This article discusses the central issue of the transition to preschool. Individual semi-structured interviews with school professionals and parents in the Brussels region revealed that this issue is crucial for the well-being of young children, from both an educational and a social perspective. We discovered that the education system works under…

The study presented here focuses on the development of an early education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum with emphasis on engineering. This article presents the teacher's experience as she undertook the task of familiarising herself with the new content and using the curriculum in a university based…

How can preschool teachers approach multiplicity and complexity in the preschool? The aim of this article is to discuss two approaches to education, one based on design and the other on open reflection, and to propose "situational sensitivity" as a concept connected within the latter approach. Special attention is paid to the ethical…

Previous research has shown that the Swedish preschool educational tradition is characterised by outdoor-oriented and democratic approaches. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate what consequences these approaches have for preschool children's meaning-making of nature, when studied in practice, in children's spontaneous…

The aim of the current study was to examine the assessments of parents of the quality of early childhood education (ECE) in Greece. Five hundred and fifty three preschoolers' parents participated in this study providing quality and importance ratings based on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale Parent Questionnaire (ECERSPQ) for the…

The development of standards in early childhood is associated with governments wanting to assert their influence on what young children should know and be able to do before they enter formal schooling. In South Africa the National Early Learning and Development Standards (NELDS), released in 2009, attempts to assert influence in the context of…

In this article I discuss contemporary tensions between policy, research and practice within Danish early childhood education and care. I present a critical, but open-ended, pastiche narrative with elements of modernization, evidence-based practice and (post-) positivistic research. I draw on postmodern and post-pragmatist sources to construct…

Social constructivist theorists tend to identify qualitative educational research as discovering meaning and understanding by the researcher's active involvement in the construction of meaning. Although these approaches have been widely influenced by Vygotsky's social constructivist approach, his own theoretical framework has received…

The aim of this qualitative case study is to explore how the teachers, parents and children describe the advantages and disadvantages of preschool education when it is located in the comprehensive school context. In addition, the study aims to clarify which dimensions of the learning environment occur in preschool? The learning environment is…

Family day-care (FDC) educators work autonomously to provide care and education for children of mixed ages, backgrounds and abilities. To meet the demands and opportunities of their work and regulatory requirements, educators need access to context-relevant and high quality information. No previous research has examined how and where these workers…

Child assessment practices in English and Korean preschools were compared by analysing data from interviews with educators, examples of child assessment, and official documents from each country. Child assessment in England was systematically implemented and characterised by several methodological and procedural strengths, whereas assessment in…

Leadership continues to be an energetically debated and contentious concept. In many contexts it elicits heated and robust discussion and illustrates a degree of disenchantment with the enactment of leadership by corporate moguls, politicians and others in positions of leadership responsibility (Wheatley, M. 2005. "Finding Our Way: Leadership…

This article draws on interviews with 29 managers and deputy managers within 15 nurseries in the private sector in England. The author argues that, whilst there is a growing literature on management and professionalism within the Early Years (EY) sector, there is less known about the actual experiences of being a manager in this context. Many of…

The article analyses two defining assumptions about the Reggio Emilia (RE) approach: the absence of a planned curriculum designed in advance as a basis for educational work and children's participation in preschools. The authors demonstrate that different approaches to planning preschool education have advantages and disadvantages, which we…

The relationship between letter and numeral identification is reviewed to determine whether early identification of these symbols impact upon both literacy and numeracy development. Numerals and letters share similar perceptual properties such as geometric features and arbitrary labels. Through early socio-cultural experiences with surrounding…