Play and playgrounds provide essential experiences for young children's growth, development and enjoyment of life. However, such play experiences are now limited for many children due to excessive fear of risk, or "surplus safety". In this article, the authors examine the pervasiveness of surplus safety in the lives of young children.…

Young children are particularly vulnerable to war and armed conflict. Although the long-term priority is always to try to unravel and reduce violence and conflict, in the short term some interventions may reduce suffering. In this article the authors report on recent evidence on psychosocial interventions designed to mitigate the impact of armed…

Young children learn about safety from a variety of sources, including formal lessons and informal activities provided through early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. For many ECEC centres in Australia, scheduled visits from police and fire departments are a highlight of safety education activities. Such visits offer children the…

This article explores critical issues linked to early child development (ECD) professionalism in African childhood contexts in the light of rights-based consideration. Against the backdrop of acculturation being a reality in Africa, it accepts professionalism as a "good thing" for ECD programmes in Africa. The article sketches a portrait…

Early childhood as a professional field with its concern for the young child has gained a distinctive perspective in Bangladesh. The prevailing thoughts and practices of this field, derived from a modern scientific paradigm, are a continuation of the trend that was introduced through colonization. The prime concern of practitioners is that…

The South African government has adopted a poverty-targeted approach to provisioning in early care and education. This approach prioritises public funding for vulnerable and disadvantaged children. Given the need to address past imbalances and the context of limited financial resources, the private sector has been given an increased role in…

Over the past decade, professionalism has become a keyword in early childhood education in New Zealand. The emphasis on "professionalism" in education often refers to increased accountability and outcome-focused approaches to teaching. The push to managerial performativity as a new hallmark of professionalism has led to arguments that…

A 10-year strategic plan for early childhood education introduced by the New Zealand Ministry of Education in 2002 included policies to create a teacher-led early childhood profession by 2012. This article reviews the provisions of the strategic plan and argues that it emerged from a critical ecology of the early childhood profession with a…

This article considers policies and strategies employed to professionalise the early childhood workforce in England since the Labour government took office in 1997. The term "professionalisation" is associated here with moves towards creating a graduate early years workforce, which could have implications for training, pay and employment…

The early childhood education (ECE) sector in Australia is marked by a habitus where "professionalism" is confined to objective, technical practices. The authors suggest that this is a diminished view of professionalism, and one that compromises high-quality ECE. This article is concerned with how teacher professionalism can be…

The action research project Sustainable Change in a Critical Learning Community was conducted in the Netherlands (2007-08) to improve quality in early childhood by enhancement of critical reflection at all levels in early childhood organisations: educators individually and collectively, pedagogical leaders and coaches, and (middle) management. The…

In light of the contemporary discussions on the biased relationship between gender and mathematical teaching and learning in the Western world, can we, by means of a reconceptualised early childhood education, influence how young children construct their gendered subjectivities in relation to mathematics? This project has been carried out with the…

Australia is typical of many western countries where the provision of quality early childhood services has become a government priority. The government initiatives in Australia include repeated demands for "well-qualified" early childhood educators. As a result of these demands the pre-service preparation of early childhood educators is…

This project involved examining the most widely used instrument designed to evaluate the quality of early learning environments, the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (ECERS-R). There are many aspects related to the way that the ECERS-R is used in practice that can vary from one observation to the next. The method in which…

It is now widely recognized that early childhood education has paramount significance for the well-being of societies. In this study, the current situation of early childhood education in Turkey is discussed mainly in terms of its perception by the government, the school enrollment rate and the quality of early childhood education programs. The…