Family literacy programmes can take many shapes, and are often focused on training adult caregivers to engage in particular literacy activities with their young children. In this study, through a series of five, two-hour workshops, we instead worked to help families take advantage of opportunities to infuse literacy learning into their daily…

Many prior studies have shown that teachers' child-centered beliefs are positively associated with children's literacy development, but the mechanism driving this association is not well understood. The aim of the study was to examine whether teachers' responsive teaching, a general factor of teacher-child interactions, served as a mediator…

This study explores communication and retelling skills that are revealed after Mexican-American preschoolers engaged in culturally sensitive read alouds. Participants, highlighted in this article, included two four-year-old preschool children in a Spanish/English dual language classroom. The children selected culturally relevant texts and engaged…

Research in the United States (U.S.) documents that young Latino children whose families are characterized by demographic risk factors disproportionately lack the early literacy skills needed to successfully transition to kindergarten. Quantitative studies using comparative samples have found lower quality home learning environments and lower…

Children's language development is a core task in Swedish preschool and central to how educators organize teaching and everyday activities. The curriculum's definition of language is described as extended, with language as both a prerequisite for learning and a learning effect, i.e. both internal processes and communication. This means that…

This paper brings together sociocultural theorising about language and literacy learning, as well as work which explores ethical issues associated with young children's participation in research in order to interrogate unplanned discussions between researchers and young children about research writing. The data discussed were derived from two…

Accountability mandates linked to state education standards and assessments have largely replaced play in early childhood classrooms. This approach limits educators' opportunities by preventing them from using play as a means of identifying and expanding children's diverse range of competencies. In this ethnographic case study, we explore how…

Translanguaging through story documents the progression of an emerging bilingual preschooler who draws on his full linguistic repertoire to story his experiences with others. Over the course of the school year, Diego progresses in his ability to tell a complete story in both English and Spanish. Repeated engagement in storytelling provides the…

Young children's use of tablets and smartphones has proliferated in recent years. Furthermore, apps are being developed at breakneck pace, often designed to support children's learning in a variety of academic skills across various domains. While a growing body of literature focuses upon the use of multimedia apps to support emergent literacy,…

The process of teaching and learning handwriting is complex and laborious. A digital learning environment in the form of a tablet app could enhance teachers' knowledge of writer characteristics and their management of classroom diversity. This study aims to identify the needs of cursive writing teachers from a survey of 164 kindergarten teachers…

Many studies that examine parent-child interactions while reading digital texts focus on the reading of e-books. Rather less is known about parent-child interactions and reading aloud of other screen texts that occur during young children's everyday use of digital technologies at home. This article presents the findings from a conversation…

In this empirical study, we analyse how five-year-old children are socialised into particular interpretive practices indicative of a literate mind. The data come from translation activities where children with their teacher listen to and then talk about how to understand the lyrics to a popular children's song. The setting is a Finnish-Swedish…

This study points to ways in which the amount and complexity of teacher talk in two preschool classrooms during transitions between activities differed from instructional activity settings throughout the day. What emerged were language characteristics that suggest not all transitions are created equal. In fact, as shown by qualitative excerpts of…

This study investigates how eight public, centre-based preschool teachers working with low-income children are using different activity settings and content foci to support one aspect of academic language: vocabulary development. Findings indicate that, on average, when teachers engaged children in teacher-led, whole group activities, read-alouds,…

Pre-school children's engagement with activities in child-initiated play is taken to be an important mediating factor in their learning. The adult's role in supporting and enhancing children's play is an area of significant study. However, how children play when play is child-initiated, and how this maps to our assumptions and expectations about…