The early care and education (ECE) sector in New Hampshire (NH) is a complex ecosystem that must account for families' needs and resources, the capacity and availability of the workforce, and the costs of providing services. This ecosystem is also bolstered (and constrained) by local, state, and federal policy. This series of primers, titled the…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the experiences of caregivers who advocate for a child with social anxiety. Parents of a child diagnosed with social anxiety describe similar experiences and challenges. Often parents adopt the role of advocate in order to obtain the necessary school services for their child. This…

Attachment theory postulates that there is a particular style of caregiving that, because of its interaction with our evolved psychology, is most likely to result in healthy psychological development. Attachment research has been criticized because most studies have been conducted with Western populations. Critics argue this has (a) overemphasized…

Background: Child and Youth Care is a challenging field characterized by intensive daily involvement with youth at risk. It belongs to the wider area of helping professions but has its distinct attributes related to clients' characteristics and working environment. Objective: This study explores how Child and Youth Care workers in Israel…

Teachers and caregivers use children's books (i.e., trade books) to support mathematics learning in school and home settings; shared book reading offers a unique opportunity to support students' understanding of operations and schema development. No prior studies have examined the representations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and…

Although there is an urgent need to develop trauma-informed services for autistic youth, little research has evaluated adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in autistic youth from an intergenerational perspective. 242 caregivers of autistic (n = 117) and non-autistic (n = 125) youth reported on ACEs that they experienced in their own childhoods and…

Participation has been discussed as a multi-layered concept with varied outlooks on children's lived experiences. Children's participation occupies a complicated terrain in that whose participation counts and how it manifests itself within complex adult-child relations are enduring questions in the early childhood field. This qualitative study…

Job crafting offers an exciting way to understand how people engineer their jobs to create more meaningful work. Work is meaningful if workers perceive their work as significant and serving an important purpose. To examine how four early childhood educators individually and collaboratively craft their work, the study reported here examines data…

In South Africa, many children with extensive support needs--including children who require AAC--are accommodated in care centers rather than the public schooling system. Caregivers employed at these centers need training in order to support children's communication using augmentative and alternative methods. A total of 29 center-based caregivers…

This study explores how daycare staff perceive children's reactions to the illness and loss of a parent, the support needs of bereaved children, and the staff's role as supporters. Data were generated through conducting focus groups with 23 employees from eight Danish daycare institutions. The study finds that staff focus on assisting children to…

As children grow and develop, child care workers play a vital role in fostering learning and providing support in a safe and nurturing environment. High-quality child care jobs, where workers are valued and respected, benefit both workers and the children and families they serve. Unfortunately, the United States has historically undervalued the…

This study explores Ohio Early Childhood and Care (ECEC) workers' perspectives about different prioritization for COVID-19 vaccine distribution between Ohio educators employed in ECEC and prek-12 settings. Days after Ohio's shutdown, ECEC programs began reopening for children of essential workers, and by June 2020 all ECEC programs could reopen…

Continuing professional development (CPD) is an essential aspect of early years (EY) workforce planning. In understanding how CPD is currently provided, we depend largely on surveys carried out by separate sector organisations with little synthesis of the data. In this paper, we scrutinise findings relating to CPD from nine surveys of EY managers…

Increasingly, universities prioritise employability as a primary purpose of personal and public investment into higher education and target graduate employability in their teaching, learning, assessment, and student support strategies. However, despite its emergence as a central concern in higher education, graduate employability lacks coherent…

Lately, pedagogical coaches have been deployed in childcare as a form of continuous professional development (CPD) with the aim of improving the quality of childcare. While we have a clear understanding of what coaching should involve to be effective and how it improves the learning outcomes of young children, research has failed to capture the…