Background: Although the contexts, structures and administrations of early childhood education (ECE) may differ internationally, effective pedagogical leadership remains an essential component in supporting young children's development and learning. This paper reports on a comparative study which considered ECE in two different settings, Finland…

The personal and professional outcomes of experiential wilderness-based professional development programs for K-12 educators have not been adequately evaluated. This study used open-ended survey questions to identify a range of personal (i.e., self-awareness, new perspectives, self-confidence) and professional (i.e., changes in classroom…

Recognizing the inherent value in outdoor play and learning for young children, we focused upon the practices and perspectives of adults at an early childhood center as the outdoor play areas were transformed into outdoor classrooms. A salient finding emerging from the data exhibited a gap between constructivist child-led theories of play and…

When contextualizing educational methods, teachers can focus on constructivism to develop inquiry materials as STEAM subject matter for use in schools. However, there is little research concerning what STEAM teaching resources teachers view as inquiry with hands-on STEAM instructional material for use in kindergartens. Therefore, this research…

The aim of this study is to investigate the change process of early childhood teachers' formative assessment practices via collaborative action research. Formative assessment contributes to children's development and learning process and also guides teachers on instructional decisions. Although research emphasizes the importance of formative…

This partly descriptive, partly critically reflective, argumentative article analyses the Norwegian kindergarten teacher education program through the three concepts that are mentioned in its national guidelines: research-based, profession-oriented, and practice-related education. An inseparable correlation between these at the level of higher…

The current shifts in educational policy to include transitional kindergarten, has created an urgency to ensure teachers are equipped to teach in transitional kindergarten programs. Transitional Kindergarten is a program designed to provide young five-year-olds with an additional year of schooling prior to entering kindergarten. Children who…

The Coaching Early Conversation Interaction and Language (CECIL) Project, which started in September 2020, has focused on exploring coaching-led approaches to support the effective implementation of early language interventions, especially in Private, Voluntary & Independent (PVI) settings. At the core of the CECIL approach is a way of…

This self-study employed Haiku poetry as a culturally responsive way to respond to Japanese students' critical reflection needs in a self-study research workshop. I am a Japanese self-study researcher working in the Icelandic education system. Introducing self-study methodology to teacher educators and students demands a careful approach to…

This report presents key findings from the four years of the Quality Support Program (QSP). The QSP is an initiative of, and funded by, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education Early Childhood Education Quality Assurance and Regulatory Services Directorate (NSW DoE), involving the delivery by Australian Children's Education and Care…

In today's linguistically and culturally diverse schools, it is important that teachers use inclusive pedagogies, such as translanguaging. This pedagogy assumes that teachers have positive attitudes towards children's home languages and cultures (translanguaging stance), which we explored in our study with 40 preschool teachers in Luxembourg. The…

The purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions and experiences of Navajo Head Start (NHS) teachers who are serving children with disabilities (CWD). This study used open-ended interviews to collect data from NHS teachers on their experiences, perceptions, and educational strategies. Twelve participants were interviewed via Zoom during…

The aim of this research was to analyze preschool teachers' types of science talks and the variety of concept-related words they used during these talks in class. A picture storybook with a light related concept as the main theme, was chosen as a data collection tool. Teachers were asked to analyze this wordless picture storybook and children were…

In 2010, Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce a legal requirement that education should be research-based, placing huge demands on schools. The study's aim is to explore how, through sensemaking, teachers and principals enact this policy in schools. In total, 272 teachers and 23 principals from pre-schools, leisure-time centers,…

This study investigated the role of external policy interventions in explaining the trend of school educators' professional intrinsic motivation. Through the explanatory sequential design of the mixed study, we first described the trend in the intrinsic motivation of a total of 1,470 school educators between 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 by…