Playgroups are a unique form of early childhood provision involving parents and their children attending together. Parents' attendance at playgroups provides opportunities for involvement in play. However, little is known about parents' practices of co-play in playgroups and the potential for these practices to enhance children's play experiences…

It is important for assessments used by occupational therapists to have documented evidence of their validity. This adds to the knowledge about what specific factors assessments measure and inform their utility for use in clinical practice by occupational therapists. The convergent validity between the Children's Assessment of Participation and…

Children's food preferences are strongly associated with their consumption patterns. Children tend to choose foods with which they are familiar. It is proposed that the earlier and broader the experience with food, the healthier the child's or adult´s diet. In a focus group we developed a toolkit consisting of a training course for kindergarten…

The effective integration of educational technologies into early childhood education remains a significant challenge. An important element of this challenge is how practitioner beliefs about pedagogy relate to how digital technologies are used in the early years classroom. Focussing on early childhood practitioner beliefs in relation to pedagogy…

Play-based learning is of growing interest in many English-medium primary schools throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. I share my insights from researching play as learning, and supporting teachers with curriculum design and pedagogy in play-based contexts. Although play is a slippery concept and its value often underestimated, the evidence of the…

This article describes how American and Japanese kindergartners see play and what teachers can learn from them. The authors share their findings from analyzing photos and interviews from 44 American children in the southeastern United States and 55 Japanese children in the main island of Japan, all aged five to six years. In the study, children…

The following article aims to present, from children's perspectives, the value of literacy and how they use it in their everyday lives. Through the use of ethnographic methodology, including observations, interviews and collection of artifacts, it seeks to examine how children rely on their literacy skills authentically, as they play and move…

The article seeks to explore the relationship between the researcher and children aged from one to three years old. The findings are drawn from a research project in an Icelandic preschool where video recordings were used as the main method. The aim of the research project was to understand children's lived experiences when creating their…

Children's interests are widely recognised as pivotal to meaningful learning and play in the early years. However, less is known about how children's diverse interests may contribute to relationships and interactions within peer cultures. This article builds upon previous studies to argue that participation in sociocultural activity generates…

Technology, digital media and popular culture form an important aspect of young children's life-worlds in contemporary post-industrial societies. A problem for early childhood educators is how to most effectively integrate these aspects of children's life-worlds into the provision of play-based learning. Traditionally, research has considered…

This project/report partnered researchers with teachers from two centres to explore and theorise understandings of children's inquiries and working theories. This project investigated the following questions: (1) What is the nature and content of infants', toddlers' and young children's inquiries and working theories in relation to their everyday…

This article troubles the established discourse of free choice and free play in early childhood education, and develops post-structural approaches to theorising children's agency in the context of institutional and relational power structures. It is widely accepted that planning a curriculum based on children's needs, interests and patterns of…

This study presents a comparative study of the free-time activity preferences of 9- to 11-year-old children in the UK and USA, as drawn by them in art workshops. Six themes emerged relating to sport, outdoor play, family/peers, media, special occasions and other (indefinable) activities. The children's talk about their drawings revealed additional…

The research question addressed in this paper is: What specific elements in the outdoor environment draw children's attention? The new approach to Welsh early years education--the "Foundation Phase: Framework for children aged 3-7 years in Wales" (DCELLS 2008)--requires the inclusion of both teacher-led and child-initiated activities and…

Children's interests are frequently cited as a source of early-years curricula. Yet, research has rarely considered the nature of these interests beyond the play-based environment of early-childhood education. This paper reports findings from a qualitative, interpretivist study in two early childhood settings in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Using…