Early Childhood Education Practitioners Research Articles

Enhancing the well-being of early childhood education practitioners working in resource-constrained contexts

Background: The recent migration of early childhood care and education function brought with it many changes that affect the workplace well-being of practitioners and centre managers, yet little research has reported on the voices and experiences of those working on the ground.Aim: To find out the current state of well-being of practitioners working in resource-constrained contexts to help us theorise how might they take action to improve it.Setting: Early childhood care and education centres in rural and township areas in six different provinces.Methods: The first author conducted 10 semi-structured focus group interviews with 80 practitioners recruited by collaborating researchers at various universities. All ethical protocols were adhered to. The focus groups were audio-taped, transcribed and thematically analysed independently by the two authors before reaching consensus.Results: Two themes were identified: (1) participants experienced negative emotions arising from both internal and systemic aspects that were affecting their well-being. (2) Several factors promoted the well-being of practitioners despite their difficult circumstances.Conclusion: Based on the findings, it appears that close collaboration among practitioners within centres and, with other external stakeholders, was an important factor for enhanced well-being. Drawing from action learning theory, we suggest how practitioners can collaborate to sustain their well-being while addressing the challenges they face.Contribution: This collaborative action learning approach can be applied not only by ECCE centres, but to any organisation wishing to improve the well-being and practice of their members.

(Un)expected Emotions and Teamwork: Narratives of Early Childhood Education Practitioners

This study investigates expectations of teamwork and related emotions as described by Finnish early childhood education practitioners. The data, which consist of video-cued interviews with 15 practitioners in early childhood education and care (ECEC), are examined with narrative-discursive analysis. Emotions are approached from a socio-constructivist perspective as narratively constructed. The results are presented as three narratives identified based on teamwork expectations: 1) narrative of inadequacy,2) narrative of injustice,and 3) narrative of support. The narratives describe how time constraints and unexpected changes in teamwork dictated from the top-down produce negative emotional narratives, as well as how the team’s expected support for each other evokes positive emotions and builds communality. The findings show that not only is teamwork an important emotional context in ECEC but also the limited possibilities for influencing teamwork practices evoke negative emotions that can affect the quality of teamwork and well-being at work in ECEC.

Issues with the Development of Professional Preschool Teaching Staff in China and Developmental Strategies

Teaching in preschool institutions is a specialized profession that requires professional expertise and techniques. Currently, certain issues with the professionalization of early childhood education practitioners have negatively impacted the quality of Chinese preschool education. This article analyzed the necessity of professionalizing pre-primary teachers and pinpointed the challenges faced by China’s educational community in building professional preschool education staff. Relevant strategies were also proposed for strengthening China’s pre-primary teaching force.

Conceptualising quality early childhood education: Learning from young children in Brazil and South Africa through creative and play‐based methods

AbstractEarly childhood has increasingly been acknowledged as a vital time for all children. Inclusive and quality education is part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with the further specification that all children have access to quality pre‐primary education. As early childhood education (ECE) has expanded worldwide, so have concerns about the quality of ECE provision, including whether its pedagogy is culturally meaningful and contextually appropriate. While these issues are much debated in themselves, often missing is a key stakeholder group for such discussions: young children. Young children have critical insights and perspectives of key importance for ensuring quality ECE. This article addresses how quality ECE can be conceptualised, through reflections on creative and play‐based methods with young children, used in a cross‐national project titled Safe Inclusive Participative Pedagogy. The article draws on community case studies undertake by two of the country teams in Brazil and South Africa. In contexts where children's participation is not necessarily familiar in ECE settings nor understood by key stakeholders, the fieldwork shows that children can express their views and experiences through using creative and play‐based methods. We argue that these methods can become part of a critical pedagogy through ECE settings, where ECE practitioners, children and other key stakeholders engage in ongoing, challenging and transformative dialogue. In turn, critical pedagogy has the potential to strengthen local practices, challenge top‐down approach, and foster quality safe, inclusive, participative early years education.

