“Yes And”: The Uses of Improvisation for Early Childhood Professional Development

In their teacher preparation and professional development training, early childhood teachers learn about the importance of play for children’s development; yet they are rarely taught how to play with children. Once in the classroom, many teachers do not interact responsively to children’s play; instead they ignore, interpret, or dominate the activity. Building on the theory that play is a collective activity similar in form to improvised performances, and that teachers can develop their ability to play collectively, this article presents findings from a pilot project that explored the use of improvisational (“improv”) theatre workshops as a professional development tool for preparing teachers to be better players. The analysis of the data suggests that the skills associated with responsive teaching can be taught through participation in improv workshops and that learning to improvise can give teachers new ways to understand their role in the classroom.     

Toward a Model for Early Childhood Environmental Education: Foregrounding,Developing, and Connecting Knowledge Through Play-Based Learning

Environmental education represents a growing area of interest in early childhood education, especially since the inclusion of environmental principles and practices in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework. Traditionally, these two fields of education have been characterized by diverse pedagogical emphases. This article considers how teachers in particular see different types of pedagogical play, such as open-ended play, modeled play, and purposefully framed play as providing opportunities for young children and teachers to develop knowledge through experiences about environmental education in early childhood settings. As a result of findings based on our qualitative research study involving early childhood teachers and children, an emerging model for thinking about environmental education in early childhood is proposed as a way of integrating these pedagogical emphases traditionally associated with environmental and early childhood education. Avenues for future research associated with this model are also identified.     

An ecological exploration of young children’s digital play: framing children’s social experiences with technologies in early childhood

Abstract

This article outlines an ecological framework for describing children’s social experiences during digital play. It presents evidence from a study that explored how 3- to 5-year-old children negotiated their social experiences as they used technologies in preschool. Utilising a systematic and iterative cycle of data collection and analysis, children’s interactions with 24 technological resources were examined over a nine-month period and across three phases. Findings reveal that children played in clusters, exhibiting a multitude of social behaviours and interactions and varied degrees of social participation, and assumed various social status roles and technological positions. These behaviours formed part of a Digital Play System, which in turn was influenced by the Preschool System, which comprises children and practitioners as active agents, technological affordances, and the cultural systems, routines and practices of the early childhood setting. Ultimately, children’s social experiences during digital play cannot be determined by any single element of the ecological system.     

Leveraging Play for Learning and Development: Incorporating Cultural-Evolutionary Insights into Early Educational Practices

There is a renewed scientific interest in the role of childhood in human evolution, pointing to the explorative phase of a human's life history that shapes how children learn and develop. This study presents a synthesis from evolutionary sciences that considers biases in childhood learning through activities in play, exploration, and social interactions. The study argues that childhood education based on this framework diverges from formal education. This framework explains why common misconceptions about childhood learning arise and how to resolve them. Finally, we propose how childhood education can be changed to take advantage of biological biases in learning.     

New concepts of play and the problem of technology,digital media and popular-culture integration with play-based learning in early childhood education

Technology, digital media and popular culture form an important aspect of young children’s life-worlds in contemporary post-industrial societies. A problem for early childhood educators is how to most effectively integrate these aspects of children’s life-worlds into the provision of play-based learning. Traditionally, research has considered barriers to teacher uptake of technologies in the early years, or teacher beliefs and attitudes about using technologies with young children. An alternative perspective focuses on children’s play as the foundation for early childhood curriculum provision and argues that what is needed instead are ‘new’ concepts of play more appropriate for explaining children’s contemporary play experiences in post-industrial societies. This article examines the influence of a new concept of play called ‘web-mapping’ on teachers’ curriculum practices in early childhood education, and finds that, according to Vygotsky’s ideas about explicit and implicit mediation, new concepts of play are likely to provide a fruitful avenue for addressing the ‘problem’ of technology, digital media and popular-culture integration in early childhood education.     

Teaching Play Skills to Children with Disabilities: Research-Based Interventions and Practices

Play is a critical milestone that contributes to the learning and development of young children in multiple ways and is essential to their well-being. Play is also considered as a central component to promote school readiness and incorporates pre-literacy, language and numeracy skills. However, play deficits seem to be acutely apparent in some children with disabilities. This highlights the need to come to terms with the best evidence and explore the promising practices related to improved play skills for young children with disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of play-based learning in early childhood and early childhood special education and provide research-based recommendations on teaching play skills to young children with disabilities.     

