This article proposes the diffractive practice of blogging-with Place as an alternative to a reflective journal. Reflective practice is a priority for teachers, with reflective journaling often employed as a method for documenting a teacher's experiences and knowledge about sites that are intended for place-based teaching and learning. However,…

Few would dispute the importance of equity, inclusion and belonging in early childhood education and care, yet translation into meaningful practice rarely centres the priorities of historically divested communities. The national learning framework for early childhood in Australia is the Early Years Learning Framework, positioning the child as a…

This study employed an inductive qualitative approach to understanding the effects of local culture on early childhood curriculum development in two Hong Kong kindergartens. A triangulation of interviews, observations and documents was established, and cultural-historical activity theory was employed as the theoretical framework. The results…

This article explores conflicts among toddlers in kindergarten and the impact of toys in these conflicts. The author describes these interactions as part of how children develop and express their citizenship, and argues that staff members should hesitate before interfering with rules in order to prevent such conflicts. This is based on Mouffe's…

Research concerning play and technology is largely aimed at expanding the knowledge of what technological play may be and, to a lesser extent, examines what happens to children's play when it encounters digital tools. In order to explore some of the complexity in play, this article elaborates on how Latour's concepts of 'translation' and…

Pedagogical documentation has been understood as an important way for early childhood educators to provide high-quality learning environments for children. The authors explore the contested nature of quality and its interpretation in two cultural contexts: in Western Australia, where pedagogical documentation is a relatively uncommon practice, and…

Play is a central discourse in policy and practice pertaining to young children's learning, development and well-being in many countries around the world. Dominant ways of understanding and advocating for play often construct universalising notions of children and childhood, overlooking that play is always-already culturally situated and…

This study aims to conceptualise a drama-integrated curriculum devised from process drama as an approach to play-based pedagogy and curriculum to realise the policy initiative of learning through play. By investigating teachers' perspectives and practices in relation to the curriculum of a local kindergarten, examples of effective…

School leadership plays a critical role in providing appropriate and sustainable curriculum practices. However, there remain significant knowledge gaps in understanding early childhood curriculum leadership in Chinese contexts. In order to examine early childhood curriculum leadership in such contexts, this study analyses and interprets data from…

Based on an empirical study in selected Norwegian kindergartens, this article investigates the practice of musically active employees, with or without professional training. The overarching aim is to develop an understanding of early childhood music practitioners that may challenge dominant views of professional identity and provide some new…

This article contextualizes the dark sides of play from a cultural-historical perspective using Fraser's theory of social justice based on the concepts of recognition and redistribution. Through a micro-ethnographic analysis of a kindergarten's daily life and play situations between 2 five-year-old girls, the article describes the dark play from a…

This article examines the interplay between governance and cost-containment efforts in the public sector and the emotional labour and well-being of childcare workers. Care-work researchers have highlighted the complexities of power in emotional labour, such as the fact that emotional labour may simultaneously benefit the individual worker and…

This article draws on new materialism, especially the work of Karen Barad, in order to explore curious encounters and intra-actions within the context of a Norwegian kindergarten. The article argues that intra-actions between both human and non-human agents can potentiate forms of learning as well as forms of knowledge that can be neither…

This research is based on interviews that explore the reflections of 10 Norwegian kindergarten practitioners with regard to the importance of their involvement in children's physically active outdoor playtime. The data were analysed from a qualitative phenomenological perspective and resulted in basic themes that describe the practitioners'…

Various forms of digital devices have established themselves as resources within constructions of professional practices in early childhood education. This article is centred on the question of how we might rethink an example of digital practice based on a Foucauldian understanding of discourse and a rhizomatic understanding of digital practice…