Early Years Education

Keeping abreast of political and policy changes can be difficult at present, due to the seemingly endless educational reforms that are being spearheaded by our new coalition government. This article offers an insight into the Tickell Review (2011) and the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS, DfE, 2012) framework, in an endeavour to show how these can positively impact on our dance work with children in the early years context.

Existing research in Jamaica on children and families has focused on family structure and function. The recent worldwide focus on the rights of children, particularly young children, has highlighted the absence of research on child rights in Jamaica. This article explores ...

This research project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada. With a focus on examining the impact of COVID-19 on learning loss and extracurricular programs, the research explored how community-based programming can be adapted and mobilized to close the achievement and opportunity gaps for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC), and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Specifically, the project as a case study examined an afternoon and weekend supplementary academic program called the Community School Initiative (CSI), which was offered from September 2020 to May 2021 to members of the Jane and Finch community in Toronto, Canada. The CSI is a partnership between the non-profit organization Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE) and for-profit enterprise Spirit of Math. It delivers a structured math curriculum to students in grades two to eight aged 8 to 14 years old supported by a team of caring adults including parents, coaches, and Ontario certified teachers. The efficacy and outcomes of the CSI was assessed through surveys with parents (n=33), students (n=33), and teachers (n=4), and a focus group with seven teachers delivering the curriculum in the CSI. Data was collected between June to July 2021 and responses were examined using thematic analysis as a methodology from a Critical Race Theory paradigm. The themes identified and discussed are holistic and culturally relevant programming, structured programming, communication and parental engagement, digital divide and inequality, and effective pedagogies.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), described by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) as ‘a comprehensive framework which sets the standards for learning, development and care of children from birth to five’, was first introduced for early childhood providers and schools from September 2008, with revisions made in 2012 and updates in 2014. The introduction of the EYFS thus ended a history of nearly 200 years of discussion and debate surrounding the philosophy, purpose and provision for early childhood education and care in the UK, a period where policy had been advisory rather than statutory. The discussion regarding the appropriateness of the EYFS still continues (as will be seen elsewhere in this book), but finally government policy has been clarified and ratified. There have been several key reports and Acts of Parliament through the last two centuries that have shaped the nature of provision for children up to the age of 5 years, with most of those elements still evident at the time this book is published. The 1870 (Forster) Education Act, the series of reports from the Hadow Committee between 1923 and 1933 and the Plowden Report of 1967 together constitute the main influences, but other legislation and reports have also contributed to the current situation.

This chapter aims to help you develop an understanding of:

• the three key issues that have emerged in the development of mass education in general and specifically in pre-school education:
{ education of the masses should be undertaken for the benefit of the national economy { education that liberated children or was child-centred was not always popular with those in privileged positions { educational settings should provide nurture and care for children in addition to that provided by the family and serve as a safety net for society • the historical developments in policy in early childhood education and care • the policy context in which early childhood education and care is based • the antecedents that have led to the introduction of the EYFS.
In addition, vignettes of key contributors to the development of early childhood education and care and additional material will be provided on the companion website.

The views expressed in this report are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Education and Skills. Introduction: Birth to Three Matters 10 Why Birth to Three? 1 0 About the Birth to Three Matters pack 1 1 The relationship between the cards and the literature review 1 3 Chapter 1: The complex nature of the growth, development and learning of babies and young children 14 Principles Which Underpin the Framework 1 4 Research, disciplines, assumptions and values 16 Is children's development and learning compartmentalised or holistic? 1 7 Continuity and discontinuity in children's lives, development and learning 1 9 Risk and resilience 2 0 Can theories provide universal explanations for children's development and learning? 2 3 Defining children's needs 2 5 What this review does and does not cover 2 6 Summary of key 'messages' 2 9 Chapter 2: Influential research and theories concerned with early childhood 3 1 How theories of chi...

This chapter presents a critical review and celebration of the most significant Australasian early childhood mathematics education research that has been published over the period 2016-2019. We utilise the internationally-accepted definition of 'early childhood' as the age range birth to eight years, encompassing prior to school settings, school settings, as well as home and community contexts. Eminent scholars in the field have undertaken the research presented in this chapter in conjunction with a range of stakeholders in early childhood mathematics education, including teachers, families and children. This chapter is structured according to six key themes which emerged from the preliminary analysis and categorisation of the current research across the Australasian region; namely: Mathematics content; Curriculum, policy and assessment; Aspects of teaching and learning; Home and prior to school contexts; Australian and New Zealand Indigenous education; and Emerging areas of...

‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ is a step-by-step guide for students new to research. It covers every stage in turn, starting with learning from other research, choosing a topic, designing research questions, writing a literature review, deciding on methodology, designing research instruments, and consideration of validity and reliability; then moving to carrying out the investigation, analyzing quantitative and qualitative data and finally writing up the project. The ethical issues of doing education research are examined throughout.

