Early Childhood Learning Environments Research Articles

Embedding Mindfulness Into Early Childhood Classroom Routines: A Practical Strategy for Teachers

Mindfulness in early childhood learning environments cultivates self-awareness, emotional regulation, and cognitive focus, fostering a conducive atmosphere for social-emotional development and academic readiness.

Science Learning in Playful Learning Environments: A Study from US Early Childhood Classrooms

Science may be a particularly vital subject in early life, serving not just to provide the foundation for future scientific understanding, but to expanding understanding and recognition of the value of young children's thinking and learning. therefore, designing learning environment to support children’s playful science learning is getting important. For this purpose, the current study was conducted to instigate how playful learning environments support children’s science learning. The data of this study was collected from four different US early childhood learning environments. The analysis of the data showed that children’s playful discoveries promotes their scientific skills and science learning. In these learning environments, children are encouraged to play more and explore a variety of situations in these learning environments thanks to the materials chosen and the design of the learning centers that encourage interaction between children. The findings of the current study suggest that exemplary practices should be developed in order to move away from traditional learning environments and to support learning through play, and to raise awareness on this issue, starting with teacher candidates.

Relationally Enhancing Teacher Education in Early Childhood Learning Environments towards Sustainability

Teacher education in early childhood learning environments (ECLE) is a generally neglected space in teaching and learning, more so when the focus is on relationality and sustainability. ECLE refers to the Care and Education of children between 2-4 years of age. The focus of this paper is on ECLE from a post-humanist perspective, which goes in tandem with UNESCO’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Emphasis is on inclusive economic development through environmentally sustainable social inclusion for all. Relationality has been chosen because of its power to advance the deconstruction of the hitherto taken for granted canons of humanism and enlightenment that promote hierarchies in knowledge and its production. These hierarchies disregard the voices of the vulnerable and the excluded, in terms of social class and other markers like age, but most importantly their erroneously assumed lack of knowledge. To date, the voices of the aspirant teachers in ECLE, as well as those of the children and parents, are non-existent when teacher education programmes are designed and implemented. This paper reveals that including the voices of these beneficiary communities enhances the quality of the discourse, theorisation and praxis in the provision of ECLE, as well as in the crafting of relevant teacher education programmes. Thus, the design and delivery of a programme is better based on the relationalities among humans, animals and plants; and between them and inanimate entities like infrastructure and resources. The relationality among all of these in the crafting of the beyond human is enhanced using advanced digital technologies. A relational approach recognises our entanglement with our entire universe in a manner that does not centre on identity. Quality therefore is about the ever-increasing complexity of diffractions of multi-layered and multi-perspective engagements across borders.

A mobilisation of motherhood, babyhood and childhood sensing pasts: Life diaries as creative and speculative force of experimentation

In recent years, the theoretical lens of new materialism(s) and surge in feminist thinking has opened up new ways of understanding the complexities of motherhood, babyhood and early childhood. This surge in post-qualitative and feminist inquiry towards the troubling of dominant early childhood abstractions and norms, as well as resistance to human-centric perspectives offers new possibilities to engage both ethically and politically in an affirmative exploration of motherhoods, babyhoods and early childhoods. Through communicating the methodological nuances in two early childhood physical spaces this article is a (re)assembling of the fibrous, slippery and friable fragments of an earlier inquiry. The first of these spaces was a baby room in an Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) setting in the United Kingdom (UK), and the second was Higher Education (HE) Undergraduate (UG) Early Childhood Studies (ECS) teaching and learning environments, again in the UK. There were also a number of virtual, past and present, material, ephemeral and ethereal research sites that seem disparate, yet connected. The transversal methodology held bodies in the middle of the research, allowing things to creep in and creep out. A mobilisation of motherhood, babyhood and childhood sensing pasts produced neologisms, such as mothersick, Bowlb(arbar)ian and (gh)host(ile)(ly) which conjure transversality and spacetimemattering in all that I do in the HE ECS classroom and ECEC environments. Memories, histories and (her)stories – severed encounters shared and assembled. Cuts that brought pain to the surface(s) and bodies become ambiguous, unnerving, raw and exposed. Through the article, it is argued, powerful psychological developmental theories that reverberate through human and nonhuman bodies haunt student and pedagogue bodily knowledges and histories. It is suggested that ethically, HE pedagogues have a duty of care to think beyond the immediate teaching and learning classroom and consider how we touch the lives of UG ECS students, in unknown but often imperceptible and sensed ways.

Space speaks: A portrait of an early childhood centre and the affordances provided by the learning environment

The quality of early childhood education and care fundamentally depends on teachers’ wise practice. However, the environments in which that education and care occur can influence, inform, and shape teachers’ practice, and children’s and families’ experiences. This article draws on a written “portrait” of the learning environment created at one New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) centre, capturing both physical and non-physical aspects of the environment and highlighting the affordances the environment offered to children and families/whānau. A Reggio Emilia lens is used to inform analysis of the learning environment and the associated affordances. The portrait (McChesney, 2020) and this article may support practitioners by providing a vision of what can be in terms of early childhood learning environments, and by providing a possible framework for self-review and inquiry.

