Issues In Early Childhood Education Research Articles

Proposta formativa para profissionais da educação infantil: contribuições da terapia ocupacional validadas pela técnica Delphi

Abstract Currently, important gaps are identified in occupational therapy research that focus on the different concepts and objectives of Brazilian early childhood education. The objective of this research was to present the validation process of training workshops aimed at workers in early childhood education, through the consensus of specialists. Seven participatively elaborated workshops gave rise to the training framework and such information was presented in detail to the specialists in two rounds, according to the Delphi technique. Twenty-nine doctoral experts in early childhood education were invited, six of whom agreed to participate, with degrees in philosophy and literature, pedagogy and occupational therapy. A descriptive analysis of the responses was performed, based on the average of the results found. The workshops reached 95%-100% agreement. Some thematic enrichments were suggested, such as: school and preschool routine; neoliberalism and early childhood education; childhoods and their multiple determinations; the spontaneity of playing in early childhood education; children's culture and curriculum. The specialists also suggested dynamics and bibliographies for the workshops. Consensus denotes multidisciplinary theoretical-methodological consistency, which increases the complexity of the approach and the chances of generalization beyond the local interests of the institution that hosted this experience. The chart contains key themes, focused on current issues in early childhood education, which makes it possible for occupational therapists to use it in other contexts.

Keyword Network Analysis of Research Articles in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education : Research Trends From 2007 to 2021

This study aimed to explore changes in research articles published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education (APJRECE) over time. To that end, keyword network analysis was conducted on a total of 244 research articles published in the journal during the 15-year period (both overall and in 5-year increments) from 2007 to 2021. The following results were obtained: first, discussions on common, important topics in early childhood education were held continuously and changes in keyword trends were observable within each of the different 5-year periods. Second, although APJRECE articles initially focused on qualitative studies, a balance of quantitative and qualitative research with some mixed-method papers and literature reviews was eventually attained. Third, an analysis of APJRECE articles by region revealed that the journal included studies from diverse locations, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, North America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. These results confirm that APJRECE functions well as an international journal and that it provides a platform for academic exchange. Additionally, the results indicate that it has addressed and considered a wide range of topics and issues in early childhood education over time.

What are the research priorities of Australian early childhood professionals? Results of a Delphi style study

ABSTRACT The aims of this study were to establish a Research Network of Early Childhood Professionals and to identity network members’ top research priorities and preferred research methods. Australian early childhood education (ECE) professionals were invited to participate in a Delphi-style survey. In Stage 1, participants were asked to describe the most important issues in ECE that need addressing; from this, a ‘top 20’ list of the most common research priorities was generated. In Stage 2, respondents were asked to prioritise the top 20 research topics and to rate their interest in participating in various methods of research. A total of 182 ECE professionals completed the Stage 1 survey (pre-COVID-19), yielding 34 topics of research interest. Ninety-four respondents completed the Stage 2 survey (during the COVID-19 pandemic), ranking the top three most important research topics as: educator wellbeing and mental health, child wellbeing and mental health, and professional learning and development. Members of the network appear to be interested in participating in ECE research and their research priorities can help highlight real-world issues warranting further investigation. Facilitating research that addresses prioritised ECE areas is particularly timely given the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across the ECE sector.

Strengthening Early Childhood Gender and Social Inclusionbased Characters Through Habitual Attitudes

Early character building is substantial considering that early childhood is the critical period for the children, including children with special needs to establish their profile and social. The aims of this research are twofold: 1. describing the habituation of behavior technique in character education, and 2. analyzing gender and social inclusion issues in early childhood education. The area of the study is chosen based on purposive sampling with the criterion of rural and urban in two kindergartens in the East Java Province, West Java Province, and Special Region of Jogjakarta. Following the qualitative approach with case study design, the total informants are 30 consisting of teachers, principals, parents, and kindergarten students. The results indicate that habituation of behavior is immersed at school and home. The process resulted in religious behavior, responsibility, discipline, independence, honesty, compassion, confidence, resilience, leadership, and introduced experience. The results infer that habituation is effective to establish good habits in children from an early age employing democratic parenting on the character education of children in school and at home.

