Nested in the socio-cultural theory and the related concepts of dialogue in thinking (Mercer & Littleton, 2007) and dialogic teaching in classrooms (Mercer & Howe, 2012), this study explored knowledge and technology as dynamic meaning-making processes in Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Group-reflections from…

This study is part of larger South African project funded by the Department of Higher Education and Training and EU which focused on how practitioners listen to young children in early childhood care and education to encourage a sense of belonging and participation. The study was conducted at two early childhood care and education centres, one…

The Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) administers and operates a state-funded preschool program called the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP). To inform systemwide improvements in the program, the department contracted with Education Northwest to conduct a qualitative study of nine sites…

Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child care costs and quality on parental employment and…

When playwork settings re-opened in July 2020 after the first lockdown in March 2020, playwork as a profession demonstrated its adaptable and flexible nature for children to access the provision. This included open access provision becoming closed access and bookable, a reduction in the number of children, resources, and space to play, and…

The theorisation of digital technologies for play-based settings has received a great deal of attention. However, less is known about how zoom modalities, which are increasingly becoming commonplace at work and in the home, have impacted on the play of children in Family Day Care. Whilst theoretical attention has been given to conceptualising…

State and territory child care and early education (CCEE) leaders typically support a range of professional development (PD) opportunities for CCEE providers. This highlight presents the "Professional Development Matrix for Quality Improvement" created by Douglass, Tout, and Doyle. The matrix provides a framework for organizing and…

The purpose of this study was to (1) explore demands and resources among centre-based and Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) early childhood education (ECE) caregivers, and (2) investigate how these factors are associated with the quality of caregiver-child relationships. ECE caregivers (n = 257) completed a survey that assessed demands, resources,…

Enabled by market-oriented policies implemented in the early 1990s, a nation-wide for-profit education industry has emerged and flourished in Sweden. As a more recent expansion strategy, Swedish school companies have begun exporting their school and early childhood education and care services internationally. In this article, three such companies…

Researchers, federal and state policy leaders and administrators, and center directors all seek to understand what drives high quality Early Care and Education (ECE). The Assessing the Implementation and Cost of High Quality Early Care and Education, or ICHQ (pronounced I-check) project, led by Mathematica and funded by the Office of Planning,…

This article examines how the practice of supervision has developed within a range of early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision in a county in Central England in the United Kingdom. Supervision has been recently introduced as a mandatory requirement for ECEC in England in 2012, and there is limited research looking at the impact of this.…

Families face challenging decisions about early care and education (ECE) for their children. Decisions about what is best for each child and family are constrained by family and contextual factors and are prone to disruptions. This study provides a descriptive look at patterns of ECE settings children were in the year prior to kindergarten,…

Research Findings: Childcare provider stress and job satisfaction has been found to influence childcare quality in high-income contexts, but this phenomenon has yet to be studied in a low- or middle-income country. In 2019-2020, we tested the reliability and validity of the Child Care Center Work Environment Scale (CCCWES) with 416 childcare…

This article sheds light on governance mechanisms at work when decentralised implementation of national educational and welfare policies encounters a heterogeneous sector of private service provider organisations. It illuminates how isomorphic pressure plays out at the interface between local governance and private providers' organisational…

As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children--through duration expansions to the kindergarten day--to better understand mothers' and families' constraints.…