This paper reports on findings from four case studies, as part of a large-scale study undertaken to evaluate the KindiLink initiative across Western Australia in remote, regional and metropolitan communities. KindiLink is an educator-led playgroup initiative in public school sites in Western Australia targeted at Aboriginal children and their…

An important essence becoming bicultural and bilingual is for additional languages to be learnt early on. This article is based on an infant and toddler case study within my doctoral research to discover how practitioners with this age group incorporate the bicultural curriculum into their teaching. The methodology was action development which is…

The quality of early childhood education has dominated current debates in the ways educators develop and implement learning programs for children yet conceptions of quality vary contextually and culturally. This qualitative case study explored the insider perspectives of six early childhood educators in Sapporo, Japan regarding their conceptions…

The article is framed by a project designed to study the teacher profession in a current Swedish preschool through work on systematic documentation of quality. Questions deal with how teachers handle the demands on visibility, how they perform and what aspects of the teaching profession will be exposed and what parts will be silenced. This article…

Professional learning communities in the early childhood education sector have been under-researched. The focus on collaborative learning, collective enquiry and shared leadership of such communities makes them worthy of study in order to establish their relevance to the sector. One of the foci of this research involving case studies of different…

A multiple-case study investigation of the experiences of eight Chinese immigrant children in New Zealand early childhood centres suggested that the immigrant children's learning experiences in their first centre can be understood as a process of negotiating and creating intercultural relations. The children's use of family cultural tools, such as…

Families and schools need to gain a mutual understanding in order to provide a favourable learning environment for the school child, especially in a culturally diverse society. This paper explores the interrelationships between the family and school practices of two Hong Kong-Australian families from the parents' perspectives. The data presented…

The active participation of teachers in designing classroom learning experiences contributes to teacher abilities to facilitate learning. This paper reports on a case study of one Dutch teacher designing a technology-rich learning environment for emergent literacy. Data was collected to explore the design and implementation of the learning…

A growing body of literature argues that integrated services, where a range of professionals including early childhood professionals work together in teams, offer a potentially highly effective strategy for providing families with access to a range of services in a seamless "joined-up" way. Some have cautioned, however, that early…

This research seeks to explore how early childhood professionals support children's scientific learning from the practitioner's perspective. Taking a qualitative approach, this case study indicates possible ways effective team teaching can support the child's scientific learning as well as other team members' learning and teaching development.…

Children have immense curiosity, a thirst for knowledge and a questioning attitude. They are innate scientists. The challenge for early childhood educators is to fuel this curiosity through the provision of appropriate learning experiences and an engaging environment within early learning centres. This paper presents a detailed case study of how a…

Since 2002, Queensland state schools have been required to document a "whole school literacy plan" built around eight essential aspects. This document is to be reviewed annually and updated to reflect the current community profile and the school's literacy curriculum (Education Queensland, 2006). This research project investigated the different…