This article presents autoethnographic short stories that describe an early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre director's work for one year in a municipality in Finland. The purpose of this article is to provide a glimpse into what it is like to enter into an ECEC director position and live everyday ECEC life with economic data that are…

High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) - particularly care defined by highly responsive interactions between educators and children - has the potential to have lasting positive impacts on children's development. While there is variability in the level of quality among early education and care settings, professional development for…

This qualitative study explored the knowledge and perceptions about early screening for developmental disabilities and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in childcare settings using semistructured interviews with directors, teachers, and parents at 12 childcare centers. Results indicated that most of the directors and teachers, who were interviewed,…

Background: Research finds center-based child care typically benefits children of low socio-economic status (SES) but few studies have examined if it also reduces inequalities in developmental disadvantage. Objective: I test if the length of time in center-based care between ages one and three years associates with child development scores at age…

Object exploration is considered a driver of motor, cognitive, and social development. However, little is known about how early childhood education and care settings facilitate object exploration. This study examined if children's exploration of objects during free play was facilitated by the use of particular spatial components (floor, tables,…

Early childhood educators (ECEs) greatly influence young children's physical activity and sedentary behaviors in childcare and psychosocial factors have been found to influence their teaching practices in this environment. This study sought to determine which personal and professional characteristics predicted ECEs' self-efficacy, behavioral…

This paper makes the claim that establishing successful multi-professional working in Children's Centres can be viewed as the art of the possible when the work focuses on children's needs rather than on the availability and expertise of the multi-professional team. This requires a model for working that enables loose flexible arrangements of…

In 2019, more than 5 million providers cared for one or more children either in their own home or in a child's home. Home-based child care (HBCC) providers are a varied group that includes listed providers and unlisted providers who do and do not receive payment. HBCC is especially prevalent in communities of color, communities with high…

Advocates for Children of New Jersey's latest report, "Still No Room for Babies: Child Care Staffing Crisis Impacts Supply of Infant-Toddler Child Care," reveals a widespread shortage of infant and toddler child care. A statewide survey of child care centers serving infants and toddlers found that licensed centers have the capacity to…

In this brief, authors Jess Carson and Sarah Boege describe changes in the early childhood education and care landscape of Grafton and Sullivan Counties in New Hampshire and Orange and Windsor Counties in Vermont, collectively known as the Upper Valley. The authors find that the Upper Valley lost 25 regulated child care providers serving children…

There are limited studies involving preschool children and phenomena such as harassment, bullying, exclusion and rejection. This study explores the relations between 4- to 6-year-old children's experiences of being frequently harassed in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions, their overall feeling of subjective…

Low pay and unequal wages make it hard to recruit and retain the high-quality early educators that young children need to thrive in early care and education (ECE) programs. Not only are early educator wages lower than those of comparable workers, but there may also be racial and ethnic wage disparities within the ECE workforce. Using a…

Empirical evidence has shown that children's mathematics achievement in South African has been on the low trend. However, no study has explored the practitioners' application of conceptions of mathematical knowledge in enhancing learners' achievement in mathematics. The study examined how practitioners apply mathematical knowledge to enhance early…

Do centre-based early education programmes prepare children for starting school? We wanted to find out if attending a centre-based early education programme was better than: (a) not attending any programme; (b) receiving a standard pre-school programme; and (c) if there were any unwanted effects. We found 32 studies involving 16,899 children aged…

This study aimed to determine the effects of the Active Early Learning (AEL) childcare center-based physical activity intervention on early childhood executive function and expressive vocabulary via a randomized controlled trial. Three-hundred-and-fourteen preschool children (134 girls) aged 3-5 years from 15 childcare centers were randomly…