Background: Relational issues at school, including bullying, tend to be interpreted primarily in terms of the behaviour of individual students. Whilst research has broadened this focus, more needs to be understood about how the design and management of the school environment and its resources may influence peer relations. Purpose: The study sought…

The performance of standardized tests is an ongoing matter of concern for childhood researchers. Standardized tests are often described as neglecting the ethical complexities of doing research with young children. However, this critique is primarily presented in general terms, and does not attend to the locality and specificity of particular test…

A child's vocabulary ability may be influenced by many different factors in their home environment. The present study focused on supportive aspects in home environments and the relation to children's vocabulary size through an online study where 166 parents of children aged 47.63 months (range 33.7-59.9 months) responded. Children's home literacy…

At a time when inclusion is valued, an important question is how it can be put into practice. This study investigates how one Swedish preschool and one of its units achieve inclusion. It adopted a mixed method research approach and a case study design. Participating in the study were one head teacher, five preschool staff members and five children…

Teachers in preschools and schools have a central role in detecting children at risk of maltreatment. The aim of this study was to provide a longitudinal understanding of teachers' temporary and prolonged concerns for children's home situations (CCHS), from preschool (age 3-5 years) to year 1-3 of elementary school (age 8-10 years). Teacher- and…

The study presented in this article shows some aspects of how children between the ages of three and five and their educators perceive and describe the educational environment in early childhood education in Sweden. The data is generated using "pedagogical walk-throughs" with the educators and "camera tours" together with the…

The aim of the research is to examine how technology is communicated in technology education in relation to humans, society and nature in preschool class. According to the Swedish curriculum for preschool class, pupils should be given the opportunity to explore, ask questions and discuss technology and how the choices of people affect sustainable…

Formal ethical issues for conducting research are highlighted in national and international guidelines. Even if such strategies are grounded in democratic and rights-based values, their implementation may produce challenges. This article foregrounds dilemmas that were derived from fieldwork conducted in preschool settings with children aged one to…

This article is an empirically grounded contribution to the understanding of how digitalization in education is interpreted and made into being by actors in everyday lives, in this case children and teachers in Swedish early childhood education. The focus is on interactions in an early childhood classroom upon and around a digital interactive…

This study explores how group size influences children's conditions for wellbeing, learning and development in preschool in relation to the intentions in the revised (2010) Swedish preschool curriculum. The study is based on qualitative methods generated from interviews and open-ended questions in a questionnaire. Group size is dependent on three…

This article sets out to discuss physical prerequisites for creativity. Creativity has come to be regarded as one of the most valuable attributes a person can have, at least in today's Western societies. This article builds on and incorporates material from a Swedish project called Entrepreneurship Liminal space, Creativity, and Understanding. The…

We investigate the importance of spatial, material, and organisational factors to gendered peer relations on the school football pitch. The study is part of an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from preschool…

This article follows a story played out by children at a Sámi early childhood centre in north Sweden. It does so by reflecting on the children's story as a form of Critical Indigenous Philosophy. In particular it explores what it could mean for a child to be a philosopher in a Sámi context by developing the concept of "jurddavázzi," or…

In Sweden, young autistic children typically attend community-based preschool programs, which may not be adapted to their needs. In the current study, stakeholders to autistic children receiving Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention were interviewed following a quasi-randomized study (#NCT03634761) aimed at improving the preschool program…

This article examines how the preschool child is enabled to withdraw from the peer group and create a private, individual space within the institutional collective. The question under consideration is, "What factors are necessary to enable a child to create and maintain a withdrawal space in the preschool?" Data were collected through…