Adults, including early childhood teachers and caregivers (i.e., parents, carers, kinship members), have an important role in supporting young children's learning through play in early childhood. However, little consideration has been given to the relationship between these significant adults' perspectives of play and the play experiences of young…

Posing the question, "What does it mean to care?" this visual work came about through a collaboration between teachers, children, and a local artist to render experiences of care from children's daily lives within an early years laboratory school. Working from a perspective of material-discursive intra-activity (Barad, 2003, 2007), this…

This paper builds upon an ethnographical doctoral study that explored how adults exercise power over children. Anchored in the worlds of children's lived experiences, it explores whether play can be deeper, richer and more meaningful when children are beyond the watchful eye of adults. It focuses on children's play within the spaces they occupied…

Home and English language learning is essential for young DLLs with disabilities. Early educators as well as parents and other caregivers can implement promising strategies to support home and second language development for young children who are DLLs. This article reviews the importance of adult (e.g., teacher, parent) feedback and language…

Playful experiences provide us with the opportunity to engage with others and learn in enjoyable ways. Recognising and building on the power of playfulness and play can be a way to support more meaningful educational experiences for all, life-wide and lifelong. This "Trends Shaping Education Spotlight" touches on gamification as a…

The author provides an overview of several theories of numeracy acquisition that, despite criticisms, have withstood the passage of time and continue to influence policy and practices in schools. These are followed by a brief review of some recent research in the domain of numeracy learning and teaching. The article ends with some of the current…

What do we know about immersive media--virtual, augmented, mixed, and cross realities (VR, AR, MR, and XR)--and young children? So far, designers, developers, and media producers have been focusing on creating hardware, software, and content for and conducting studies with adolescents and adults--but children find these technologies incredibly…

When science is integrated into early childhood learning experiences, it becomes a critical area supporting young children's development. Young children are natural scientists, curious about their world, and they engage in scientific practices to learn about and explore their world. This article describes how the K-12 Framework for Science…

Each year, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) releases a list of scientific advances that represent significant progress in the field of autism research. The "2021 Summary of Advances" provides short, plain language summaries of the top research breakthroughs selected by the IACC from a pool of research articles…

Emerging technologies attract children and push parents' and caregivers' abilities to attend to their families. This article presents recommendations related to the new version of screen time, which includes time with computers, tablets, and smartphones. Recommendations are provided for screen time for very young children and those in middle and…

Each year, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) releases a list of scientific advances that represent significant progress in the field of autism research. The "Summary of Advances" provides short, plain language summaries of the top research breakthroughs selected by the IACC from a pool of research articles nominated by…

What's a risk? It's when one doesn't know what will happen when she/he takes action. Risks can be little or big, calculated or stupid. Every new idea carries risks--and the challenge to face them and see what will happen. Nobody becomes smart, creative, self-confident, and respectful of others without taking risks--remaining open to possibilities…

Executive functions enable children to pay attention, follow instructions, apply what they have learned, have those "aha!" moments in which they grasp how multiple facts interrelate, think of creative solutions, obey social norms such as waiting their turn and not butting in line or jumping out of their seat, mentally construct a plan,…

Visual arts, such as drawings, are attractive to most young children. Marks left on paper by young children contain meaning. Although it is known that children's oral language could be enhanced through communication with adults, rarely is there a series of dialogues between adults and young children about their drawings. Often heard instead…

Polli Soholt points to normalization in the first plane as leading to the successful realization of the human personality, which is the basis of social development. Children who have cultivated concentration and purposeful work at an early age develop the virtues to become world citizens. Normalization can be assisted by certain practices: 1)…