An Inclusive Early Childhood Education Setting according to Practitioners’ Experiences in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

In Indonesia, the definition of inclusive education tends to be a narrow one. Even though the goal of the national policy on inclusive education underlines non-discrimination for all learners, early childhood education (ECE) practices still do not accommodate every child’s needs. This study focuses on inclusive practices in ECE by exploring the provision of inclusive ECE in Yogyakarta, one of the big cities in Indonesia, where ECE inclusive pedagogy has been implemented for more than five years. By exploring ECE practitioners’ experiences, this study aims to discuss the (mis)alignments between inclusive education policy and practices. The data sources are two-fold. First, we conducted online interviews with ECE manager and teachers (N = 5). The second form of data comprised ECE teachers’ online discussions on the topic of inclusion. The data collected were analysed using a thematic analysis method. The results indicate that distributed leadership, an organisational culture that respects diversity, and inclusive ECE pedagogy are the main aspects that need to be developed to enable inclusive ECE.

The Relationship Between Kindergarten Teachers' Perceptions and Children's Readiness Skills in Selangor, Malaysia: A Survey Study

The purpose of this study is to learn about teachers' perceptions of children's readiness skills by understanding the different types of skills and their importance to children who will enter primary school in the future. There are 4 main objectives in this study which are (i) to explore the types of children's readiness skills; (ii) to explore teachers' perceptions of children's readiness skills; (iii) to find out the relationship between teachers' perceptions and children's readiness skills; and (iv) to find out the difference between male and female teachers' perceptions towards children's readiness skills. This study is a quantitative study where it was only conducted using a survey method which is a set of questionnaires was distributed to 112 participants consisting of trainee teachers, young teachers, experienced teachers, and early childhood education practitioners in Selangor. The data were analyzed by using Statistical Software Package for Sciences (SPSS) version 25 to obtain percentage, standard deviation and mean. Findings show teachers understand the level of readiness skills required by children in kindergarten. Besides, their perceptions of the readiness skills needed by children is also at a good level. Several suggestions have been made to the Malaysian Ministry of Education to ensure that the emphasis on child well-being through positive learning is implemented in kindergarten so that children can improve their readiness skills when they are entering the primary school. Furthermore, researchers have stated the implications on children's readiness skills, specifically the role of the school and parents in providing opportunities for them to explore their surrounding so that they demonstrate a clear nature of readiness to learn.

The Level of Efficacy of Private Kindergarten Teachers in Classroom Teaching Implementation Based on Professional Qualification Status

A survey was conducted to determine the efficacy of private kindergarten teachers in the classroom based on their professional qualifications in Early Childhood Education (ECE). A set of printed questionnaires that were modified from previous studies were physically distributed to 250 private kindergarten teachers in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia, who were selected through convenience sampling. The study sample consisted of 228 people. Findings showed the level of teacher efficacy for both groups of teachers to be high. However, the mean value for teachers without ECE qualifications is higher than the mean value for teachers with ECE qualifications for the aspects of teaching strategies and student engagement. In addition, there is no significant mean difference in teacher efficacy based on professional qualifications. The contributions of this study are it can help ECE practitioners and responsible agencies to learn more about the current efficacy level among private kindergarten teachers, to re-examine the quality of ECE teacher education training programs, and to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher professional development programs implemented.

Investigating parents' degrees of trust and communication towards teachers in Indonesian kindergartens

The parent-teacher interaction has been identified as a critical component in the development of children. Teachers' capacity to educate children is influenced by the level of trust parents have in them. Creating a supportive environment at home and cooperating with the school are essential components of a positive educational experience for all parties involved. Prior research, however, found little parental involvement particularly in establishing a quality relationship with the schools in Indonesian kindergartens. This research aimed to examine Indonesian parents’ degrees of trust and communication toward the teachers in 8 kindergartens in Dairi regency, North Sumatra. In constructing the questionnaire, 9 early childhood education practitioners were invited to make content suggestions before conducting a validity test and reliability through factor analysis. The validity is guaranteed by the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure result of .872 and Barlett's Test (Chi-Square = 3451.561, df = 406, p 0.05). The reliability was measured using Cronbach's Alpha obtaining an alpha coefficient of .870, indicating good reliability. The findings from the 203 questionnaires consisting of 29 items that were distributed indicate parents’ favorable attitudes toward teachers. Besides, the parent’s background does not reflect their attitudes and practices. Suggestions, including delivering the concept of partnership to the parents and increasing the opportunities of participating in school activities, are provided to promote greater quality of the parent-teacher relationship.

