Theory-driven and practice-driven research are often separated, but in this article we shall argue for a research approach that is theory-driven but practice-oriented and shares features with the specific kind of early childhood education pedagogy this research approach has generated, what we refer to as developmental pedagogy (Pramling Samuelsson & Asplund Carlsson, 2008). On the basis of numerous empirical studies in the field of young children's learning carried out in a specific context, namely the Swedish early childhood education system, we shall first briefly describe the approach to learning and then analyse the specific features the empirical studies behind it share. The clear parallels between the pedagogical approach with children and the research studies are that: 1) they are both theoretically driven; 2) they both orchestrate and direct what we want children to learn in educational practices, and what to study in research, respectively; and 3) they both focus on children's and teachers' discernment and meaning-making.