Musical make-believe playing: three preschoolers collaboratively initiating play ‘in-between’

This study presents an analysis of a video observation of three six-year-olds interacting in front of a synthesizer in a Swedish preschool and using a new music technology (MIROR-Impro). It investigates how a musical role-play unfolds as an intermediate activity when there is a malfunction with the set-up of the technology and how it recommences when the technology is again functioning. The study is informed by a sociocultural perspective on playing and learning and analyses how the children communicate and negotiate in and about this activity. The analysis shows how they make use of this gap to develop mutual make-believe play and how they actualize and use some of their out-of-school experiences. How the children establish coordination into a joint activity and scaffold each other’s musical performance is also shown. The study relates to children’s music experiences in contemporary childhood and how early childhood music education can respond to these.     

“You need a phone and camera in your bag before you go out!”: Children’s play with imaginative technologies

Early childhood settings value play as the way young children learn and educators encourage children’s re-enactment of cultural practices in the imaginative play spaces provided. From a cultural-historical perspective, children expect these imaginative play spaces to contain objects from their social contexts, but what happens when technologies are not provided? The aim of this study was to explore children’s imaginative play involving working and imaginative technologies within two kindergartens (the year before formal schooling). Imaginative play spaces are designed to replicate social situations relevant to the cultural context in which they occur and as technologies increase in society, their proliferation is reflected within early childhood settings. Understanding the role that imaginative technologies can play in children’s digital literacy learning is important for the early childhood field. Also, these devices are often absent from literature and overlooked in conversations about children’s digital participation. The findings show how the children engaged with the imaginative technologies and raises questions around the influence of these technologies on children’s imaginative play and their technological understandings. The findings have implications for educators’ understandings of children’s play with technologies and the objects they provide in an era where children’s lives are increasingly immersed in technology.     

Understanding and Building upon Children's Perceptions of Play Activities in Early Childhood Programs

Early childhood educators are in agreement that children should spend part of each day engaged in play activities. Play is generally viewed by adults as a time when children direct their own activity. However, little discussion has focused on how children and teachers in the same classroom perceive playtime. This article reviews research on the differences between children's and teachers' views of play and presents a continuum of activities from work to play. Based upon observations of how one child was redirected during free playtime, the author suggests ways in which teachers might respect and foster children's play.     

Professional ecologies shaping technology adoption in early childhood education with multilingual children

Strategic deployment of the digital world in educational ecosystems inhabited by multilingual children (4–6 years old), their teachers and their families is evolving in some communities. This study reveals the “actors” and communities that mediate the extent and the nature of engagement with new media in contexts of early childhood education, including evidence of partnership with teachers. Teachers and parents were found to be the “keystone species,” with the teacher the most influential mediator for young multilingual children. Empirical research into the interacting learning ecologies of young children in six early childhood centres and five associated schools is based on interviews with teachers and families plus photographs of the linguistic landscapes in these physical and digital ecosystems. Fragmented multiple perspectives on the education of young children and technology adoption are brought together with Davis’ Arena Framework of change with digital technologies in education. One early childhood education centre is mapped in a global arena to expose the co-evolution of education with technology that occurs in all levels, local through global. This clarifies the need for co-construction of policy and practice in these ecosystems so that that emergent bilinguals can have a better start in the digital world.     

Reading, Reasoning, and Literacy: Strategies for Early Childhood Education From the Analysis of Classroom Observations

Researchers have posited that children generally learn to read in environments that are trusting, comfortable, and offer small group or one-to-one adult support, all of which are characteristics of a high quality early childhood education program. This evaluation research study examines the Pre-Kindergarten Incentive Program, an early childhood demonstration program in Washington, DC designed to study several urban community-based sites. The authors facilitate a discourse on how all early childhood education programs can become high quality programs through standardized observations, evaluations, and constructive feedback. The article describes the demonstration program, highlights general findings from standardized classroom observations, discusses areas needing improvement, and presents strategies for addressing areas of challenge. It will reveal to early childhood educators how evaluation findings can improve teaching and learning techniques and environments in early childhood programs. The goal is to promote overall improvement in reading, reasoning, and literacy for children enrolled in early childhood programs and thereby better prepare them for kindergarten.     

