As schools collaborate with other educational and cultural institutions, students, families, and teachers benefit from expanded learning experiences. In 2020, digital technology learning was added to the New Zealand school curriculum so that every student, beginning at five years of age, would develop an understanding of computational thinking and…

Curriculum innovation occurs throughout the early childhood education (ECE) sector. This article reports on the results of a survey conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand, during Phase 1 of a two-phase mixed-methods study. The research examines the factors that shape the way teachers use curriculum innovation and seeks to understand how teachers'…

Play, of varied type and form, provides opportunities for children to acquire a sense of competence and belonging when engaging in classroom life. The purpose of this study was to investigate ways that the inclusion of play as a curricular component eased academic stressors and supported motivation during the transition to kindergarten. In this…

Ladson-Billings (2014) asserts educators often fail to carry out a critical form of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) by neglecting the development of sociopolitical consciousness and attending to limited understandings of "culture." Using narrative inquiry, this study explored preschool teachers' narratives on various factors which…

Few matters are of greater importance to high quality early childhood education than the content and mediation of curriculum. In spite of this, early childhood curriculum practices are rarely examined through the lens of curriculum theory. This research employs educational connoisseurship and criticism as a methodology to shed light upon the…

In the US, recent efforts have focused on professionalizing the field of early childhood. One way to indicate professionalism is through the terms used to describe both the field and the workers. However, few have examined how practitioners or researchers describe early childhood professionals' work. Using multiple data sources and analytic…

Background: The use of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and delivery of Physical Education (PE) concerning time allocation, resources and number of learners per class is crucial for optimal delivery to the intermediate-phase (IP) learner. Aim: This study aimed to determine the gap between the understanding and the interpretation…

Background: The number of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is rapidly increasing globally and requires a supportive educational system to meet the needs of these children. Aim: The study assessed challenges faced by teachers of children with ASD in the public special schools of the Limpopo province, South Africa. Setting: The study was…

Background: In South Africa socio-economic problems such as poor health conditions, juvenile delinquency, high rates of school dropout and teenage pregnancy are increasing. Therefore, it is vital to prepare foundation phase (FP) pre-service teachers to fortify children with basic life skills (LS) that will help them to cope with real-world…

Writer's workshop is a popular curriculum opportunity in most US schools. This case study of two Black boys engaging in a Kindergarten writer's workshop richly contextualizes their writing identities and practices. A critical childhood studies framework was used to show how Black boys and their White teachers improvised writing-related…

Early childhood personnel preparation programs must prepare future early educators who can counteract racism and ableism to provide all children with an equitable and just education. We applied Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) Classroom Ecology to early childhood and specifically to preschool settings. We argue that early childhood…

This qualitative study explores how a group of preservice teachers, all of whom had been well prepared to become primary-grade teachers, made a transition into infant/toddler group care settings. The authors used the teachers' daily journal entries, individual interview, document analysis (course syllabus, weekly planning sheets), and weekly team…