A Critical Analysis of the Explicit and Implicit Treatment of Human Rights Education in Early Childhood Education Textbooks

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly recognizes that children are entitled to the full range of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. Despite the powerful social function of early years textbooks in legitimizing cultural norms in primary and secondary education, there has been little attention on human rights issues in early childhood education (ECE) curricular materials. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the explicit and implicit representation of human rights education (HRE) in Spanish ECE textbooks. Our quantitative and qualitative result show that ECE textbooks failed to find any explicit mention of children’s rights; an excessive attention focused on the teaching of responsibilities; a distorted representation of childhood; a lack of representation of those responsible for children's rights; a justification to avoid the adults’ loss of power; and the idea that teaching children as a citizens with rights constitutes inappropriate politicization of the school.

The Interplay among Early Childhood Teachers’ Social and Emotional Well-Being, Mental Health Consultation, and Preschool Expulsion

ABSTRACT Research Findings: The present study examines the associations between various elements of a teacher’s social-emotional well-being and context and her requests for the permanent removal of a child from her classroom. Specifically, the current study explores teachers’ perceptions of their emotional intelligence, levels of depression, classroom-level externalizing behaviors, and center climate. Using self-report survey data from teachers at community-based preschools in a large Midwestern city (N = 124), logistic regressions predicting teachers’ expulsion requests shed light on associated factors. Findings indicate that teachers with greater levels of depression are more likely to request that a child be expelled from their care but that this association is attenuated by their centers’ utilization of infant/early childhood mental health consultation services. Teacher-reported emotional intelligence, perceptions of their students’ externalizing behaviors, and center climate were not significantly associated with expulsion requests. Practice or Policy: This study contributes to our growing understanding of two pressing issues in early childhood education: teacher well-being and exclusionary discipline. Findings suggest that attending to teacher mental health and early childhood mental health consultants may be important in reducing rates of exclusionary discipline in early education settings.

Panorama das ações musicais na educação infantil no município de São Gabriel/RS, Brasil

O presente trabalho reflete e discute a questão musical na educação infantil no contexto do município de São Gabriel, Rio Grande do Sul (Brasil), tendo como objetivo investigar as práticas e intencionalidades de atividades que envolvem a música, considerando seus impactos numa educação inclusiva e agregadora. Três aspectos se destacam neste trabalho: o contexto atual de reformas nas bases de nossa educação; a importância do papel do profissional que atua em sala de aula; os currículos formadores de nossos profissionais. As análises permitiram a ampla visualização da realidade em que a educação infantil está inserida e, em um contexto amplo, do impacto das ações artístico/musicais na transformação dessa realidade.

DESIGUALDADE RACIAL NA PRIMEIRA INFÂNCIA

The present work has the theme of racial inequality in early childhood. Where it aims to discuss structural racism in early childhood education, assuming that the discussion of racial issues in early childhood education is of great value for the integrity in the formation of the individual. The focus of the study is to demonstrate that from the pregnancy of the black and peripheral child to the admission to the day care center and EDI there is inequity. The referred work will highlight, laws regulated with the theme in order to establish historical reparation for the black, brown and indigenous population, can assist the professional of early childhood education in approaching their practice in the classroom. This very sensitive and highly impactful theme, when experienced in a structurally unequal way with regard to different treatments, due to differences in racial and socioeconomic issues, can lead to inequality in the process experiencing by the child where this first understanding of the world occurs in early childhood education. It is necessary that the professional of early childhood education has knowledge of how to conduct at this stage of the child's life this subject that is so expensive for the formation and construction of the individual and the whole society.

Work in early childhood education: Protocol of a systematic review

There is international attention on early childhood work issues including workload, qualifications, low pay, and social and professional value. Increasingly, research examines ECEC work, including associated issues such as personal wellbeing, stress, and work-family balance. This protocol for a systematic review outlines plans for comprehensive synthesis, mapping and quality grading of international research published between January 2010 and 2020, focusing on work factors and associated issues in early childhood education and care. Several cross and inter-disciplinary databases will be searched, with items screened against inclusion criteria, and quality assessed using NICE quality appraisal checklists. This systematic review will be of interest to policy makers, early childhood education service owners, and employees, while indicating areas requiring further investigation.

