The present longitudinal study examined the reciprocal relationships between teachers' causal attributions and children's math performance and task persistence. In total, 760 elementary school children and their teachers participated in this study. The children were tested in math twice, at the end of the second and third grades. At both time…

Establishing national framework curricula is a growing tendency in early childhood education internationally, and is considered to be part of the regulatory requirements framework for enhancing preschool teachers' professionalism. A topical issue in this context is whether and how teachers themselves see these practices as contributing to their…

This comparative study investigated the perspectives of preschool teachers in Australia, Denmark, Estonia, German, Greece and Sweden about learning and participation in preschool. A structured survey questionnaire investigated four main questions: What situations can be characterised as learning? What activities are important for learning? What…

This study examined transactional development of mothers' beliefs (self-efficacy, success attributions of a child's success to maternal effort) and children's academic skills. Six hundred sixty-eight children and their mothers were evaluated twice: at the beginning of the first grade and at the end of the third grade. Mothers' beliefs were…

As in many Western countries, children's learning in the curriculum of Estonian Early Childhood Education is seen as a lifelong process, wherein the teacher is primarily a guide to children's active learning. Thus, a child-centred approach to learning is valued in the national curriculum, but our interest was whether this approach is fixed in the…

Over the past decade great changes have occurred in the Estonian system of education, including changes in the content and organization of early childhood education. The aim of the present study is to find out about the views of staff of early childhood institutions on educational objectives, some aspects of the educational process and the role of…