Practitioner perspectives on the challenges of implementing ‘alternative’ early childhood education (ECE) provision for nomadic children in Mongolia

Investment in early childhood education (ECE) is seen as key to improving life chances for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Children from nomadic backgrounds often face difficulties in accessing ECE services because of geography, lack of services and the mobility of families. However, the provision of these services is seen as important in reducing educational inequalities between nomadic and non-nomadic children as well as in improving school readiness. Mongolia’s alternative provision policy for nomadic children is often presented as a case study of how ECE services can be provided for nomadic peoples. However, there is little to no literature on how this alternative provision policy is experienced on the ground by practitioners and the subsequent impact on front line staff and children. This research explored the perspectives of ECE practitioners in Mongolia, who are engaged in providing services to nomadic children, to understand their views on how the policy on alternative provision was experienced. Semi-structured interviews with 24 key informants were undertaken in 4 areas of Mongolia over the period 2019–2020. Practitioners highlighted issues around the funding of ECE alternative provision which impacted not only on sustainability of the programs but also impacted on access to programs, the resources available, the duration of programs and the quality of programs. Moreover, factors such as the qualifications of staff and a lack of teachers were highlighted. We conclude that appropriate funding is key in ensuring effective implementation of provision and identify areas of need in relation to ECE practitioner training as well as factors related to practitioner terms and conditions that require attention. Furthermore, some rethinking of the policy of ‘one child one type of provision’ needs to be undertaken as it leads to a lack of equity in relation to access and quality of provision between nomadic and non-nomadic children.

Rethinking awkwardness made in collisions of physical and early childhood education

ABSTRACT Background Beginning with a proposition that physical education (PE) and early childhood education (ECE) build affinities through shared developmental interests, this article works the gaps made possible when PE meets with ECE in unfamiliar ways. Through a shared investment in the normalizing and minoritizing functions of child development, how and why PE collides with ECE often hierarchizes particular knowledges, practices, and relations that typically foster instrumental and technical educational approaches to understanding children’s movement that align with settler colonial, Euro-Western conceptions of bodied individualism, responsibility, and regulation. These status-quo alliances of PE with ECE manifest in children’s movement guidelines and leave little room for local, responsive invention with children. This article asks what becomes within the spaces where PE and ECE collide otherwise – where we do not already know what can be made in the proximities of these two bodies of knowledge and instead attend to moments where, in everyday meetings of PE and ECE, we create unfamiliar pedagogical possibilities for moving with children. Purpose and Method I detail one concept found in the literature where PE meets ECE: awkwardness. I re-encounter awkwardness through blog posts co-written by early childhood educator co-researchers and the researcher during Moving Pedagogies, a pedagogical inquiry project where early childhood educators and preschool-aged children investigated how to walk slowly while disrupting walking as primarily a mode of exercise. Then, alongside Manning’s ([2014]. “Wondering the World Directly–or, how Movement Outruns the Subject.” Body & Society 20 (3-4): 162–188.) ‘precarious equilibrium’, awkwardness is engaged through its contradictions and troubles toward nourishing our imperfect work to move otherwise with PE and ECE. Conclusions Resisting the urge to articulate an overarching model for PE and ECE to intersect going forward, this article brings to the foreground moments where PE and ECE meet and fail and where what we thought we knew about PE and ECE crumbles. It proposes that with situated, enduring threads of PE and ECE we might co-create with children locally meaningful possibilities for moving together. The article concludes with a vital question for PE and ECE practitioners, educators, and researchers to grapple with: how do we do moving with children with local collisions of PE, ECE, bodies, knowledges, inheritances, and lively more-than-human others, where to move is to take the risk of inventively enmeshing our collective movements within the hopeful, messy, and disorienting ethical and political entanglements that compose complex contemporary worlds?

An investigation into children's agency: children's initiatives and practitioners’ responses in Finnish early childhood education

ABSTRACT This paper investigates adult–child interaction in the early years of education. The intention is to understand how children's initiatives and practitioners’ responses support and/or hinder children's agency. Our ethnographic data include 150 h of video data supplemented by observational field notes from a Finnish Early Childhood Education (ECE) centre with eight five-year-old children and two ECE practitioners. The video data were analysed abductively by using an Interaction Analysis method. The children's initiatives were found to manifest in several modes, namely asking a question, suggesting, challenging, refusing and ideating. The responses to these initiatives by the ECE practitioners included accepting, accepting after a rejection, adapting, rejecting or ignoring. The analysis points to ways in which adult–child relationships are negotiated in everyday activities, showing the relational nature of agency and suggesting that the ways in which adult engages in the child's initiations are an intricate part of children's agency.

