Early childhood education is a sector often mis-represented in the media and public domain, depicting a sector beleaguered by low salaries, lack of professional recognition and inadequate working conditions. Missing from this depiction is the fullness of the everyday teaching and learning experiences of early childhood educators, and subsequent…

This article explores the practices of 'Acknowledgement to Country' in Australian early childhood education contexts. Acknowledgement is a process of seeking out and honouring local Aboriginal Country and knowledge and investing in local resources of language, art, stories, nature and songs. Twenty educators across six early learning centres…

Creativity is recognised as a key facet of the suite of 21st century skills driving education worldwide. Understanding its existence outside of The Arts is vital for recognising young children's creativity. However, what constitutes creativity and what it 'looks like' is not always clear. As a result, inconsistency and lack of efficacy when…

The literature on play and learning attests many developmental benefits for children. The Australian curriculum endorses play-based learning (PBL) as an age-appropriate teaching pedagogy. However, what enables or prevents PBL in the classroom is not well documented. The present study examined the responses of 334 teachers currently employed in…

Little is known about children's participation in early childhood education (ECE) in regional and remote areas in Australia. This research addresses this gap by investigating the perspectives of early childhood centre directors and educators who work directly in ECE services in these areas. The study used a two-stage mixed methodology, including…

This article discusses infant-toddler educators' perspectives of using the Observe, Reflect, Improve Children's Learning tool (ORICL) in practice. ORICL is a new tool informed by implementation science and co-designed with Australian early childhood education and care policy-makers, practitioners, and service providers. It aims to support…

Past studies have shown that kindergarten teachers find it challenging to integrate science into their instruction, but little is understood about factors that influence their science teaching in Indigenous areas. Our study aimed to investigate the associations between kindergarten teachers' experiences, attitudes, self-efficacy, outcome…

Risky play promotes learning for children but can be challenging for adults who may then avoid providing these opportunities for children. Research about educators' intentional teaching for risky play is limited. The focus of this paper is a project where educators sought to change practice by embedding intentional teaching within children's risky…

Early childhood (EC) professionals are valuable educators and teachers, and their work involves being caregivers, yet the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the lack of 'caring about' and 'for' EC professionals. With the increasing focus on educator wellbeing, this paper explores how eight EC professionals understand the role of…

This paper explores how leadership is addressed within Australia's National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy (ACECQA, 2021). The Workforce Strategy has been widely welcomed, arriving at a time of unprecedented workforce pressures in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. Yet, on close examination there appears an…

It has been well-established that highly gendered, early childhood education workforces face major temporal, material, physical and psychological barriers to being well. This issue is particularly pressing in this political moment: a national childcare policy program is being rolled out for the first time in Canadian history. It is in this context…

Recent research suggests there is a lacking presence of assessment and its role in informing intentional teaching in the practice of play-based pedagogy. Formative assessment can be effectively embedded in pedagogy when practitioners are geared with practical tools that can be implemented within naturalistic settings. In recent times, there has…

The complex and fluid nature of knowledge is a key dimension of the early childhood curriculum and of early childhood teaching and learning. Such complexity adds to the already complex and dynamic work of an early childhood teacher. With a dynamic view of knowledge in mind, this article reports on research with a team of early childhood teachers…

Despite the urgent need to provide kindergarten teachers with professional development (PD) in music and movement, little is known about their needs, motivations, and preferences in this area. This interview study explores Hong Kong kindergarten teachers' prior music and movement educational experiences and their self-perceived usefulness of such…

Early childhood teachers' professional learning and development (PLD) is a significant factor in the provision of quality early childhood education (ECE), yet gaining a full picture of PLD in the New Zealand ECE context is problematic. Information about government-funded PLD programmes is available through evaluations, however, teachers access PLD…