In children's early years, they frequently pretend, create and take on roles while engaging in the dramatic play area where symbols, language and culture are spontaneously developed and applied. Although abundant research has been conducted on sociodramatic play incorporating digital tools and using props, previous research has given less…

Expectations for increased conceptual outcomes in the early childhood education sector have foregrounded a need for more evidenced-based practice in support of children's play. One such avenue for researching models of play practices that support cognitive outcomes is to study the implementation of Playworlds. Grounded in cultural-historical…

Recent early childhood education and care (ECEC) reforms across the globe are placing greater emphasis on the intentionality of educators' pedagogy. In Australia, a National Quality Agenda (NQA) has significantly reformed ECEC through the country's first national learning framework, which demands educators take a more intentional (active) role in…

Guided play, a balanced approach to involvement in play that includes child- and adult-direction in learning activities, holds great promise for children's effective and engaged learning in education. Recent studies in laboratory settings show benefits for academic and socio-emotional outcomes, while retaining a focus on child-centred exploration.…

The consideration of child-centred participation in childhood research is a topic that draws heavily on human rights, and participatory childhood research is performed in a variety of ways. The paper explores issues of adult-child roles in early childhood education with an intention to involve young children in the research as much as possible…

This article is based on a meta-approach to the results of two separate studies and concerns the areas of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) in early childhood education. One of the studies focuses on how preschool teachers understand STEM and how it is taught in the…

There has been much debate about the profile of the child who is ready for primary school. Thirty-three teachers from pre-primary and primary schools in Jamaica participated in a series of focus group discussions as part of a discursive approach to understanding children's readiness. Four themes emerged which were guided by the research questions:…

There is a persistent suggestion that the lack of men who choose to work with young children (0-5 years) is detrimental to children's learning and development. This study analysed whether practitioners believed that men who work with young children adopt specific approaches within a play pedagogy. Practitioner beliefs about how their gender…

This article aims to discuss the quality of early childhood education and care in Brazil and the process of infants' and toddlers' "Inserimento" to daycare. The theoretical framework of our arguments is based on the notion of quality of child education as a negotiated concept, and by the Italian concept of "Inserimento." The…

Early childhood advocates agree that positive teacher-child relationships are critical to classroom quality. Much research has emphasized quantifiable teacher characteristics and child outcomes without fully capturing the complexity of these relationships. Drawing on extensive classroom observations, two video-recorded free play sessions and…

Building strong relationships between children and parents is vital for children's social and emotional development. A majority of children attend early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings where they experience a range of relationships (educator-child, educator-parent, parent-child). Educators build relationships with children and…

This paper presents different angles on the subject of digital play as a means to develop children's literacy and power, using an online ethnographical study of Swedish preschool teachers' discussions in informal online forums. Question posts (n = 239) were analysed using the Technological Pedagogical Knowledge framework and the Caring, Nurturing…

This article outlines an ecological framework for describing children's social experiences during digital play. It presents evidence from a study that explored how 3- to 5-year-old children negotiated their social experiences as they used technologies in preschool. Utilising a systematic and iterative cycle of data collection and analysis,…

The article explores how young children between one and three years old communicate and prioritise values in order to create and be a part of a community during play sessions in an Icelandic preschool. Furthermore, it aims to investigate the value conflicts that might occur and how the children resolve such conflicts. The study adopts the…

This study concerns the relationship between learning and play. On the basis of sociocultural theory, some ideas are put forward about how this relationship can be conceptualised in the context of goal-directed practice. Empirical data from primary school with children 6-8 years old are used to illustrate and discuss this conceptualisation. It is…