Video art as digital play for young children

AbstractIn the 21st century, along with fine arts, media art has become an important genre for young children. Undoubtedly, early visual arts give children a powerful language with which to express themselves aesthetically, cognitively and creatively through the use of symbolic representations. However, digital play remains a controversial issue in early childhood education, causing many schools to delay implementing digital arts. Recently, a number of international scholars have studied how digital technologies relate to children's learning experiences at school, arguing that open‐ended digital devices (eg, tablet computers, cameras and video recorders) may allow children to produce more creative content, such as drawings, photos and films. This study explored the role of video art in early visual arts education by using digital devices in a summer workshop in Hong Kong on video making, applying the digital play framework to the data collected. The findings revealed that the children who participated were able to explore the professional device through epistemic play. Meanwhile, they were able to use film language to share their toy‐playing stories and make their own 1‐minute video through ludic play. In this study, the children engaged in concurrent exploratory activities, using a digital video recorder and toys to create innovative and imaginative play. The findings of this study increase practitioners' and leaders' awareness of the role of digital play in early childhood education. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic? Digital arts initiatives in early childhood education have been discussed around the world; however, the implementation of digital arts learning projects has been a challenging undertaking in schools. The digital play framework has been introduced in the previous literature. This framework helps teachers observe, plan for and integrate the use of still‐camera technologies in play‐based learning. What this paper adds This study aims to offer practical advice on the integration of video art in children's digital play activities. It adopts a theoretical lens related to video making to examine techniques and engagement among children in the Asia‐Pacific region. It supplements the existing digital play framework with additional indicators associated with learning to use video cameras through play. Implications for practice and policy This study sheds new light on the application of open‐ended digital devices in children's play and learning. The results highlight the value of children's play in digital arts and the possibility of integrating digital arts into the early childhood curriculum in schools.

The Effects of Teacher Professional Development on Children’s Attendance in Preschool

Student absenteeism is a widespread and critical issue in early childhood education. Current efforts to reduce student absenteeism in both preschool and K–12 settings have largely been family- and parent-focused interventions. Yet, interventions targeting teachers and schools may similarly be effective tools to improve student attendance. We utilize data from a large-scale, experimental evaluation of an early childhood professional development intervention to examine whether it impacted children’s absenteeism and chronic absenteeism. Although the professional development targeted the quality of teacher-child interactions and did not target children’s absenteeism, we find that the professional development reduced student absence rates by 1.0 percentage points (equivalent to approximately an additional 1.9 days of preschool). The professional development also reduced chronic absenteeism by 6.0 percentage points. Impacts were concentrated among lower-income children. Implications for policies targeting student absenteeism in preschool settings are discussed.

Do you want to play with me today? Friendship stability among preschool children

ABSTRACTChildren’s ability to establish peer relationships is an important issue in early childhood education. Making and maintaining friendships fosters children’s social skills development. This longitudinal study examines the transitivity, mutuality, and stability of five- and six-year-old children’s peer relationships over one preschool academic year. Participants included 16 children in a southwestern Finnish preschool. The data consist of interviews with the children (80 total) conducted at five separate time points using sociometric nomination techniques. Social network analysis methods were used to investigate the nature and change in the children’s peer relationships. The study contributes to the extant literature by describing how the children’s friendship ties stabilized over one year. It finds that, instead of extending their peer networks, the children sought stable and mutual relationships, exhibiting a stronger preference for gender segregation than age similarity. Daily pedagogical arrangements in the seating order had some influence on peer relationships.

Contemporary issues in early childhood education in Germany

I was very pleased to be invited to serve as a guest editor of a special issue of Early Child Development and Care. The present special issue, ‘Contemporary issues in early childhood education in G...

Playing the assessment game: an English early childhood education perspective

Assessment and the documentation of learning is an international issue in early childhood education (ECE) and has increasingly become a way for governments to exercise direct control over the practitioners working with young children. This paper details recent statutory guidance about assessment and documentation for English ECE settings and deconstructs the latest English ECE policies, highlighting that these often give contradictory messages to practitioners. It suggests that practitioners are caught up in playing a game: trying to make compatible assessment practices that address both the scientific discourse of empiricism and a more recent internationally influenced sociocultural discourse, as outlined by Soler and Miller. However, we concede that it is unrealistic to reproduce practices that have deeply culturally embedded significance elsewhere. The paper therefore outlines key challenges for English practitioners: how to use documentation as a generative assessment tool and how to make assessment more collaborative. We suggest that addressing these issues through building pedagogical knowledge could enable practitioners to develop greater confidence when playing the assessment game.

