Early Childhood Education Journal最新文献

While teacher-child relationships vary across sociocultural contexts, most research has focused on Western settings. Given Korea’s collectivistic culture and the hierarchical nature of adult-child relationships, this study examined how teacher and child perceptions of their relationships influence children’s math skills mediated by instructional quality. Participants included 283 children and 16 preschool teachers. Findings reveal that child-perceived negativity and conflict were negatively associated with children’s math skills, with concept development mediating these effects. In contrast, teacher-perceived closeness and conflict did not have a direct effect on math skills. These results underscore the critical role of children’s perceptions in math development, particularly in Korean cultural contexts. We discussed nuanced approaches for teachers to respond to children’s perceived conflict in collectivistic and hierarchical cultural contexts, such as Korea.

This study investigated the effectiveness of the Transition to School Teacher Professional Development Program (TSTPDP) in promoting school readiness and social-emotional adjustment among preschoolers in Southeastern Anatolia, Türkiye. Using a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest control group design, 40 preschool teachers and 152 children aged 48–72 months were assigned to either the TSTPDP intervention or a control group. The 12-session TSTPDP, grounded in Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory and the Ecological and Dynamic Transition Model, was implemented online over four weeks before the start of the school year. Data were collected using the School Readiness Scale, adapted to the Turkish context by the researcher, and the Preschool Social Competence and Behavior Assessment Scale (SCBA-30), and reflective journals completed by the participating teachers. Results indicated that children in the TSTPDP group exhibited significantly higher levels of school readiness and social-emotional adjustment compared to the control group at the end of the first semester. The qualitative data enriched these findings, providing insights into teachers' changed perspectives and practices. These findings highlight the potential of comprehensive teacher professional development programs in facilitating a smoother and more positive transition to preschool for young children.

Computational thinking (CT), defined through its dimensions of abstraction, generalization, algorithmic thinking, and evaluation, fosters cognitive skills for solving problems logically and systematically, preparing individuals for the challenges of the digital society, where interaction with machines is essential. This empirical pre-experimental study arises from an individualized intervention with students aged 4–6 (N = 82), aimed at measuring their level of CT. Its originality lies in involving them in a story featuring a robot, whose mission is to help a turtle recover its habitat. To achieve this, they must program the robot to follow a predetermined route and overcome various challenges. Thus, the CT-Robot-DST scale was designed and validated, consisting of 14 indicators with 4 performance levels, to record the observed level of CT during the intervention (27′ 30′′ per child). This scale assesses their skills in task planning and sequencing, logical reasoning, lateralization, spatial orientation, understanding and identifying the buttons to program the robot’s movements, memorization, counting, eye-hand coordination, problem-solving, effectiveness, and engagement with the story. The results show that the majority of the students engaged in the story, expressed interest in planning and executing the required tasks, successfully programmed the robot, solved problems, and overcame the proposed challenges. Thus, 78.1% of the students scored close to the high CT level. The more autonomous students performed better. Undoubtedly, this intervention, focused on completing various tasks structured around a narrative featuring a robot, represents an innovative approach that involves students in the storyline to solve the challenges.

This study examines the dreams of children who have experienced an earthquake and subsequently started preschool education, as well as the reflections of these dreams in their drawings. The participants of the study consisted of 25 children aged 46–60 months attending a public independent preschool in Kahramanmaraş, the epicentre of the earthquake that occurred in Turkey on February 6, 2023. The study was designed based on a basic qualitative research model, utilizing the ‘Child Information Form’ prepared by the researchers and employing the ‘Drawing’ technique. The findings of the study reveal that the children’s drawings largely reflect earthquake-related themes in their dreams. In the children’s drawings, similar to those without any disaster-related experience, figures such as family members, houses, the sun, and the sea were present. However, it was also observed that they depicted changes in their daily routines, such as relocating to different cities, and used words like debris, damage, and security-related expressions—terms that are not typically part of their daily routines or conversations. In this context, the researchers recommended that teachers plan less structured activities and focus on activities that provide more opportunities for children’s interactions with one another.

Research abounds regarding the need for young children’s access to authentic play experiences. Yet, while play is considered the main method of learning for young children, mainstream curricula often omit this mode and further perpetuate the artificial divide of play or learning. Guided play is a pedagogical approach in which teachers integrate a balance of child-led exploration alongside intentional scaffolding and targeted guidance. This method allows educators to support children’s agency while facilitating their play towards specific learning outcomes. However, along with challenges related to limited time and support, teachers face a lack of clear guidance on how to implement guided play in their classrooms and scaffold children’s learning within these environments. Supported by current research, this paper provides methods for incorporating writing instruction through guided play in four kindergarten classroom spaces. Materials and scaffolding strategies are discussed, along with a brief list of resources for each learning area. Finally, this paper concludes with recommendations for teachers who are beginning to incorporate guided play into their early years kindergarten classrooms.

