-care reconciliation. Even though there is a long tradition in Germany of education-oriented approaches, the primary goal has always been care. The extensive development of early childhood centres for children under three years of age…

The article takes its starting point from the current debate on sexual violence in educational institutions. It follows an ethnographic perspective without observing sexual violence directly, arguing that doing so is ethically impossible. Instead it suggests deducing risks for sexual violence through the limits of pedagogical practices. Discussing…

Economic theory predicts market failure in the market for early childhood education and care (ECEC) due to information asymmetries. We empirically investigate information asymmetries between parents and ECEC professionals in Germany, making use of a unique extension of the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). We compare quality perceptions by…

In German there is a long tradition of institutionalized daycare center-based early education. These institutions are concerned with "Bildung, Erziehung und Betreuung"--the education and care of children up to six years of age. Education and childrearing as well as care are all important but separate processes in German early childhood…

This article investigates links between staff working conditions in children's day care centres ("Kindertageseinrichtungen"--known as "Kitas" in Germany), job satisfaction, commitment and perceived stress at work. Data are based on the nationwide, representative questionnaire survey AQUA ("Arbeitsplatz und Qualität in…

In contrast to the importance of the occupational activities of pedagogues discussed in pertinent theoretical studies, there is a lack of empirical findings concerning the texture of the occupational activities of pedagogues working in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. The present study addresses these issues by examining 127…

This study investigates social and ethnic differences in the use of early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers with different learning environments in an ECEC system with universal state-subsidized provision and low fees. Based on the German National Educational Panel Study-Kindergarten Cohort from 2011, we matched data on 587 groups in 253…