Reform Disconnections between the Free Quality Kindergarten Education Scheme and Kindergartens in Hong Kong

National Association of Education for Young Children (NAEYC) (2009) stated early childhood education (ECE) practitioners are key agents who develop quality assured curriculum and conduct teaching through developmentally-appropriate practice (DAP). They play the vital role in providing quality education for enhancing children's whole-person development in early years, in the sense that, their importance and significance towards children’s development is an undeniable fact. In order to retain and maintain a stable teaching team in kindergartens, whether or not ECE practitioners’ salary could be guaranteed with statutory increment are the key concerns of different stakeholders in ECE, where appropriate, the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) plays a pre-dominant role in policy-making on the subsidy of ECE in Hong Kong. This paper therefore examined the key initiative on the salary adjustment for kindergarten practitioners through the implementation of the Free Quality Kindergarten Education Scheme (Scheme) starting from 2017/18 school year (Education Bureau, 2017b). The latest three policy addresses on the direct subsidy to kindergartens joining the Scheme (Scheme-KGs), announced by the Government of HKSAR in 2016, 2017 and 2018, were extracted for examining the fault-lines in terms of direct subsidies for Scheme-KGs via content analysis. Developed by Walker (2006), the Five Reform Disconnections were adopted as theoretical framework for analyzing the disconnection between the Scheme and teachers' expectation on their salary adjustment. Practical recommendations were provided for alleviating the said disconnection.

Practitioners’ Views on Learning Using Children’s Peer Interactions Amongst Under Three Year Old Children in Selangor, Malaysia

Research on children’s peer interactions shows many benefits for children’s development especially in developing children’s social competence. Drawing on a case study data from a study that investigated peer interactions among under-three-year-old children in three Malaysian childcare centres, this paper provides a picture of how the children’s peer interactions were understood by largely untrained practitioners at the start of the project, and how the complexity of children’s lived experiences remained hidden to the practitioners until they took part in the video-stimulated recall (VSR) interviews based on children’s peer interactions, and focus group discussions. The latter provided practitioners with an opportunity to deepen their thinking about children’s peer interactions and to begin to see them as linked with learning. In particular, the practitioners perceived that (i) play; (ii) familiarity; and (iii) having friends constituted important learning for children during peer interactions at their early childcare centres. This has implications for understanding the roles of early childhood education practitioners to children’s peer interactions as well as how practitioners can help support children’s learning to make a social difference.
 
 KEYWORDS: Children’s Peer Interactions, Practitioners, Early Childhood Education Centre, Video-Stimulated Recall Interviews, Focus group Discussions

Understanding ableism: A teaching and learning tool for early childhood education practitioners

Understanding ableism: A teaching and learning tool for early childhood education practitioners

The status-quo of play-based pedagogies in Western Australia: Reflections of early childhood education practitioners

This paper discusses the findings of a qualitative research project conducted in 2017 that explored practitioners’ experiences and perceptions of the provision of play pedagogies in contemporary Western Australian early childhood education contexts. Interviews were conducted with four play-based learning teachers and an open-ended survey was completed by 40 early childhood educators who were members of the audience at a Western Australia conference in 2017. The study participants discussed beliefs and values pertaining to quality play-based learning and tensions associated with the diminishing role of play in the early years of schooling and its impact on young children. They also highlighted several enablers and barriers that influence and shape current early childhood education practice. The findings of this study provide further evidence for the issues identified in recent Early Childhood Australia (Western Australia) discussion papers and in other research surrounding play-based learning in the current social-political context.

Exploring the role of Malaguzzi’s ‘Hundred Languages of Children’ in early childhood education

