The "National Physical Activity Plan", as well as professional and government agencies (NASPE, 2008a; US Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) acknowledge pre-kindergarten (pre-K) children should be part of comprehensive school physical activity initiatives anchored in quality physical education programming. These…

This study investigated factors related to the quality of early-childhood practitioners' interactions with infants in play and routine contexts. Participants were 24 practitioners working with 9-20-month-old infants in long day-care infant programmes. Video-recordings of their interactions with a nominated infant during play and in routine…

In April 1994, South Africa held its historic first democratic election. The African National Congress overwhelmingly triumphed and Nelson Mandela became the first president of a free and democratic South Africa. In this review, the situation of South Africa's young children under apartheid and the context of young children in South Africa in 2012…

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of parents and early childhood teachers in Norway regarding the benefits of child care to young children. Both positive and negative benefits were explored. In the autumn of 2009, 41 parents and 35 early childhood teachers of children aged 1.5 years or less, living in the city of Trondheim and…

This article sets out to discuss one aspect of the findings of an ESRC-funded project which explores early years practitioners' understandings of quality and success in their work, and which challenges the hegemony of universal standards in early years provision in England. The qualitative research was conducted within a broadly symbolic…

Reflecting the growing momentum in support of quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) as a key strategy to improve early care and education quality, significant amounts of public dollars have been devoted to their development and implementation. In this brief, the authors report on their investigation of both quality rating and improvement…

As part of the federal Preschool Development Grant Program in late 2014, the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) was awarded a Preschool Expansion Grant (referred to as the Massachusetts PEG program) to expand high-quality early childhood education to four-year-old children from low-income families. The Massachusetts PEG…

The concept of "Assessment-of-Learning" (AoL) has long been the tradition in most school assessment practices in Hong Kong. In view of the deficiencies in the assessment mechanism, the Education Commission (2000) recommended "Assessment-for-Learning" (AfL) as one of the major areas of action in the current education reform.…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a topic of increased policy interest in the Slovak Republic where improving quality in the ECEC sector is a subject of growing importance. The OECD has identified five effective policy levers to encourage quality in the sector: 1) quality goals and regulations; 2) curriculum and guidelines; 3)…

According to the findings of a recent European study on competence requirement for the early childhood education and care workforce, competent systems that succeed in achieving high levels of professionalism are embedded in coherent public policies that build on consultation with key stakeholders, particularly at local level. In order to flourish,…

The North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten Program (NC Pre-K) is a state-funded initiative for at-risk 4-year-olds, designed to provide a high quality, classroom-based educational program during the year prior to kindergarten entry. Children are eligible for NC Pre-K based on age, family income (at or below 75% of state median income), and other risk…

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationship of preschool teachers' self-reported depressive symptomatology, perception of classroom control, and perception of school climate to classroom quality as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System Pre-K. The sample consisted of 59 urban preschool classrooms serving low-income and…

Though quality in early childhood education and care has attracted last decades enormous research interest there is still not a unanimous agreement about its definition. Yet, almost all definitions attempted include interaction, group size, adult:child ratio and early childhood educators' level of education, as important indices of quality.…

Use of reflection in developing quality teaching skills needs to be examined more closely in the context of early childhood education. Previous research has led to conclusions that greater education equals higher teacher quality, but education may not be the primary predictor of high-quality early education teachers, who as adult learners apply…

This article addresses various educational cultures observed today in a variety of training and professional development contexts in the field of early childhood education. The paper also analyses methods of developing and implementing training or professional "accompaniment". This notion of "accompaniment" has been developed…