Making ‘place’ for ecological sustainability in early childhood education

Culturally, childhood is often understood as a time of innocence which can mean that issues such as ecological sustainability are considered too problematic for early childhood practice. By drawing on findings from a research project that focused on issues of ecological sustainability in early childhood centres in New Zealand from Western and indigenous perspectives, this article contributes a critical perspective of ecological sustainability as an educational issue in early childhood education (ECE). The article falls into two parts: the first section gives an overview of some of the conceptual and theoretical issues that underpin critical perspectives of childhood, and provides a context for current global ECE discourse, while the second section introduces the research project and discusses the intersections of ‘local’ and ‘global’ in light of teachers’ emerging ‘pedagogies of place’. The intent is to demonstrate that critical engagement with such complex global issues as ecological sustainability generates spaces for new understandings of how ECE can contribute to theory and practice of education for sustainability.

Teacher Education in Pakistan: Analysis of Planning Issues in Early Childhood Education

This article focuses on the status of teacher education and early childhood education in Pakistan. The paper analyzes planning issues in early childhood teacher education by examining education policies and existing practices in early childhood teacher education in Pakistan. Initiatives taken at public and private levels in Pakistan are also discussed. The paper suggests ways in which teachers can be supported. Furthermore, this paper reflects on how to ensure that teachers in early childhood education are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that will help them to be good teachers and learners.

Interactive Writing as Informed Assessment with Highly Capable Young Children

Assessment of young children's literate knowledge and understandings is one of the most controversial issues in early childhood education. Parents, teachers, administrators, researchers, and policy makers often engage in impassioned debates about the purposes, forms, and interpretations involved in assessment practices (Salinger, 2001). I do not wish to add to those debates. Recommended guidelines for the assessment of highly capable young children call for the use of multiple measures (National Association of Gifted Children, 2006), and so my intention here is to explicate an approach to early literacy assessment that allows teachers to document the literate knowledge, behaviors, and performances of highly capable young children within the context of an authentic reading and writing event. I describe the approach as a type of informed assessment (Johnston & Rogers, 2001), because through their participation, children reveal a great deal about their literate understandings, thus informing their teacher as to what they know and can do—as well as to what they still need to know. Informed assessment is especially useful in early childhood education, because it allows teachers to organize subsequent instructional activities so as to optimize children's literacy learning (see Chamberlain, Buchanan, & Vercimak, 2007). In this article, I argue that interactive writing (McCarrier, Pinnell, & Fountas, 2000)—an innovative approach to beginning writing instruction—can also become a powerful tool for informed assessment of children's early literacy development. I begin the paper by defining and explaining the potential of informed assessment in early literacy. Then, I describe interactive writing as an instructional approach. For each component of the lesson, I suggest various ways in which teachers can use interactive writing to document the literacy development of highly capable young children. My goal is to make a case for interactive writing as a preferred approach to both early literacy instruction and assessment.

Book Reviews: Critical Issues in Early Childhood Education, Gender Equity in the Early Years, Learning from Sure Start: Working with Young Children and Their Families, Rethinking Parent and Child Conflict

Book Reviews: Critical Issues in Early Childhood Education, Gender Equity in the Early Years, Learning from Sure Start: Working with Young Children and Their Families, Rethinking Parent and Child Conflict

Making the Invisible Visible: Gay and Lesbian Issues in Early Childhood Education

This article, based on empirical qualitative data gained from a survey and interviews with a group of early childhood educators, argues for the inclusion of sexual differences, or more specifically, gay and lesbian equity issues, in approaches to anti-bias. The article examines the discourses that prevail in the field, that perpetuate the perceived irrelevance, invisibility and exclusion of lesbian and gay issues in early childhood settings and education generally. The discussion focuses on several main areas, including: the prevalence of the dominant discourses of childhood and sexuality that intersect to constitute sexuality as irrelevant to children; the pervasiveness of the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality and the assumed absence of gay and lesbian families in settings; or the assumed absence of significant gay and lesbian adults in children's lives; the presence of homophobia and heterosexism in early childhood settings; and the perceived irrelevance of broader social, political and economic issues to the ‘child's world’. This article highlights some crucial issues for practice and policy development in the area of anti-bias education concerned with sexual differences.

Issues in early childhood education in Europe

SUMMARY The work of early childhood educators in most European countries has been informed by theory and research underpinned by developmental psychology. This discipline is being questioned, not only by psychologists themselves but by those from other backgrounds and this is to be welcomed as a healthy sign in a rapidly changing and diverse world. Many of our commonly held assumptions are derived from basing much of our thinking on the theories and research of developmental psychologists. The need for early childhood educators to problematise these and their own assumptions is called for, in an attempt to explore the possibilities and paradoxes of common understandings and recognition for babies and young children's personhood in the ‘postmodern’ era.