Background: In the history of early childhood education (ECE), language is viewed as key in teaching and learning. Children in the ECE are mostly confined to verbal communication which, to a certain extent, restricts their imagination and inventive ability. Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, initiated the Hundred Languages of Children (HLC) as a pedagogical approach to enable children to interact and communicate.Aim: This study aims to explore the role of HLC through the experiences and views of the four ECE practitioners in the Gauteng province. Drawing on Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, the author argues that ECE children possess different kinds of minds, and therefore they learn in different ways.Setting: Two Early Childhood centres in the Gauteng Province of South Africa were selected for this study because they had adopted Malaguzzi’s HLC approach to constructing concepts to help children structure knowledge and organise learning.Methods: The author used one-on-one interviews to get ECE practitioners’ experiences on using Malaguzzi’s HLC. To corroborate the interviews’ data, the author conducted classroom observations and document analysis.Results: The participants viewed Malaguzzi’s HLC as an enabler to meet the requirement of the two sets of curricula from the Department of Social Development (the National Curriculum Framework for children from 0 to 4 years) and from the Department of Basic Education (the Curriculum Assessment and Policy Statement for 5-year-old children).Conclusion: The findings show a paradigm shift, as children become active constructors of their own knowledge.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD TRHOUGH HORSE RACING AT DOMPU TRIBE

This study aims to examine the role of traditional horse racing games in the tribes of the Dompu tribe, Indonesia. This study uses a qualitative approach with ethnographic methods. The subjects of the study were five young jockeys aged 4-8 years and seven horse owners. Data were collected through observation, interviews, documentation and focus group discussion (FGD). Data were analyzed using domain analysis techniques, taxonomic analysis, componential analysis and theme analysis. The results of the study indicate that the transformation of enviromental education in early childhood through horse racing games is done by growing children's concern for the environment and caring for animals, such as horses. During the process of horse racing, children are not permitted to damage nature and hurt animals. Therefore, horse racing becomes a means of enviromental education for children for the sake of the preservation of nature. Horse racing is also one of the most environmentally cared tourist destinations for local people. Another important finding is that the traditional horse racing game in the Dompu tribe has become a medium of transformation of enviromental education of for early childhood. This study informs that the transformation of environmental education can be done since children are aged 4 years through traditional horse racing games. This research can also be a reference for early childhood education practitioners to create a special school for children who have a hobby of riding horses.

Participatory pedagogy for values education in early childhood education

ABSTRACTPractitioners working with young children in the provision of early childhood education (ECE) are often directed by state governments to mediate specific values through their pedagogical practice. This paper reports the findings from a small scale empirical research study exploring the pedagogy applied by ECE practitioners in this context. I argue that moral pedagogies, where children are positioned as constructors of knowledge about values, have the potential to support ECE practice in ways that respect and uphold children’s rights. Such an approach requires practitioners to adopt a critical stance and consider their epistemic beliefs about how children learn. I suggest that this process may be enhanced by practitioners’ reflecting on the positioning of children within pedagogical relationships through the lens of child rights.

Play in adult-child interaction: Institutional multi-party interaction and pedagogical practice in a toddler classroom

Abstract This paper considers the ways in which adults' active participation in play has the potential to manage and manipulate participation frameworks in adult-child joint activities, drawing on a dataset of 150 h of video-recorded, naturally occurring adult-child-group interactions from one Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) institution for children under the age of three. A total of 47 instances of multi-party make-believe play were located from the dataset and subjected to multimodal conversation analysis. The data-driven microanalysis revealed that adult role in play is more complex and multidimensional than prior research has shown. Playing can be understood as a shared communicative project, a form of mutual understanding, between adults and children. In adult-child interaction play has the capacity to simultaneously invoke two different institutional frames: that of playing and that of caring or educating (e.g., soothing or including). In a multi-party context, adults' playful stance taking can serve different kinds of institutional tasks and balance asymmetries of participation among children and between adults and children. The results contribute to theoretical and pedagogical discussion of adult roles in children's play and facilitate early childhood education practitioners' pedagogical reflection and imagination.

Mengoptimalkan Kemampuan Fisik Motorik Anak Usia 3-4 Tahun Melalui Kegiatan Bermain Lempar Tangkap Bola

The development of motor functions is one of the dimensions of early childhood development that is important to note among other development dimensions. This is a fundamental part of the child's need to develop muscle, brain, and nerves, which is one of the basic developments at a later stage. Therefore, this dimension needs to get appropriate stimulation in accordance with the stages of child development, so that stimulation is given with the right portion. One of the most effective ways to develop children motor skills is through their favorite activities, such as fun and play activities. This paper tries to explain one of the fun activity alternatives that could be used to optimize the motor physical ability of children aged 3-4 years, ie through, among others, throwing ball games. It is hoped that this paper is useful for early childhood education practitioners, as well as parents in developing ways to stimulate the development of motor skills of early childhood through fun activities.