Early Childhood Education Journal最新文献

Early science inquiries and experiences increase young children’s awareness and interest for science. The importance of promoting science process skills which bolster children’s confidence to formulate and communicate personal ideas have been emphasised by international guidelines. As Loose Parts Play (LPP) is a form of free play involving open-ended play materials, its flexible nature promotes active exploration with materials that encourages children’s interaction with science-related experiences. This teacher action research aims to explore the influence of open-ended questions on children’s science process skills, as well as the scientific concepts that children are capable of exploring independently during play experiences. Analyses draw on video- and audio-recorded observation, child observation notes, and teacher journals. A total of 180 open-ended questions were employed by the teacher-researcher and 155 instances of science process skills were observed in a group of five-year-old children. Findings revealed that periods of uninterrupted play time followed by open-ended questions, extend children’s science process skills, and add complexity to their scientific exploration. Furthermore, children were observed to self-initiate exploration of scientific concepts, such as transforming materials and changing motion, during these uninterrupted play periods. Overall, this teacher action research highlights the pivotal role that educators play in young children’s playful learning experiences, where their timely use of open-ended questions has the capacity to facilitate children’s early science learning during LPP. This study serves to define an educator’s role within student-driven or child-initiated learning experiences, as well as guide educators in the utility of loose part materials, provision of uninterrupted play periods, and planning of open-ended questions to stimulate children’s science exploration.

ECEC educators play a vital role in educating and caring for children during the first five years of life, a critical period for learning, growth, and development. University-trained early childhood teachers make a particularly significant contribution to overall service quality. This exploratory interview study brings an ecological lens to the perspectives of nine Australian university-trained early childhood teachers on the nature and quantity of their work and workload. As part of the mixed methods Early Learning Work Matters project, this Phase II interview study supports findings from the prior international systematic review that work in ECEC is complex and demanding. Interviews yielded new findings indicating the potential changing nature of early childhood teachers’ work, some of whom reported little to no capacity to focus on service quality. Concerningly, analysis revealed burdensome influences at all ecological levels, with only a few uplifting microsystems which were inconsistently experienced by participants.

With the increase of computational thinking (CT) tools in education, there are questions as to whether and how CT might support and/or hinder algebraic thinking of young children. Utilizing seeds of algebraic thinking, we add to this scholarly discussion by presenting examples from a CT activity with four-year old children in which we illustrate how young children are engaged in early algebraic thinking. More specifically, we highlight children’s pre-instructional engagement with replacement, a precursor to the concept of variable. The included examples add to our limited scholarship regarding young children’s (i.e., ages 3 to 5 years) early development of algebraic thinking of replacement through an unplugged activity that can be implemented within multiple learning environments within children’s larger STEM ecosystem.

Questioning the common practice of treating texts as property that can be stolen and instead exploring the social and rhetorical dimensions that define what is owned (and what is not), as well as what can be taken and appropriated, I drew on data from a yearlong qualitative investigation of young children writing with technology to interrogate how one young child’s scene of play(giarism) can be rendered as consequential writing. Entering this work from a sociocultural perspective wherein literacy learning is intersubjective, findings highlight the descriptive contexts wherein individuality came to intersect with the politics of social belonging and academic obligation. Realizing individual freedoms through contesting compositional forms, play(giarism) meshes personal ways of being and knowing with the doing of (and sometimes disciplining from) others.

Play is pivotal in supporting young children’s holistic development. The COVID-19 crisis further highlighted the importance of play in supporting children’s well-being and in providing a sense of normalcy. Guided by the phenomenographic method, this study aimed to examine Korean in-service infant-toddler teachers’ experiences in fostering play in early childhood educational classrooms during the COVID-19 crisis. The study involved 10 infant-toddler teachers working with children under the age of three years at a large university-based childcare center. They participated in drawing tasks and in-person focus group interviews. The findings revealed that the pandemic caused and exacerbated barriers to everyday play. However, despite challenges, the participants demonstrated their strong commitment to play in the classroom, exhibiting resilience, adaptability, creativity, and resourcefulness. They continued to create a playful environment, support play in various forms, and prioritize play-based learning, demonstrating their strong commitment to play. One notable change expressed by the participants was limited social interaction during mealtime. This study found that the much-needed, unavoidable public health interventions during the COVID-19 crisis may have resulted in unintended consequences for infants’ and toddlers’ social-emotional and language development. Such findings reinforce the idea that play should remain at the forefront of education during the pandemic and beyond.

