Background: Early childhood is a formative period during which distinguishable development has projections of bearing desirable outcomes within an individual. Hence, physical, language, cognitive, emotional and social independence are healthy components of a typical child's development that early childhood development (ECD) educators deem…

School readiness assessments in South Africa still predominantly focus on the assessment of cognitive skills. The Emotional Social Screening Tool for School Readiness (E3SR) was developed to bridge the perceived gap in assessing emotional-social skills as a domain of school readiness. An emerging body of research reports exists on the psychometric…

Violence in South African schools has various negative effects on learners. These effects include loss of concentration, poor academic performance, playing truant, and depression. School violence also affects the psychological well-being of learners, leading to absenteeism and difficulty in paying attention in class. Furthermore, school violence…

Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) is traditionally depicted as a hegemonic masculine domain. Thus, fundamental to any dialogue on gender in OAE is whether the outdoor experience reifies or disputes stereotypical gender roles. This study explores the influence of gender on the psychosocial outcomes and descriptions of gender-related influences on…

Background: This review explores the pastoral role of early childhood development (ECD) teachers through a trauma-informed lens, grounded in neuroscience. Traumatised learners experience neurobiological changes that hinder cognitive and physical functioning. The review highlights the importance of pastoral support in ECD because of learners'…

School-based Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs emerged in North America and have not traditionally focused on embodied learning processes that are situated in the learners' contexts and lived experiences. Thus, we present evidence and advance the case that transferable social-emotional competencies are inherently culturally responsive or…

This study evaluated the impact of a parenting intervention on children's cognitive and socioemotional development in a group of caregivers and their 21-to-28-month-old children in a low-income South African township. A randomized controlled trial compared an experimental group (n = 70) receiving training in dialogic book-sharing (8 weekly group…

Current research around the middle grades has brought a heightened attention by teachers, policymakers, and researchers recognizing that this stage is a time when a students' health and social and emotional well-being directly impacts their academic progress. To date, school leaders and teachers have not been well served by explicit resources for…

Rhymes, poetry, stories, wrestling, music and dancing were essential cultural elements through which childhood play was promoted in traditional Africa. "Modernisation" brought about by colonialism led to distortion and decline in the use of traditional play for childhood education in many parts of Africa. This work assessed the value of…

Scientific and policy advances are putting early childhood development (ECD) at the center of efforts to improve human development. This study was undertaken to understand what knowledge and attitudinal barriers exist that 25 hinder the full-scale roll-out of services for the youngest children and their families. We used anthropological methods…

There are limited studies into the exact pervasiveness of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in sub-Saharan Africa, and fewer still into early intervention for learners with autism. This paper focuses on how three foundation phase teachers provided explicitly structured classroom experiences to develop social skills training, particularly…

Background: Many South African learners seem unprepared for formal education, and a need for intervention during early childhood has been identified. Aim: The present study explored the effect of infant exposure to an early childhood development programme aimed at the sensory developmental stage of the infant's brain. Setting: Participants were…

In this article I explore the emotional resources activated by single mothers to support their adolescent children's educational journeys. Mothers' emotional work is often regarded as something that mothers must do (Gillies, 2006). However, this view does not recognise the power and influence that mothers exert to create opportunities for…

"Hall of Heroes," a digital game, was used to compare social and emotional skills of 63 adolescent female students matched for age across Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Participants were assessed on six social and emotional competencies during game play, namely impulse control, cooperation, communication, social…

Background: Consistent with evidence from high-income countries (HICs), we previously showed that, in an informal peri-urban settlement in a low-middle income country, training parents in book sharing with their infants benefitted infant language and attention (Vally, Murray, Tomlinson, & Cooper, [Vally, Z., 2015]). Here, we investigated…