Globalisation has been transforming early childhood care and education worldwide since the turn of this millennium. The early childhood sector in Singapore is no exception. Its early childhood curriculum has inevitably been influenced by Eastern and Western cultures and has developed into a unique hybrid over the years. This special issue collects…

Many governments have launched the top-down early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms to enhance the accountability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The present discourse analysis of latest ECC policies across four diverse but representative countries -- Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore -- aims to examine the…

Purpose: This article presents a scoping review of the internationally published research on the early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms, policies, measures, and effectiveness in China and Singapore, to explore the joint and interactive effects of globalization and localization in ECC in two different contexts. Design/Approach/Methods: We…

Coding (or computer programming) helps equip children with an intellectual structure that is valuable for their lifelong learning and development. The proliferation of innovative coding platforms, especially screen-free programmable robotics, has made it possible for coding to be integrated into early childhood education (ECE). However, how the…

Research Findings: This study aimed to explore parental satisfaction with Puhui early childhood education (ECE) service in China using evidence from a national validation study. The Parent Satisfaction with the Puhui Early Childhood Education Service Scale (PES) was developed and validated with 4,134 Chinese parents, who were sampled using a…

Coaching is proven to be an effective strategy of professional development; however, rare research has documented the nuances of coaching effects and the enablers in early childhood education. This study presents a systematic review of 33 randomised controlled trials or (quasi-)experiments to investigate the effects of coaching as a professional…

While Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly valued in China, there is little research to understand how science, technology, engineering, and math are best integrated into early childhood education. This study aims to examine Chinese educators' views and perspectives on early technology education -- 'the…

Teachers' professional identities, or the professional images teachers have of themselves, play an essential role in teachers' pedagogical knowledge and their propensity to stay in the profession. Even though with a shared recognition of the importance of professional identities among teachers, research is limited in terms of examining preservice…

In this conceptual paper, we propose a new three-pronged theoretical framework derived from Chinese philosophy: (1) "Tian Shi" (timing); (2) "Di Li" (context); and (3) "Ren He" (human capital). Specifically, we delineate the nature of "Tian Shi, Di Li, Ren He" required for the successful translation of…

The Singapore government has launched kindergarten curriculum reform since 2003 to promote constructivism in teaching and learning, which seems to contradict the traditional pedagogy. Using video analysis, we examined the actual classroom dialogue in six Chinese language classrooms to understand to what extent the constructivist pedagogy has been…

This study explored the patterns and predictors of code-switching (CS) in Singapore preschoolers by analyzing the data elicited from an existing early childhood corpus. Altogether 943 cases of CS produced by 111 children aged 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 5;6, respectively, were analyzed. The results indicated that: (1) 'insertion', 'intersentential', and…

Research Findings: This study aims to validate the Parent Satisfaction with Education Experiences Scale (PSEE) and to explore parental satisfaction with early childhood education service in urban China. Altogether 27,515 Chinese parents who were randomly sampled from 12 cities of China completed the survey. First, the exploratory and confirmatory…

Inclusive education has been promoted in primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong since the 1990s, and it has now spread to pre-primary education. Without qualified teachers and sufficient resources, however, it is difficult to implement inclusion in early childhood settings. This case study investigated how inclusive education was practised in…

School-based curriculum development (SBCD) has been advocated to enhance the quality of early childhood education within the context of modernization and globalization. However, few studies have examined how the social change and globalization may shape the early childhood curriculum. This study examined SBCD in two Shenzhen kindergartens via…

This paper reports a case study of the manifestation of the teaching-research nexus in a research-active professor's classroom teaching of a research methods course targeting a cohort of Master of Education (MEd) students in early childhood education (ECE). The study was conducted at a research-intensive English-medium university in Hong Kong…