Included are case studies to illustrate common problems and solutions; 14 ‘Project Sheets’ (available on this Academia page) which allow students to build up their work in stages and prepare draft text for their final written project; also key points, activities, recommended further reading and a glossary of research terms.

The book is written for undergraduate students doing education courses and Masters-level students new to research. It is relevant to students of all phases of education: early years, primary, secondary and further education, and to a range of international settings.

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Much research relating to bilingual education in the early years has focused on how young children are learning a new language, viewed from a monolingual paradigm of language use (Tabors 1997, Clarke 1999, Cummins 2001, Drury 2007, Genesee 2008). Recent sociocultural research on meaning-making in communities (García and Sylvan 2011, Gort and Sembiante 2015, Wei 2018, Creese and Blackledge 2019) reveals a less rigid boundary between named languages, and an emerging theory of translanguaging. This theory offers a new perspective from which to view pedagogical practices in bilingual classrooms.
The multimodal nature of young children’s meaning-making has long been acknowledged, founded on the work of Vygotsky in the 1920s, and is evident in the variety of pedagogical practices used by early years teachers to support meaning-making (Rogoff 1990, Siraj-Blatchford et al 2002). More recently, multimodal meaning-making has been explored in different communities (Kress 2000, Flewitt 2013, Bezemer and Kress 2014), revealing the many different modes of communication regularly employed to share meaning. However, in studies of early bilingual education, the significance of non-verbal behaviours has often been overlooked.
This thesis therefore sets out to explore the significance of multimodal meaning-making and a pedagogy for translingual practice (Canagarajah 2013) in an early years bilingual context. Using ethnographic tools, it analyses the pedagogical practices of two teachers working in a co-teaching situation in a kindergarten in Abu Dhabi. By an iterative process of data analysis, it explores how those practices contribute to children’s development as confident bilingual learners. 
The findings indicate that, as teachers create new spaces for learning using action and gesture as well as speech, children are empowered to draw on both verbal and non-verbal modes of meaning-making in a fluid process of bilingual and multimodal languaging.

Στην εργασία αυτή παρουσιάζεται το εγχείρημα χρήσης ευέλικτων υλικών σε χώρο προσχολικής
αγωγής με παιδιά ηλικίας 2,5-4,5 ετών. Οργανώνοντας τον χώρο ενός νέου παιδικού σταθμού, βασικό μας
μέλημα ήταν η ανάπτυξη της δημιουργικότητας και της φαντασίας. Μελετώντας παιδαγωγικές θεωρίες και
παιδαγωγικά προγράμματα από διάφορες περιοχές του κόσμου συνδυάσαμε τη χρήση των ευέλικτων υλικών
(looseparts ή openended) με τις συνήθεις γωνιές παιχνιδιού και μελετήσαμε τις αντιδράσεις, καθώς και την
εμπλοκή των παιδιών σε αυτά.

Nature-based learning is an increasingly popular type of early childhood education. Despite this, children’s experiences—in particular, their form and function within different settings and how they are viewed by practitioners—are relatively unknown. Accordingly, the use of nature as a setting and a resource for learning was researched. A description and an emerging understanding of nature-based learning were obtained through the use of a group discussion and case studies. Practitioners’ views demonstrated their eagerness to share experience that ranged from positive examples to challenges encountered within practice. Case studies recorded in a Scottish nature kindergarten and two Nordic counterparts take a situated view of nature-based learning. Findings indicate that nature is utilised as setting, as resource and as educator within children’s learning and this holds true within different countries. Local, social and cultural contexts exert influence on pedagogical practice and implications for practice based upon these are given.

Observations of play in early childhood education have typically been documented in paper-based formats (e.g. scrapbooks, written notes, printed photographs) as part of assessment practices. However, there is a growing trend in early childhood education towards using commercial software to record learning in digital formats, where video, audio, photographs and writing can be combined. These multi-media forms of ‘digital documentation’ offer new possibilities to recognise, represent and value children’s multiple signs of learning in new ways, and to share these narratives with parents and children. Yet there is little research-based guidance on digital documentation, so early education assessment practices run the risk of being guided by commercial drivers rather than by child-centred learning theories.

In this study, we worked with educators to develop an early childhood pedagogy of observation, documentation and assessment that brings Froebelian principles of the ‘uniqueness of every child’s capacity and potential’ and ‘holistic nature of development’ to documentation practices in contemporary early years settings. Fieldwork included case studies of children aged 3-5 years living with disadvantage and/or in the early stages of learning English in three diverse multicultural early years settings in London. The study design was framed by a multimodal social semiotic perspective on learning (Kress 2010) and an ethnographic approach to social science enquiry. Data generation included video recordings, examples of documentation of children’s learning, interviews with educators, parent questionnaires and video-prompted discussions with children. Thematic and fine- grained multimodal analysis of video extracts resulted in rich findings regarding the opportunities and constraints of different approaches used by the participating settings in their observation and documentation of young children’s learning.