A comparative analysis of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised and Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Third Edition

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales, including the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised (Harms et al., 2005) and the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Third Edition (Harms et al., 2015) are the most widely used observational assessments in early childhood learning environments. The most recent version of the scale addresses some of the criticisms in the research literature, particularly related to the organization of the Scale and the standard scoring procedures. In the current study, we explore the relationship between the two scales. Specifically, we evaluated the correlations between the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised and the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Third Edition, as well as the differences between the overall scores, individual items, and subscales. Implications for practice and future research are also provided.

Making Space for Storytime: The Role of the Environment in the Production of Storytime

ABSTRACTThis article reviews the findings from Project VIEWS2, a four-year IMLS-funded study that examined the early literacy impact of public library storytimes, and provides detail on a secondary analysis of storytime spaces that was done using the Project VIEWS2 dataset. The storytimes spaces were explored by looking at the spatial quality, physical literacy environment, and seating of attendees, as these characteristics have been identified as important aspects of early childhood learning environments. Findings across these three characteristics are presented as well as implications and recommendations for more effective storytime practice and space design.

Kajian Ergonomi di Sentra Persiapan BCCT: Menggugah Minat Baca-Tulis Anak Usia Dini Melalui Penataan Lingkungan Belajar yang Ergonomis

Humans influence and are influenced by their environment. That rule is fully accepted in the study of behavioral science or psychology. Thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and tendencies to act can "change" a situation, and can "changed" because of a situation. Ergonomics is the study of the relationship between humans and their environment, in order to improve the quality of these relationships so as to produce positive situations for humans, as well as positive for their environment. This conceptual writing wants to try to apply the study and the results of ergonomics studies into the practice of early childhood learning, by taking a learning approach that is closely related to environmental structuring, namely a center and circle based learning approach, also known as a Beyond Center and Circle Time (BCCT). Which is one of the centers of learning in the BCCT approach is the preparation center. That is the center for early childhood learning environments arranged in such a way that supports the achievement of the purpose of preparing early childhood to master the ability to read, write, and count. This paper wants to integrate the principles of environmental management of the preparation center, with the psychological fact that effective environmental management can really affect human performance, in this case the achievement of early childhood development in read, write, and count preparation. So that it is expected that the efforts of early childhood education institutions to prepare well the tasks of early childhood development can be increased to the optimal level.

Promoting Child Development in a Universal Preschool System: A Field Experiment

This study tests an intervention that introduces a structured curriculum for five-year olds into the universal preschool context of Norway. We conduct a field experiment with 691 five-year-olds in 71 preschools and measure treatment impacts on children's development in mathematics, language and executive functioning. Compared to business as usual, the nine-month curriculum intervention has effects on child development at post-intervention and the effects persist one year following the end of the treatment. The effects are entirely driven by the preschool centers identified as low-quality at baseline, suggesting that a structured curriculum can reduce inequality in early childhood learning environments.

Theorising young children's interests: making connections and in-the-moment happenings

Abstract Global perspectives of early childhood education are increasingly mediated by an instrumental discourse associated with standardised notions of knowledge acquisition. However, an alternative discourse for early childhood emphasises the importance of learning experiences that are responsive to the diverse interests that children enact in their play. In this article I argue that instrumentalism reproduces binary conceptualisations of knowledge through which curriculum content privileges universal forms of knowledge over the locally situated knowledge which is mediated by children's interactions and intra-actions within fluid and overlapping social, cultural and material contexts. Drawing upon an episode of play from an early years classroom in England, this paper explores three different ways in which the notion of ‘interest’ can be conceptualised and positioned in relation to young children's learning, knowledge and ways of knowing. In so doing, the paper poses critical questions regarding ‘what counts’ as valid knowledge and as legitimate modes of becoming knowledgeable. I suggest that interests are constituted by a combination of children's intentional motivations to make connections with sociocultural repertoires and the unpredictable, in-the-moment happenings that emerge through intra-activity in early childhood learning environments.

THE ROLE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD TUTORS IN OPTIMIZING THE EARLY CHILDHOOD LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AT PAUD NOOR RAKHMAH BANDUNG

Abstract Non-formal Early Childhood is a symbol of the council school, when viewed from the tuition fee that is voluntary and not mandatory, so do not imagine this school has the good facilities. In terms of places, early childhood doesn't have own building, mostly using village hall or other public facilities such as mosques or musholla. This limitation also has an impact on early childhood space for learning. Children cannot play and move freely and develop themselves. The environmental of learning should be a lot of attention, the environment will affect the learning process and learning outcomes of children . This research is qualitative research with study descriptive. This research is based on the problem of various conditions of environmental management learning at Early Chilhood Education (PAUD) Noor Rakhmah related to facilities and infrastructure. Tutors have an important role in optimizing the management of early childhood learning environments. The purpose of this research is to obtain data that is: (1) The planning process conducted by Tutor PAUD Noor Rakhmah in optimizing the early childhood learning environment. (2) The implementation process conducted by Tutor PAUD Noor Rakhmah in optimizing the early childhood learning environment. (3) The evaluation process conducted by PAUD Noor Rakhmah Tutor on the utilization of early childhood learning environment.Keywords: Environmental Management Learning, Early Childhood

