A facility dog in a school is a comparatively recent category of working dog. These dogs typically are trained at the assistance, or service dog, level and are thoroughly prepared for their role. The school facility dog accompanies an owner/handler, who is a professional employee of the school, to work on a regular basis. Research on human-canine…

This paper takes a 'networking of theories' approach to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of agency. We examine an episode, where a kindergarten teacher and nine children work on an addition problem, from three different perspectives: Valsiner's zone theory; Radford's theory of objectification; and Pickering's dance of agency. Our…

The "Children's Engagement Behaviour Framework" was developed to describe young children's engagement with science exhibits and how their behaviour is related to learning about the exhibits. The "Framework" was synthesised from frameworks in research literature related to family learning and the nature of play. It describes…

Just beginning to understand the potentials new technologies might bring to the learning environments of young children, we invited authors to submit articles that investigate multimedia sources and their effect on learning settings. Two main themes emerged--how digitization changes the learning environment and adult-child interaction in…

Mediated learning experience (MLE) stresses that the quality of interaction between the child and the environment via a human mediator plays a pivotal role in the cognitive development of the individual. Feuerstein's theory of structural cognitive modifiability posited that humans have the propensity to change the structure of their cognitive…

When observing skill and determining the competency of children and youth physical education teachers often focus on the coordination dynamics within the individual in the early years and then the individual's ability to play the game as they develop. But in these game contexts the focus is often still on the individuals' actions and not the…

This paper provides an overview of the features of caregiver input that facilitate language learning across early childhood. We discuss three dimensions of input quality: interactive, linguistic, and conceptual. All three types of input features have been shown to predict children's language learning, though perhaps through somewhat different…

Parents engage in joint story book sharing where adults read an appropriate text to children, usually in the home environment. Story book sharing promotes the young children's development of receptive and expressive language abilities as well as their emerging early literacy abilities, which have an effect on the children's success in school-based…

In this article I present examples of young children's interaction in collaborative group work in mathematics and consider how the children shared intentions, that is, how they influenced the thinking of another. By analysing the children's use of deixis as an aspect of indexicality, I examined how the students pointed out mathematical…

After decades of rapid evolution and groundbreaking research, the field of early intervention can be understood within a common framework: the Developmental Systems Approach (DSA). Created by a highly influential leader in the field, Michael Guralnick, this evidence-based, relationship-oriented, family-centered framework focuses on strengthening…

The early home language environment, and parents in particular, form the foundation of children's language development. In this article, Dina Kapengut and Kimberly Noble explore the intersection of neuroscience and developmental psychology to explain how language experiences in the home, and the "home learning environment" more broadly,…

Understanding the process of attachment formation in young children has been a focal point in child development research for decades. However, young children's attachments are not only with human beings; they also form bonds with companion animals, particularly dogs ("Canis familiaris"). Given the number of dogs that are kept by families…

In most cultures, play seems to matter a great deal to young children. This is evidenced by the vast amount of time children spent playing and the combination of often unsurpassed passion, imagination, and energy which they invest in this activity. This paper explores why play matters through the lens of Bakhtin's dialogic approach combined with…

Whereas research on children's well-being in education has largely focused on adult perspectives rather than on children's understandings, recent scholarship argues for a stronger focus on children's experience and perceptions of their own well-being. Adopting a narrative approach, this article puts children's stories centre stage as we explore a…

This paper examines early childhood education (ECE) by applying and developing relational-spatial perspectives on everyday life in educational institutions for young children. The aim is to investigate the dynamic process of construction of space and to illustrate with selected empirical episodes how this process occurs in ECE. Drawing on authors…