The mandated early childhood framework in Australia requires educators working in early childhood services to attend to children's spirituality. Also, one of the five outcomes in this framework tasks educators with promoting children's connectedness with and contribution to the world, including natural environments. In this paper I present…

The purpose of this study was to understand typically developing children's repetitive behavior in a freeplay, daycare setting. By studying repetition in a non-Montessori setting, we tested the assumption that repetition is a characteristic behavior of all young children and not limited to the Montessori environment. Although Maria Montessori…

Child care centre attendance is associated with an increased risk of concurrent ear infections, but what is less clear is whether there are any positive or negative long-term effects of early child care attendance on the incidence of ear infections in later childhood. This research assessed the impact of early child care attendance on concurrent…

Early Learning Indiana is a statewide nonprofit that advocates for early childhood education (ECE) services in Indiana. Their work includes operating and connecting families to high-quality child care centers, strengthening and supporting the ECE workforce, and advocating for expanded access to ECE services for families across Indiana.…

The pandemic has amplified and exacerbated many of the existing challenges facing the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and forced the field to innovate and change much of what had become the status quo. The McCormick Center has a 30-year history of providing intensive (6-12 months in duration), cohesive (curriculum content is…

This article critically interrogates the model of language that underpins early years policy and pedagogy. Our arguments emerge from an ethnographic study involving 2-year-olds attending a day care centre that had begun to hold a substantial proportion of its sessions outdoors. The resultant shift in pedagogy coincided with changes in the…

This study aims to investigate the language-learning environment and educational language practices in four toddler groups measured as high quality on the 'Listening and Talking' subscale in the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale -- Revised. The empirical data are taken from a larger fieldwork conducted in four child groups, and comprise 98…

The training and education of childcare directors is ever more important with the increasing demands of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). QRIS have become the standard method in the United States for evaluating and assigning program-level quality status in early childhood education and the process is almost always managed by the…

Purpose: To explore whether parental perceptions of risk and attitudes toward risk-taking during play are associated with preschoolers' physical activity (PA) and physical literacy (PL). Methods: Nova Scotia preschoolers (35 boys, 17 girls; mean age = 3.8 years, range = 3-5 years) and parents (n=52 pairs) provided data. Linear regressions assessed…

Studies on parental views and experiences of the integrated programme implemented in mainstream early childhood settings for children with disabilities are dominated by the perspectives of mothers and teaching personnel. Additionally, most of these studies are largely from Western countries. This hermeneutic phenomenological study attempts to…

This paper describes consultation training experiences offered through a decades-long partnership between a university school psychology graduate program and a local Head Start center. The collaboration provides a field placement setting where beginning students engage in activities tied to first-year coursework, and an advanced practicum site for…

This study evaluated a classroom implementation of augmented reality (AR) for improving subitizing skills of preschool students. Children explored the mathematical concept of subitizing by using an AR enhanced board game, called "Creature Counting." The AR markers, which were friendly creatures, triggered the augmented reality functions.…

Children's Centres are an under-researched type of organisation, and leadership practices within Children's Centres are yet more neglected and unknown. This action research reveals how leaders of these Children's Centres understand and verbalise their leadership practices, which leadership practices are serving them well and can be levered for…

Evidence was gathered from an Australian long day care project 'Educators of babies and toddlers; developing a culture of critical reflection'. A cultural-historical theoretical approach was sensitively interwoven with visual methodology. The innovative combination of visual methodology and cultural-historical theory involved the creation of three…

Four recent publications describe the progress of nine states that received Round 1 Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grants in implementing systems that rate early learning and development programs on quality and help them improve. These systems are known as tiered quality rating and improvement systems (TQRIS). RTT-ELC had…