This paper explains various good practices and perspectives of Early Childhood Education across the nation. A good number of reviews across the globe has collected from various sources, research projects, PhD thesis and so on which put categorized as knowledge base, developmentally appropriate practice, observation and assessment, positive…

There are calls for developing ways to teach language that can inspire and motivate students to study additional languages. While previous research has pointed toward benefits of arts-based activities in language learning, combining language and dance has mainly been studied with younger language learners. Contextualized within the course…

This study sets two main objectives to address this research gap in CLIL materials design: to identify and to evaluate teachers' approaches to text modification. The study focuses on four secondary teachers who teach non-language subjects to grades 7-9 in Finland, in English. The qualitative data consist of interviews and teaching materials…

In this study we investigated the effects of two naturalistic 2- to 4-year-old children's intervention programs aimed at promoting children's Spontaneous Focusing On Numerosity (SFON) and early numerical skills. The study consisted of a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design with a delayed posttest and an active control group participating in…

This is the first international and interdisciplinary handbook to offer a comprehensive and an in-depth overview of findings from contemporary research, theory, and practice in early childhood language education in various parts of the world and with different populations. The contributions by leading scholars and practitioners are structured to…

This study investigates children's vocabulary knowledge in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL), specifically their understanding of different form-meaning mappings by using a multilayered assessment format originally developed for British Sign Language (BSL). The web-based BSL vocabulary test by Mann (2009) was adapted for FinSL following the steps…

In a changing society where the roles of fathers and mothers in caregiving are becoming more equal, the role of the father in early language development has also changed. We aimed to study associations between paternal factors and early vocabulary development in boys and girls. In a longitudinal cohort study, we examined the growth of expressive…

This study investigated responsive and directive speech from 60 Finnish mothers to their 2-year-old children, as well as correlations with concurrent and later vocabulary. Possible gender differences with regard to both maternal speech and children's vocabulary skills were considered. There were no gender differences in maternal utterance…

Toys both guide and foster the play--and stimulate the imaginations--of players of all ages. The authors investigate adult use of toys as a point of entry to the world play of both transmedia-connected and stand alone toy characters--dolls, action figures, and soft toys. They point to how adult toy players engage actively in world building in…

Few studies provide information on the reliability and validity of parental report instruments when assessing the language skills of pre-school-aged children. This study investigates the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the parental report instrument, the Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory III (FinCDI III),…

Success in an increasingly globalized world sets requirements for versatile communication skills and understanding about other cultures. One of the keys to success is versatile language skills, on which the European Commission spoke out as early as in 1995, recommending that every European citizen should learn two foreign languages in addition to…

Although many studies have investigated teaching in one-to-one computing classrooms, not many have considered the material dimension as equally important to the human dimension. Thus, by using a sociomaterial perspective, we aim to broaden the discussion about emergent teaching practices in Nordic classrooms where students use tablets as personal…

This cross-linguistic study investigated whether the native language has any influence on lexical composition among Italian (N = 125) and Finnish (N = 116) very preterm (born at <32 gestational weeks) children at 24 months (controls: 125 Italian and 146 Finnish full-term children). The investigation also covered the effect of maternal education…

Background: Children with unilateral cochlear implants (CIs) may have delayed vocabulary development for an extended period after implantation. Bilateral cochlear implantation is reported to be associated with improved sound localization and enhanced speech perception in noise. This study proposed that bilateral implantation might also promote…

It is not well understood how grammar emerges in very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. The main aim of the present study was to gain information on the emergence of grammar in this group at 2; 0. The Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory was used to collect data from VLBW children ("N" = 156) and full-term controls…