Involvement is the cornerstone of the educational process, especially in the early years settings. It is a fundamental factor in people’s actions particularly when they are deeply concentrated in an activity. However, little research has been conducted in the early years settings, with focus on teaching and learning. This piece of research investigates the effects of the arts as a means to promote children’s involvement during literacy activities. This was based on the hypothesis that the arts provide opportunities to children to participate actively. The participants were from a case study of an early years setting in Greece, with 18 children and their average age was 5,2 years old. The research procedure was based on the “Play and Learn through the Arts” programme, which was an interdisciplinary programme that was designed for a PhD study. Children’s involvement was measured with LIS-YC and it was further examined with a semi structured interview to the head teacher of the class. The findings show that the data collected from both measures verifies the research’s hypothesis about the beneficial effect of the arts on children’s involvement during literacy activities. These findings should be treated carefully in terms of generalising them, as they derived from a case study. This research could be useful to early years educators as a pioneering approach in early literacy

Bilingualism denotes as the ability of one’s to be able to speak two languages. Globalization leads the numbers of migrants, expatriates and cross- cultural marriage have tremendously increased, as a result, it has resulted the number of bilingual children has increased significantly (Meisel, 2008). English Language is known as the most widely used language globally as it improves one’s job prospects (Ragen and Jones, 2013). The number of learners learning English Language as their second language has increased significantly nowadays. (Ragan and Jones, 2013). Nonetheless, due to the differences between the English language and Chinese language, the effects of Chinese language speakers, namely their native language, towards their English learning as the second language shall be taken into account, in terms of the phonological systems and syntactic systems of both languages. Though learning a second language at the young age is said can be achieved native-like competence, however,  the native language of a child’s towards the second language learning should not be overlooked as the cultural, social background and native language of one’s play a significant role on affecting saliently their second language (English language) acquiring/ learning (Ellies, 2008). This study aims to diagnose the effect of phonological and syntactic difference in Chinese Language towards a child’s second language (English Language) learning.

Kalogiannakis, M. (Ed.) (2017). Proceedings of the 9th Panhellenic Conference: Science in Early Childhood Education: Current Issues and Perspectives. 27-29 May 2016. University of Crete - Rethymno: Department of Preschool Education (in Greek).

Developments in neurosciences have moved into many spheres of early childhood education and policy. I am exploring the possible consequences for different populations and educational knowledge production of new narratives that are produced by the neurosciences latching onto the human capital model. How do developments in the neurosciences alter the ways in which the human capital model constructs problems, makes them intelligible and shapes interventions? On what kind of human being or child subjects these interventions are administered? My Foucauldian analysis offers a speculative examination of a series of possible narratives to critique (and destabilize) the possible effects of these policy directions.

Η παρούσα εργασία μελετά την έννοια του γραμματισμού με επίκεντρο την πρακτική εφαρμογή του στην προσχολική ηλικία. Κατηγοριοποιεί το περιεχόμενό του ως προς τους δύο κεντρικούς άξονες: γραμματισμός ως κοινωνική πρακτική και κριτική προσέγγιση του γραμματισμού. Αναλύει
τις μεθοδολογικές προσεγγίσεις τους περιγράφοντας τις θετικές και αρνητικές πλευρές και προτείνονται πρακτικές εφαρμογές για την εφαρμογή της κάθε κατηγορίας. Στα συμπεράσματα τονίζεται η αλληλένδετη σχέση των κατηγοριών και η επιρροή της μίας κατηγορίας
στο περιεχόμενο της άλλης.

In this paper I argue that insufficient attention is paid to the explicit teaching of comprehension in South African literacy policies and practices. Like elsewhere, governments reinforce the existing curriculum gap by trying to solve the achievement gap in early literacy. I substantiate my claim through a critical analysis of a report commissioned by the South African government and written by the National Education and Evaluation Unit (NEEDU). At an analytical level there is a logical problem with NEEDU’s recommendations about early literacy – there is a mismatch between the solutions and the problems it tries to solve. Unlike government responses to South Africa’s very poor results in national and international literacy tests, I claim that the findings of these tests point to the urgent need to teach higher-order questioning skills to teachers explicitly from preschool onwards. By referencing national and international research evidence of an approach to teaching and learning called Philosophy with Children, I argue that the inclusion of philosophical thinking in early childhood literacy education could help teach the ‘full literacy’ as recommended by the NEEDU report.

The target child, who I observed is 3 years 7 months old and she has been coming to our nursery since she was 2 years old. The target child attends to our setting Monday-Thursday everyday accept Fridays. The target child lives with her parents and older sister. Her sister used to come to our setting too. Before the observations started, I discussed them with my leader in the nursery. My leader and I spoke to the target child’s mother to ask for permission. I informed her mother that I would not use the child’s real name during the observations. I got written permission from the child’s mother. I also told all the nursery staff team that I would be carrying out some observations from time to time during the sessions.