With the aim of deepening understanding of young children's identity construction, the study explores small stories produced in a Finnish day care center context. Small stories are understood as identity-constituting social practices that occur and recur in day care settings. Taking ideas on narrative ethnography as starting point, research…

In early childhood education, children's daily practice revolves to a great extent around order and discipline. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from a Swedish preschool class, the present study further explores how the task of being a teacher's assistant can be critically understood in terms of how gender, discipline and order are…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the meaning that Swedish preschool teachers ascribe to systematic quality work. In Sweden, all preschools are required to work systematically with quality issues. This involves several interdependent steps that follow each other in a specific order. Although the concept of systematic quality work might…

This article reports a meta-analysis based on a multiple case study of the use of learning study (LS) to understand children's learning in Swedish preschool. The aim is to investigate whether and how the LS model can be developed, adjusted and used to meet contemporary demands placed upon preschool teachers for increased content focus and improved…

Early years environments play a significant role in children's sense of belonging, wellbeing, and learning. Yet, bathroom spaces have received minimal considerations as part of early years environments. Bathroom practices in early childhood settings are usually examined from medical and developmental perspectives, such as pathologies related to…

This article describes a puppet as a mediating tool in early childhood education and the puppet's communicative properties, potential and use in preschool. In the empirical section, the puppet consists and functions as a starting point for children's interaction, narratives and different ways of communication. The research interest is directed…

Documentation for pedagogical purposes is an increasingly important practice in Sweden, in Europe, and in the United States. This article focuses on the ethical aspects that need to be addressed in documentation practices in preschool. The empirical material is drawn from the blogs of Swedish preschool teachers who recorded their thoughts on…

This article reports upon a Portuguese pedagogical model, where children engage with the teacher in planning and assessment during routine activities like "Council Meetings", "Communication Time," and using specific tools such as an "Activities Chart" and a "Diary." The article questions how these processes generate a community of practice in…

This article sketches out a philosophy and practice of open listening, linking open listening to Bergson's (1998) concept of creative evolution. I draw on examples of small children at play from a variety of sources, including Reggio-Emilia-inspired preschools in Sweden. The article offers a challenge to early childhood educators to listen and to…

The article investigates the discursive constructions of preschool girls and points to how girls are positioned, assessed and constructed by adults in parent-teacher conferences in Swedish preschools. Using transcripts of audio-taped episodes from parent-teacher conferences, the analysis reveals that gender is an important aspect of the adults'…

Since the end of the 1980:s when OECD published the Brundtland report, in which the concept of sustainable development as a critical global issue was introduced, the role of education for global survival has been frequently discussed and explored, by politicians as well as researchers. In school curricula and educational practice, efforts have…

Ideas of sustainable development, globalization and global citizenship raise questions about justice, rights, responsibility and caring for human beings and the world. Interest in the role of education for sustainable development has increased during the last decades, however little attention has been directed to early education. Even if the moral…

All schools in Hong Kong were closed in April 2003 to prevent the spread of SARS. This paper considers the influence of the SARS epidemic on children's routines and behaviour when preschools re-opened, after a six-week closure. Observations were made in 20 kindergartens and principals of another 10 kindergartens completed questionnaires. The…

This paper describes a family literacy project that involved parents whose children were attending a pre-school centre in a low socio-economic suburb of Perth, Western Australia. A formative experimental design was used to examine the home literacy practices of the families as described by the parents, and to construct a series of workshops. The…

Community participation in children's education is by no means a new concept. However, it is remarkable that for more than a decade, a small rural community in Central India, with a population of 3000, mostly agricultural labourers, has been successful in actively involving parents and other community members in their young children's education.…