The use of apps in preschool has increased considerably during the last few years. Studies have shown that digital technologies are sometimes used to replace analogue artefacts in educational settings. This calls for studies on how the use of apps transforms preschool activities. This study empirically investigates how preschool children play…

This empirical study analyses the qualitatively different ways in which teachers approach children's learning in and about nature. The empirical data consists of video observations of children and teachers communicating with one another around natural phenomena found during excursions into a forest. Variation theory is presented as a framework for…

The overarching interest of this study concerns how to outline learning opportunities and support in early childhood education (ECE) without losing its play-based character. More specifically, the study reports an empirical investigation into the evolving activity of a 6.5-year-old child and an adult conversing about the child's drawing of…

Theory-driven and practice-driven research are often separated, but in this article we shall argue for a research approach that is theory-driven but practice-oriented and shares features with the specific kind of early childhood education pedagogy this research approach has generated, what we refer to as developmental pedagogy (Pramling Samuelsson…

In this empirical study, we investigate an early childhood education activity in mathematics on the concept of "pattern". The children participating in the study attend an intermediate form of schooling in Sweden called "the preschool class for six-year-olds", intended to facilitate their transition from preschool to school.…

This article concerns children's engagement and participation in a musical dialogue, with the adult taking the role of the more-experienced participant and frames the activity as a musical play activity (in both senses of the word "play"). It presents an analysis of empirical data from a session with two six-year-old children interacting…

An exploratory study into the collaborative activity of creating a poem in early years education is reported. A group of 6-year-old children and their teacher making free-form poetry are followed for three consecutive lessons. The analytical interest is wide in scope, from looking at the process in terms of the verbal actions of the children and…

The present study concerns the multimodal nature of music education. How children (aged 4-8 years) respond when faced with the challenge of talking about what they hear in pieces of music is studied. The semiotic tools children and their teachers use in these situations and how they transduce between modalities (verbal, sound, colours and…

In a significant book, Cameron suggested that we study metaphor as "prosaics" (i.e. as a feature of mundane talk). In this article, by means of a few brief examples, we point to instances of such talk in the setting of preschool. We also discuss some opportunities for learning that such talk could offer children, and what the…

In a general sense, the research interest of this article concerns the preschool class, which is an intermediate form of schooling for six-year-olds in Sweden, between preschool and school and their two traditions of "play" and "learning," respectively. In a more specific sense, the issue of learning one aspect of basic…