The relationship between teacher qualification and the quality of the early childhood education and care environment

The relationship between teacher qualification and the quality of the early childhood education and care environment

Associations between inattention, hyperactivity and pre-reading skills before and after formal reading instruction begins

Concurrent associations between teacher ratings of inattention, hyperactivity and pre-reading skills were examined in 64 pre-schoolers who had not commenced formal reading instruction and 136 school entrants who were in the first weeks of reading instruction. Both samples of children completed measures of pre-reading skills, namely phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming, and letter name knowledge, as well as a measure of verbal ability. School entrants also completed measures of letter sound knowledge and beginning word identification skills. Teachers completed rating scales of inattention and hyperactivity. In the preschool sample, teacher-rated inattention and hyperactivity were not correlated with measures of children’s phonological processing but were correlated with letter name knowledge. In comparison, inattention, but not hyperactivity, was independently related to all measures of school entrants’ phonological processing and alphabet knowledge and their knowledge of high frequency words. Structural equation modelling on the school entrant sample revealed that the relationship between inattention and beginning word identification was mediated by pre-reading skills, suggesting that attention problems may compromise reading development during the earliest stages of learning to read through their impact on pre-reading skills. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the consideration of inattention in the design of effective and engaging early childhood learning environments.

Beyond gamification: reconceptualizing game-based learning in early childhood environments

The recent promotion and adoption of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in K-12 education presents compelling opportunities as well as challenges for early childhood educators who seek to critically, equitably and holistically support the learning and play of today's so-called digital natives. However, with most DGBL initiatives focused on the increasingly standardized ‘accountability’ models found in K-12 educational institutions, the authors ask whose priorities, identities and notions of play this model reinforces or neglects. Drawing on the literatures of early childhood studies, game-based learning, and game studies, they seek to illuminate the informal contexts of play within the ‘hidden’ and ‘null’ curricula of DGBL that do not fit within the efficiency models of mainstream education in North America. In the absence of a common critical or theoretical foundation for DGBL, they propose a conceptual framework that challenges what they regard to be the institutionally nullified dimensions of autonomy, play, affinity and space that are essential to DGBL. They contend that these dimensions are ideally situated within the inclusive and play-based curriculum early childhood learning environments, and that the early years constitute a critically significant, yet overlooked, location for more holistic and inclusive thinking on DGBL.

An Analysis of Teachers’ and Paraeducators’ Roles and Responsibilities with Implications for Professional Development

There is a lack of documented evidence related to the relationships existing between paraeducators and teachers working in early childhood classrooms. Based on a 2-year project with three phases of data collection, the authors explore the duties of paraeducators and their working relationships with the teachers with whom they team. Based on findings from the data collected, the authors make specific recommendations for targeted professional development that is designed to improve collaboration and skill sets for paraprofessionals within early childhood learning environments. The position taken is one that supports collaborative teamwork designed to maximize the learning of young children.

More than Just Number

To build on and encourage children's natural curiosities about shapes and their connection to the real world, early childhood learning environments should be constructed to support geometric thinking. Adults can provide opportunities for children to explore materials, engage in activities, and work in collaboration with peers and teachers to construct their own knowledge of the world around them.

A case study of learning architecture and reciprocity

This ethnographic case study follows the trajectory of one child’s learning disposition, reciprocity, and its relationship to the ‘learning architecture’ of her early childhood and primary school learning environments, over eighteen months. Learning dispositions are coping strategies or habits of mind, and tendencies to respond to and select from situations in specific ways. Learning architecture encompasses opportunities for mutual engagement, power-sharing, positioning and making connections. I followed Lisa, as she simultaneously attended two early childhood centres during Phase one of the study (at four years); in an early childhood centre which she attended at Phase two (at nearly five years); and after she had started school at Phase three (at five years and four months). The paper examines the kind of self, which was being created for Lisa, within the discourses and practices of the different settings. Her learning disposition towards reciprocity was both supported and constrained within these settings. Lisa moved from being a ‘shy’ child and a peripheral participant at four, towards engaging with people, places and things confidently and powerfully at five. The case study shows the potentiality of early childhood settings to transform children’s ongoing engagement in learning.

Worship in an Early Childhood Setting

Catch cries such as ‘high quality care’ and ‘warm, caring environment’ seem to be standard descriptors of early childhood learning environments regardless of the centre’s philosophy. No longer can one claim that these descriptors are unique to a centre staffed by Christians. Christian care providers need to look deeper into their practices to determine what makes their centre unique.

Shaping the Learning Environment: Connecting Developmentally Appropriate Practices to Brain Research

Connections are shown between recent findings in brain research and principles of Developmentally Appropriate Practices to explore the implications for early childhood learning environments and teaching practices. New research on how the growing mind learns appears to bear out the value of NAEYC’s constructivist approach to early childhood education where environments are designed to gain the learner’s attention, foster meaningful connections with prior understanding, and maximize both short- and long-term memory through patterns and active problem solving. Each unique learner needs to feel challenged, but not fearful, so that stimulating experiences result in an exchange of ideas and promote deeper understanding.