This article suggests that many of the 16-year-olds who don't achieve a C or better in GCSE English may have had parents who didn't recognise the value of talking to them from the moment they were born. It argues that a bringing together of health visitors, Sure Start centres and primary schools could help lift many children out of the cultural…

Becoming familiar with "the field" location and its inhabitants is a natural and important part of ethnographic research. However, little has been written about how operationalising a "familiarisation period" within an ethnography can form the foundation on which fieldwork can be built. By reflecting on the experience of…

This paper focuses on child-initiated pedagogy that is based on the process of co-construction of learning experiences between children, adults and the environment, being part of longitudinal research project that analyses child-initiated pedagogies in formal early years settings with 3-6-year-old children. Drawing on an ethnographic approach this…

In recent years there have been significant changes in education across the globe, largely as a result of changing demographics, technological developments, and increased globalization. Relatedly, the changing needs of societies and families, along with new research findings, provide new directions in early childhood education. Consequently, early…

"Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1" reviews the best available evidence to offer five recommendations for developing the maths skills of 3-7-year olds. Recommendations include integrating maths into different activities throughout the day -- for example, at registration and snack time -- to familiarise children…

This article examines the use of naturalistic observations to explore children's experiences in the early years at school, from their perspectives. It looks at the difficulties encountered in determining the significance of observed behaviours in relation to (a) experiences and (b) impact of those experiences. Often the children were not satisfied…

This article draws attention to the walking and running of young children as a key element of their multimodal communicative practices. In addition, the article argues that the walking and running of young children can be seen as a place-making activity, acknowledging the power of young children to create meaning in their world. Drawing on…

What cognitive processes influence how well we maintain information in visual short-term memory (VSTM)? We used a developmentally informed design to delve into the interplay of top-down spatial biases with the nature of the internal memory codes, motivated by documented changes for both factors over childhood. Seven-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and…

Background: The youngest children in an academic year are reported to be educationally disadvantaged and overrepresented in referrals to clinical services. In this study we investigate for the first time whether these disadvantages are indicative of a mismatch between language competence at school entry and the academic demands of the classroom.…

"Concerted cultivation" has been described as a common, urban middle-class practice concerning the enrollment of children in a variety of age-specific activities that may promote the learning of valuable life skills as well as the development of individual abilities (Lareau, 2003). Music is one such activity. This study investigated the…

Background: Language development has been characterised by significant individual stability from school entry. However, the extent to which trajectories of language growth vary in children with language disorder as a function of co-occurring developmental challenges is a question of theoretical import, with implications for service provision.…

This paper reports on the research process and findings of a commissioned study of a Sure Start Children's Centre based in the North West of England. The study focused specifically on how child observations were being carried out in the Children's Centre to inform assessment and planning. It was imperative that the research process should not be…

Video is an increasingly popular data collection tool for those undertaking social research, offering a temporal, sequential, fine-grained record which is durable, malleable and sharable. These characteristics make video a valuable resource for researching Early Years classrooms, particularly with regard to the study of children's interaction in…

Speech and language delay occurs in approximately 6% of the child population, and interventions to support this group of children focus on the child and/or the communicative environment. Evidence about the effectiveness of interventions that focus on the environment as well as the (reported) practices of speech and language therapists (SLTs) and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine prevalence and predictors of persistent speech sound disorder (SSD) in children aged 8 years after disregarding children presenting solely with common clinical distortions (i.e., residual errors). Method: Data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (Boyd et al., 2012) were used.…