The purpose of the present study was to examine teachers’ practices for reading aloud informational texts to kindergarteners and describe whether these are affected by the different text structures. Ten (10) teachers working in public kindergartens located in different regions of Greece participated in the study. The sample teachers read informational texts that were created to represent the most common informational text structures: compare-contrast, description, cause-effect, problem-solution, and sequence. Read-aloud sessions were recorded and analyzed according to parameters that refer to well-documented read-aloud styles and ensure discussion quality and text comprehension. Indicative parameters were the timing of the discussion, teachers’ prompts and techniques for enhancing children’s language production, and their verbal participation in the text discussion. Data analysis showed that the teachers’ read-aloud practices stand more in favor of a dialogic reading style. Furthermore, the predominance of low cognitive demand questions and the children’s few initiatives to ask their own questions were representative of the discussion quality. There were also differences in the teachers’ read-aloud practices according to the structure of the texts, with the compare-contract structure being the most challenging one for the teachers and the children. The results of the present study have several implications for improving teachers’ read-aloud practices and kindergarteners’ text comprehension.

Given the increased diversity of the population in the United States and the importance of early science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, it is crucial to identify ways to reduce racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in STEM education. This is particularly important for children with disabilities with intersecting identities, who are more likely to experience opportunity gaps in STEM. One way to address the issue of inequitable STEM learning opportunities is to make sure that research on evidence-based strategies is conducted with a wide range of children with diverse needs and characteristics, so that they can be generalized in real-life settings. To date, little is known about the representation of participants in the early STEM intervention literature. This review analyzed demographic reporting practices and participants’ demographic characteristics in the early STEM intervention literature. The findings suggest that there is a lack of consistency in the reporting of demographic data, particularly regarding race and ethnicity. This inconsistency presents a potential challenge to the field, as it may hinder progress toward achieving equity and reducing disparities in early STEM education. This review highlights the urgent need to establish a consistent method for collecting and reporting participants’ demographic data.

Music and movement activities are universal in children’s play and socialisation and are fundamental tools to utilise in early years teaching. Early childhood teachers tend to value the positive role music and movement can play in their work, however teacher confidence to implement music-based activities varies, often due to a lack of professional learning opportunities. Findings from a study that trained and coached five early childhood teachers, with no prior formal music training, to deliver a specific rhythm and movement program are highlighted throughout this paper. Qualitative data gained through interviews articulates the teachers’ experiences of professional learning, the approach to building their skills and confidence in this area, and the key areas that led to success. Important elements of the professional learning approach included active participation, provision of a video resource library, the nature of the evidence-based and structured program, ease of access, and coaching and implementation support throughout. These key elements, identified as being successful in boosting teacher confidence to use music in their practice, may be readily taken up by other programs, and are transferable to other curriculum and pedagogical areas beyond music.

Story dictation and story acting are joint practices that were popularized some years ago by educator and author Vivian Paley and remain relevant today given their alignment with child-centred, play-based curricula. We review quantitative and qualitative research on these practices, with a focus on young children’s writing as it has been conceptualized in cognitive-linguistic and socio-cultural models. The studies reviewed demonstrate that story dictation and story acting augment children’s print and word awareness, motivate children to handwrite and spell (i.e., transcribe), and enhance vocabulary and narrative skills that are important to composing texts in both oral and written modalities. The practices also foster individual creativity and collaboration amongst children and can thus help teachers and children build a vibrant community of storytellers in their classrooms. In addition to elaborating on the diverse benefits of story dictation and story acting, the review covers ways that the practices can be expanded or modified to engage all children on the path to writing and guides readers to key resources. We conclude with issues that merit reflection by teachers or other practitioners wishing to implement story dictation and story acting in their classroom or other early childhood setting.

The domain of early childhood education has witnessed an increasing emphasis on developing coding and computational thinking (CT) abilities. Scholarly investigations have delved into appropriate approaches for enhancing these proficiencies within early childhood classrooms. The present study aims to investigate the impact of a digital story design program, or Design-Based Digital Story Program (DBDS), on the coding and CT skills of 5-year-old children. Specifically designed for children aged 3–6, the DBDS program aligns with constructivism principles, which promote experiential learning. Employing a case–control quasi-experimental design, the study employed pre-intervention and post-intervention assessments and a follow-up retest after one month. The intervention involved implementing the digital story design program over 11 weeks, with three sessions per week, each lasting between 60 to 90 min, targeting five-year-old participants. The findings reveal that the DBDS program significantly enhances CT and coding skills compared to a control group. Moreover, female participants exhibited more significant improvements in CT skills post-intervention than their male counterparts, while no significant gender-based effects were observed in coding skills. These findings suggest that the DBDS program effectively supports the cultivation of coding and CT abilities among young children, warranting further exploration in diverse educational settings and across various grade levels.