Early Childhood Education Journal最新文献

This article outlines a series of mini-lessons designed to integrate interactive read-alouds, arts-engaged activities, and social-emotional learning (SEL) themes to support literacy development and socioemotional well-being in students. Each lesson pairs a carefully selected anchor text with a creative arts activity and online resources, aiming to foster engagement and holistic growth. SEL competencies such as identity exploration, impulse control, managing strong emotions, and responsible decision-making are emphasized. Practical strategies and implementation steps are provided to assist educators in integrating these approaches into their curriculum, promoting equity and accessibility while nurturing a positive classroom culture.

Shared reading sessions utilizing dialogic reading methods have shown promise in supporting children’s language development and comprehension, though variability in implementation among practitioners remains a concern. This study analyzed 33 videotaped, one-on-one dialogic reading sessions implemented by 14 Chilean preservice early childhood educators and children aged 1 to 6. In total, 1289 sequences were examined for adherence to the PEER structure (prompt, evaluate, expand, and repeat), prompt type, and rate and length of children’s answer. Results showed that, on average, PSECEs executed sequences of 1.75 steps, with only 5% of all sequences reaching the final step. Furthermore, the study investigated the types of prompts employed by PSECEs. Notably, 69% of the prompts included questions, with wh-word-initiated questions comprising 46% of the total questions. Within this category, 16% were classified as high-challenge. Merely 7% of all prompts featured high-challenge questions. Children’s response rates were notably higher for prompts containing questions compared to other types of prompts, as well as for those containing wh-questions compared to other question types. Moreover, children’s answers were observed to be longer in response to prompts including high-challenge questions in contrast to other prompt types. Implications of these findings and future lines of research are discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education for all children, particularly for children with disabilities. Many preschools closed, offered distance learning or nothing at all, or operated in a hybrid format. We examined the impact of enrollment on young children’s social and emotional adjustment for children with and without disabilities, as well as caregiver stress during the pandemic as reported by 229 caregivers of 3 to 5 year old children. Respondents were predominantly White (n = 175) and female with high levels of education and income. In addition, 94% of caregivers were biological/parental caregivers. Children enrolled in preschool and who experienced in-person instruction received more favorable ratings of their social and emotional skills compared to those who were not enrolled or did not receive in-person instruction. However, the benefit of being enrolled and receiving in-person instruction disappeared when children had a stressed caregiver. Of note, children with disabilities had significantly higher ASQ scores than those without disabilities and caregivers with children with disabilities had a higher PSI score. Further research is needed to understand mitigation efforts employed by families and the unique experiences of culturally, linguistically, and racially/ethnically diverse children and their families.

As an increasingly recognized facet of early childhood development, the integration of play into early STEM education is garnering attention. This paper delves into the role of engineering play within early childhood education, emphasizing its application in natural playscape settings. The focus is on investigating the extent to which engineering play can spontaneously emerge in such natural settings. To explore this, we analyzed extensive video footage of preschool children engaging in play on these playscapes. Our findings reveal a spontaneous occurrence of engineering play, highlighting three illustrative cases. These cases provide valuable insights into how playscapes, complemented by strategic adult involvement, can nurture young children’s engineering skills and behaviors. The findings contribute to the growing evidence that young children are capable explorers, particularly in environments that offer a harmonious mix of structured and unstructured elements tailored to their developmental needs. This research has significant implications for early childhood education. It underscores the importance of incorporating engineering concepts into play-based learning and advocates for a nature-oriented pedagogical approach and curriculum. This approach not only promotes engineering thinking and practices among young learners but also advocates for a curriculum that nurtures these skills through playful, natural interactions.

This review examines the extant Australian literature on process quality in ECEC, which is understood as children’s actual experience within a childcare setting such as interactions between educators and children. A thematic analysis of empirical evidence from the 21 qualified articles reveals key characteristics of ECEC process quality studies, the benefits of process quality to child outcomes, and some factors influencing process quality. The review highlights the increasing interest in ECEC process quality in Australia and that process quality can be linked to children’s outcomes in the early years. It also underscores that outdoor environments and educators’ attributes such as personal experiences and qualifications stood out as the key supporting factors of process quality. More importantly, the review found that most of the process quality studies in Australia were conducted in metropolitan areas, and there were only two studies focused on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The paper calls for more actions to combine process quality with equity across types of ECEC services.