This practice-based case study is taken from a large three-year school-based participatory research project and presents evidence of both teacher-adapted and peer-supported learning in collaborative group work in early years mathematics. We draw on Vygotskian sociocultural theory, incorporating asynchronous and synchronous scaffolding, to examine evidence from one teacher’s unit of work conducted with a class of 6- to 8-year-old children where the focus was on equal grouping as an aspect of early multiplicative thinking. Four videoed lesson observations were taken over a six-week period. These indicate how the teacher adapted her support across the four lessons, both in promoting talk prompts and in progressing learning. Detailed transcript data are presented of the interactions of two groups of three children from the fourth lesson as they collaborated on a task intended to challenge their thinking in relation to equal grouping. The two interactions are analysed according to sociocultural discourse and demonstrate how the use of manipulatives took on a critical mediation role in the collaborative dialogue and shared learning within the groups. In solving the task, the children took the group’s shared ideas as their own. The two group interactions are presented as practice-based evidence that an approach, which takes account of teacher autonomy in directing and reinforcing steps of learning (asynchronous scaffolding), can result in productive peer-supported synchronous learning.

Given high exclusionary discipline practices and decisions in early childhood education, it is important to understand teachers’ experiences with challenging behaviors and examine factors associated with their experiences. Depression, as a significant indicator of well-being and prevalent among early educators, is understudied in relation to teachers’ challenging behavior experiences. This study examines the association between early childhood teachers’ self-reported depression scores and experiences with children’s challenging behaviors and whether this association varies for teachers working with children with disabilities (CWD), using data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education. The analysis focused on 3079 center-based early childhood teachers. Both linear and ordinal logistic regression were used to analyze the data. The results showed that teachers with higher levels of depression scores were significantly more likely to report higher levels of challenging behaviors in children. While working with CWD increases the likelihood of reporting challenging behaviors, it did not significantly alter the association between teacher depression and their experiences with challenging behaviors. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Following a significant natural event (e.g., SARS-CoV-2, Hurricane Katrina), some young children adapted effectively while others face academic and social-emotional challenges (Goenjian et al., American Journal of Psychiatry 162(12) (2005)); (Joo & Lee, Child Indicators Research, 15 (2022)); (Stark et al., Psychological Trauma: Theory Research Practice and Policy, 12(S1) 2020); children from groups that are historically and institutionally marginalized are at greater risk of experiencing negative outcomes than their majority peers. This descriptive study addressed three primary questions: (1) Did the effects of COVID-19 disruptions on pre-kindergartener’s academic, social, and behavioral skills differ by racial/ethnic status?; (2) Were student-teacher contact and learning supports/barriers associated with young children’s academic, social, and behavioral skills during COVID-19 disruptions? Did these associations differ by racial/ethnic status?; and (3) Was there evidence of academic, social, and/or behavioral “recovery” among study participants during their kindergarten year? Data were collected from 108 pre-kindergarten children’s teachers via online surveys. Teachers reported no contact with 11% and frequent contact with 37.4% of students after in-person classroom instruction ceased. Common types of contact were in-person video-chats and pre-recorded lessons. Children from groups that are historically and institutionally marginalized more frequently had no contact with their teachers and fewer in-person video-chats and pre-recorded lessons. Teachers also reported access to learning materials, technology, and parent engagement/support was lower for children from historically and institutionally marginalized groups. A second wave of data collection revealed children had significant improvements in language and social skills from pre-kindergarten to elementary and small declines in behavior problems. Findings offer evidence that children from groups that are historically and institutionally marginalized received fewer learning supports immediately following COVID-19 disruptions but that primary-school teachers made a concerted effort to engage all children in positive learning experiences and frequent contact, serving as a protective factor against the potential negative impact that COVID-19 disruptions had on children’s learning and development.

This study examined whether preschoolers’ learning behaviors moderate the process through which maternal media literacy influences their digital literacy via mother–child verbal interaction. A total of 514 South Korean mothers of 5-year-old children participated in the study by completing a structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using the PROCESS macro (Models 4 and 15), which tested both mediation and moderated mediation effects. Maternal media literacy was found to be positively associated with children’s digital literacy both directly and indirectly through verbal interaction. More importantly, among the three learning behavior dimensions, competence motivation significantly moderated the effect of mother–child verbal interaction on children’s digital literacy. Specifically, children with higher competence motivation benefited more from mother–child verbal interaction, whereas those with lower motivation did not show significant gains. Attention/Persistence significantly moderated the effect of maternal media literacy on children's digital literacy. Specifically, children with low and middle attention/persistence benefited more from maternal media literacy. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of maternal media literacy on children’s digital development depends not only on verbal engagement but also on the child’s individual characteristics. Implications are discussed for developing family-centered digital literacy interventions that consider both parental practices and children’s learning dispositions.