Low pay and unequal wages make it hard to recruit and retain the high-quality early educators that young children need to thrive in early care and education (ECE) programs. Not only are early educator wages lower than those of comparable workers, but there may also be racial and ethnic wage disparities within the ECE workforce. Using a…

Policymakers' demands for improved academic achievement by all children and the standardization of instructional practices continue to alter the landscape of early childhood education. Many within the early childhood education community are examining how these changes impact stakeholders' conceptions of school readiness. Yet, little has been done…

The COVID-19 Pandemic and resulting school closures, present a serious threat to young children's care, learning, and the achievement of their developmental potential (UNESCO, 2020a). Disruptions to normal school functioning worldwide have presented challenges for teachers who were generally unprepared to teach using different methodologies…

This study reports preschool educators' uses of music in educational settings, as well as challenges faced in incorporating music in the classroom in the U.S. Through a multiple-methods approach, data from two focus groups (N1 = 8, N2 = 6) and a survey (N = 119) are used to gain insight into how frequently preschool educators in the US use various…

This is a conceptual paper based on existing literature aiming to provide practical information on designing and implementing activities to promote children's computational thinking. Computational thinking is a relatively new term in early childhood education that refers to a specific problem-solving thinking process involving various logical and…

The study presented investigates the understanding of feminist literature by preschool children in a Spanish school. To carry out the research, semi-structured interviews with 65 students were performed, in order to discuss the story, "The Paper Bag Princess." The data analysis was conducted under a poststructuralist lens, using the…

Research studies and national education standards support the importance of young children acquiring narrative skills for early language and literacy development. Less is known, however, about teachers' beliefs about how essential it is to provide young children with narrative instruction. Using a person-centered approach, the current study…

The present study investigated how 380 early childhood pre-service teachers perceived equity in science education and how they planned to incorporate their equity concept into their future science teaching practices. An inductive thematic analysis of the data collected indicated that the majority of pre-service teachers harboured misconceptions…

This study investigated children's cooperative problem solving (CPS) behaviors during play in classrooms and associated influencing factors (school, age, and gender) in a Chinese kindergarten and U.S. early learning center. Four- and five-year-old participants (n = 39) were from one Chinese kindergarten and one U.S. center. They were video…

Project approach allows early childhood teachers to use both child-initiated and teacher-facilitated instructional methods. This article describes what we learned from a study focused on project approach professional development for early childhood teachers who later served as mentor teachers during a field experience for an introductory methods…

Shifting realities across the world have emphasized the need to change early childhood systems thinking. Specifically, a quality early childhood workforce was in high demand before the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be in demand until sustainable recruitment and retention efforts are achieved. Encouraging more professionals to enter and…

Preschool teachers can become attachment figures that complement the children's families of origin, becoming relevant actors in their early development. This article presents the results of a group video feedback program on early childhood teachers in public centers. The model, which focuses on promoting "educational sensitivity",…

Parents of infants and toddlers have expressed concerns that their children's social-emotional development has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to gather information about parents' and caregivers' perspectives of experiences in a remote early childhood music class that incorporated explicit…

This study focuses on the early years program at International School Hong Kong (ISHK), a school with an explicit mission towards global mindedness. The program aims to move beyond narrow conceptions of us/them, north/south, and east/west binaries. Instead, ISHK urges children to view the world holistically through a range of perspectives. Within…

Vocabulary knowledge provides a critical foundation for later reading comprehension. Children with limited vocabularies and background knowledge often need many opportunities to learn a new word. One effective way to promote vocabulary acquisition for young children is to provide opportunities for children to learn new words throughout classroom…