Early Care and Education (ECE) providers earn low wages, have limited access to employer sponsored health insurance, and are at higher risk for poor health (Lessard, 2020). Evidence shows that poor ECE teacher physical and mental health is associated with decreased ability to provide quality care for young children (Esquivel et al., 2016). One potential way to improve ECE teacher health is through workplace wellness interventions. Through longitudinal surveys and qualitative interviews with ECE providers, we found that, over the course of a year, ECE providers who participated in Be Well Care Well (BWCW), a 12-month wellness program designed specifically for ECEproviders, improved significantly on measures of personal strength and resilience, worker stress, job satisfaction, motivation towards health, and engagement in physical activity, which was supported by interviews conducted by a subset of teachers. Providers’ physical activity was specifically associated with the amount of time they reported engaging in components of the BWCW intervention. Compelling data was also gathered about the experience of children in the care of ECE providers who participated in BWCW. Findings show that after participating in BWCW, teachers’ interactions with the children in their care proactively facilitate healthy social and emotional development. This provides initial evidence that BWCW is a promising approach for improving the lives of ECE providers and the quality of care they provide to young children.

Early childhood educators (birth through second grade) have faced a wide range of challenges while providing education and care for the youngest group of children. Their positions often range from child-care settings to grade school, with different configurations for benefits, class size, and salary. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 192 early educators shared their perceived stress levels and personal and employment context including relationship status, caregiving responsibilities, education level, work setting, and age group. While there were noted differences across the group, educators working in school-aged settings and those who were caregivers (outside of work) reported higher levels of stress. Interview results from a subset of survey respondents showed concerns about online learning and the well-being of their students, while also underscoring personal growth through the challenges.

High-quality early childhood education provides children with opportunities for engaged learning. Yet there are currently no classroom-level measures that focus specifically on how teachers support engagement in the classroom, a key underlying dimension of playful learning. We introduce the Playful Learning Across the Years (PLAY) observational tool, a new tool designed to assess support for engaged learning in early childhood classrooms. Using data from videos of Ghanaian preprimary classrooms (N = 420) coded using the tool, we conduct factor analysis to assess the underlying domains of engaged learning opportunities at the classroom-level and find three domains representing support for exploration, social connectedness, and positive emotional climate. We then examine if these domains are sensitive to impacts of a teacher professional development program and find that the program had large impacts on all three domains (d = 0.55–1.01). Finally, we explore concurrent validity of the tool using classroom process quality scores from a separate classroom observational tool and teacher characteristics and find some evidence from each. This study aims to systematically operationalize opportunities for engaged learning at the classroom-level in an under-studied context, with implications for measuring quality and promoting children’s school readiness in early educational settings globally.

Global trends suggest that teaching writing focuses on a skills-based approach to preparing children for high-stakes standardised tests. In the early years, teachers are grappling with finding a better balance between preparing children for such tests and satisfying their sense of pedagogic responsibility to teach them to become joyful, creative writers. This paper explores an Australian Preparatory teacher’s teaching of writing framed by the pedagogic framework LAUNCH. Using video and audio recordings, as well as children-made artefacts, the paper considers the impact of this framework on the writing experiences of fourteen five- and six-year-old children. Basil Bernstein’s visible and invisible pedagogies provide the theoretical frame. Findings assert that a pedagogic mix allows early years teachers to teach children to be skilled and confident writers while nurturing their imaginations and creativity. This is significant given that current debates around children’s writing experiences are often tied to high-stakes, standardised test-based writing.

Through a qualitative, collective case study design, the study investigated children’s demonstration of agency in composing writing projects in three elementary classrooms within one school. Researchers conducted interviews with the teachers, observed classroom writing instruction, interviewed children individually or in small focus groups, and collected student texts. The findings demonstrate how the curriculum, which supported choice and expression of student voice, shaped students’ responses in unique ways. Across classrooms students found ways to embed their out-of-school experiences within their writing and express their linguistic identities and cultures. The shared philosophy of the school using a Reggio-Emilia inspired model of instruction supported the argument that agency is relational and mediated through the ways in which people use tools within their social settings. Implications for practice include building community, providing choices within and across genres, and encouraging children to use their full linguistic resources to support student agency.