Toddlers' peer conflicts offer meaningful opportunities for toddlers to learn social-emotional skills, including learning to understand another's perspective and learning how to regulate emotions. This study explored 31 teachers' self-reports of their roles, teaching practices and the conditions that influenced their pedagogical responses to…

This article engages critically with the concept of agency in infant and toddler educational discourse. It is argued that agency, when conceptualised with emphasis on individuality and the autonomous self, poses a conceptual "dead end" for those who are not-yet-in-language, such as babies and toddlers. In considering agency as an aspect…

Using multi-level growth modeling, we examined the effect of several measures of maternal input on growth in children's word types from 15-54 months. Mothers and children engaged in a picture description task (N = 77) at 15, 24, 33, and 54 months; the frequency of children's observed word types at each wave was coded and additional independent…

It is not only in families that young children are influenced to become members of their culture. Around the world and within individual countries, culture influences how care is provided to infants and toddlers in child care settings. In turn, infants and toddlers begin to learn how to act and think as members of their culture. From ways that…

This paper critically examines current concerns regarding professional issues in labour force development for teachers with children up to two years of age (UtoT). The concerns in New Zealand (NZ) relate to whether initial teacher-education (ITE) qualifications prepare teachers to work with children UtoT, involving synergy between ITE and the…

An important essence becoming bicultural and bilingual is for additional languages to be learnt early on. This article is based on an infant and toddler case study within my doctoral research to discover how practitioners with this age group incorporate the bicultural curriculum into their teaching. The methodology was action development which is…

This project/report partnered researchers with teachers from two centres to explore and theorise understandings of children's inquiries and working theories. This project investigated the following questions: (1) What is the nature and content of infants', toddlers' and young children's inquiries and working theories in relation to their everyday…

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (short form) was adapted for Samoan and Tongan speakers in New Zealand. The adaptation process drew upon language samples from Samoan and Tongan parent-child dyads with 20- and 26-month-old children and adult informants. The resulting 100-word language inventories in Samoan and Tongan, plus a…

Three studies examined aspects of child care in New Zealand. In the first study, supervisors of 38 child care centers were interviewed about the organization of their centers. Based on the responses, categories were developed to describe the type of center, the persons responsible for management decisions, organization of care by age grouping, and…

This study examined the "educare" experiences of infants and toddlers in New Zealand child care centers to evaluate whether those experiences provided opportunities for learning. Subjects were 200 under-2-year-old children (99 boys and 101 girls) from 100 childcare centers, 2 children from each center. Subjects were each observed for 80…

Assessed long-term predictive validity of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Sentences (CDI:WS) for children's expressive and receptive vocabulary development. Sixty-one New Zealand children were assessed with a New Zealand version of the CDI, and with the Expressive Vocabulary Test and Peabody Picture Vocabulary…

Drawing from the personal visits of an early childhood specialist to centers for infants and toddlers in Britain and the United States, this paper focuses on issues of teacher education, deregistration, and professionalism. Introductory material describes the child care situation in Aotearoa, New Zealand, highlighting the increasing demand for…

This pilot study investigated methods for meeting the needs of children under 2.5 years of age who attend play centers with older children. Also studied were the effects of the toddlers' presence on the other children, parent helpers, and supervisors. Advisors at each of 27 play centers in New Zealand completed a questionnaire with the help of…