Sustained shared thinking dialogues which focus on teacher talk with preschool learners have long been considered an important route to learning progression. Toddlers, however, seldom engage in dialogues through talk alone, and their encounters are often fleeting. As a consequence, they are often positioned on the periphery of learning dialogues…

Way to Play is an approach that supports adults to promote the engagement of young children with autism spectrum disorder through play. The Ministry of Education in New Zealand has collaborated with Autism New Zealand to ensure the sustainable delivery of Way to Play within Auckland's early learning services by training early intervention staff to…

This collaborative project explores the nature of teacher-child sustained shared thinking (SST) in two kindergartens. SST involves teachers engaging with children in play, working together in back and forth conversations that provide opportunities to discuss, explore, and think about everyday experiences, problems or challenges in an inquisitive…

This study examined the validity of data collected from a novel online story retell task. The task was specifically designed for use by junior school teachers with the support of speech-language therapists or literacy specialists. The assessment task was developed to monitor children's oral language progress in their first year at school as part…

This article presents the findings from a collaborative action research (CAR) study undertaken by a small group of early childhood education teachers working in a New Zealand setting with children aged 3-4 years. The teachers' shared aim was to explore and improve their teaching practices to more effectively support children's prosocial behaviour…

Our study highlights how careful attention to, reflection on, and critical engagement with the dialogues of 2-year-olds in preschool 'mixed-age' settings can help teachers work more effectively with these learners. The teachers in our study carried out in-depth coding of, and reflection on, comprehensive video footage of dialogues involving…

This article describes a study undertaken in New Zealand, England and Sweden and is based on the use of a tool developed by the researcher as a professional development and teaching tool in technology education for teachers of students between four and six years of age. The aim of the research was to investigate teachers' views of the…

Toddlers' peer conflicts offer meaningful opportunities for toddlers to learn social-emotional skills, including learning to understand another's perspective and learning how to regulate emotions. This study explored 31 teachers' self-reports of their roles, teaching practices and the conditions that influenced their pedagogical responses to…

This 2-year collaborative research project focused on young children's working theories about identity, language, and culture, how early childhood teachers can nurture and encourage this learning, and how this in turn impacts on children's participation in early childhood education (ECE) communities. The project builds on a previous Teaching and…

This summary report describes a project built on prior national Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) research investigating teaching and learning episodes between teachers and child during their everyday interactions (Carr, et al., 2008; Davis & Peters, 2008). With these prior studies as a foundation, the current project aimed to…

This report was produced for the 2012 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Mauritius. Its main purpose is to track the historical progress and likelihood of attainment of Education For All and education-specific Millennium Development Goals while also critically reviewing the methods used to track this progress. The analyses…

Early childhood education Centres of Innovation (COI) were established in 2002 as part of the 10-year plan for early childhood education, "Pathways to the Future/Nga Huarahi Arataki." In COI projects, innovative early childhood teaching teams reflect on and investigate their practices through action research, and share their findings…

Examines some of the reasons why early childhood practitioners in New Zealand should undertake research, and offers suggestions for getting started. Considers how, when, where, and with whom practitioners can conduct research. (JPB)

This study explored the nature of staff roles and relationships in four New Zealand kindergartens during the process of change that ocurred when a new staff member was taking up a position. The study attempted to identify features of early childhood settings in which relationships among staff were working well and settings in which they were not.…

This booklet explains the aims and practices of teachers of mainstreamed children with disabilities in 39 New Zealand preschools. Using data obtained from interviews, the report tells how these teachers saw their role, how they planned their programs, and how they organized activities for the children. It also describes their attitudes to, and…