This study investigated children's cooperative problem solving (CPS) behaviors during play in classrooms and associated influencing factors (school, age, and gender) in a Chinese kindergarten and U.S. early learning center. Four- and five-year-old participants (n = 39) were from one Chinese kindergarten and one U.S. center. They were video…

Pretend play leads to real-life learning. By imitating a firefighter using a horse, a doctor checking a patient's ear, or a construction worker building a skyscraper, children learn about community roles and services and feel proud and satisfied. When they pretend, children create pictures in their minds of past experiences and use their…

Very few studies have focused on learning about art through picture books. More importantly, teachers are trained as generalists and have minimal knowledge about supporting children to learn art, particularly through picture books. This project aimed to explore the aesthetic learning potential of picture books in kindergartens. The project was…

This study investigates the structure of discourse children initiate by asking inquisitive questions. In total, 301 question sequences were analyzed, taking into account the discourse analysis procedure. Generally, the analysis concluded that although children were demonstrating their epistemic stance, they used different question structures than…

Recent research indicates that teachers have the predominant role in organising early childhood classrooms in Australia. Not much is known about the involvement of children in organising the kindergarten classroom in Queensland, Australia. There is even less research that considers how the play equipment, utensils, resources and the classroom…

Studies have found a relationship between pretend play and self-regulation both during and outside pretend play; however, very few have investigated these three variables simultaneously. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between the frequency of role-play (a type of pretend play), self-regulatory behaviour during role-play, and…

With a growing number of multilingual children entering early childhood education, teachers are challenged to create appropriate learning opportunities for all children. Given diverse literacy skills and cultural backgrounds, early childhood educators might provide different support to children after an inappropriate child response depending on…

This paper aims to investigate to what extent preschoolers' narrative speech can be affected by the combined use of five narrative elements: narrative framing, narrative basic structure, intertextual hero, plot subversion and image-text interaction. It presents an intervention aiming to teach these elements to an experimental group of…

The process of teaching and learning handwriting is complex and laborious. A digital learning environment in the form of a tablet app could enhance teachers' knowledge of writer characteristics and their management of classroom diversity. This study aims to identify the needs of cursive writing teachers from a survey of 164 kindergarten teachers…

Research Findings: The study examined the latent profiles of approaches to learning (ATL) in Chinese preschoolers and the association of profile membership with their academic school readiness. A total of 235 preschoolers (M[subscript age] = 58.07 months, SD = 10.09 months) were sampled and evaluated with the School Readiness Composite (SRC) of…

Chinese as the medium of instruction (MOI) is used across the curriculum for early childhood education in Hong Kong; however, kindergartens with non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students adopt different MOI, in which English remains an integral part of learning and teaching, to cater to the needs of NCS students and their families. The present study…

During preschool age, three precursors to self-regulated learning (SRL) can be identified: general self-regulation ability, speech competence, and executive functioning. There is evidence for a large interindividual heterogeneity in these precursors which may have an impact on the development of SRL. This study (a) examined heterogeneity in SRL…

There is considerable evidence on the connections between emergent literacy-related skills in preschool-age and successful reading and writing. The purpose of this double-designed experimental/descriptive study was to analyse the impact of invented spelling activities on kindergarten children's spelling performance and to explore adult mediation…

The present work intends to analyse how pre-school aged children experience the re/construction of a 'gender identity' and the processes that create it as an essential, factual, and unchangeable reality -- therefore, suspect. Given the growing importance of 'gender identity development' in child development literature, as well as the arising…

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether morphological awareness measured before children are taught to read (Kindergarten in Israel) predicts reading accuracy and fluency in the middle of first grade, at the very beginning of the process of learning to read pointed Hebrew -- a highly transparent orthography, and whether this…