Difficulties of Hong Kong teachers’ understanding and implementation of ‘play’ in the curriculum

Play is a characteristic behaviour of young children. It is a vital way through which children reconcile their inner lives with the outside world. It is a central activity in kindergarten and nurseries. ‘Learning through play’ is recommended as the mode of learning and teaching for young children. In Hong Kong, it was documented in an official education report in 1986 and is the key guideline for the implementation of the aims of early childhood education for the next millennium. A case study of two kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong was conducted to investigate the understanding and implementation of play in the kindergarten curriculum. The findings showed immense difficulties in understanding the concept ‘learning through play’ and a gap between the practitioners’ espoused theories and practice. The study reflected the complex nature of learning and teaching and highlighted the core issue for reform, namely, the need for bridging the gap between theory and practice.     

Assessing the play beliefs of African American mothers with preschool children

A rating scale measuring parent beliefs about play was developed and validated with a sample of 224 African American mothers of children attending Head Start. Principal components analyses of the Parent Play Beliefs Scale (PPBS) revealed two factors, Play Support and Academic Focus, which capture parent attitudes regarding the developmental significance of play. Maternal ratings of Play Support correlated positively with ratings of children's interactive peer play and were positively associated with parent education. Maternal ratings of Academic Focus were negatively correlated with prosocial peer play ratings and positively correlated with ratings of disruptive and disconnected play in children. Findings support the psychometric utility of the new measure. Future directions involving parent play beliefs in conceptual models of children's social competence during early childhood are discussed.     

Searching for the Norm in a System of Absolutes: A Case Study of Standards-Based Accountability Reform in Pre-Kindergarten

Research Findings: The emergence of standards-based accountability reforms in early childhood education has created new challenges for the field. This article presents findings from a case study that explored how stakeholders in a large urban pre-kindergarten program struggled to implement an assessment tool that aligned the normative academic achievement expectations found among their teachers and administrators with the absolute measures of this construct found in their state policymakers' high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms. Analyzing the tension that emerged in this process of alignment highlights the challenges early educators face as they fold their child-centered programs into these larger high-stakes standards-based kindergarten through grade 12 education systems. Practice and Policy: The findings from this study illuminate the need for early childhood education programs to understand how high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms define student achievement. Furthermore, as early childhood programs and personnel address these reforms, their responses need to be explicit about how their assessment measures are connected to their normative conceptualizations of student achievement and what this means for the education of children in their programs.     

Playing at School: An Inquiry Approach to Using an Experiential Play Lab in an Early Childhood Teacher Education Course

Play is considered an important activity of the early childhood years. Research supports the contribution of play to children’s development, learning, and well-being. In spite of this, time for play is being pushed out in many early childhood programs by greater time allotted to formal instruction in narrow academic skills to be tested eventually by standardized tests. As a result, current preservice teachers are likely to see fewer examples of appropriate time and support for play in their field placements in early childhood settings. The purpose of this study was to document and analyze what happens when an experiential play lab is implemented in an early childhood teacher education program. This qualitative study includes multiple forms of data collection, including two forms of reflective writings and group discussions. After the workshop, preservice teachers made a greater number of references to play in their defense of developmentally appropriate practice, and the nature of their references to play increased in their focus on play process and on teacher roles in children’s play, as compared to prior to the lab. The results of this study of an experiential play intervention support its potential as a means of probing, documenting, and enriching students’ understanding of the importance of providing for and supporting play in classrooms for young children.     

浅谈幼儿学习外语的可行性及教学方法

随着启蒙教育受到越来越多的重视,幼儿外语教育成为了社会关注的"热点"。由于年龄及心理特点,幼儿往往是通过自身的活动去认识世界,体验生活,习得经验。幼儿天生就有习得语言的能力,也有其学习语言的敏感期与关键期。作者在研究了国内外相关文献的基础上,提出了八种帮助幼儿学习外语的教学方法;同时,也建议成年人在幼儿外语教学过程中,要充分利用幼儿的自然特征和学习特点,根据实际情况,采用相应的教学方法,充分开发幼儿学习外语的能力。     

The representation of the national quality framework in the australian print media: silences and slants in the mediatisation of early childhood education policy

ABSTRACT

While research investigating the mediatisation of education policy has primarily been undertaken in school contexts, this paper reports on a study conducted in the context of early childhood education. The paper examines how a major policy in early childhood education in Australia – the National Quality Framework – has been mediatised in selected newspapers. Drawing on Foucauldian, critical discourse analysis and mediatisation theorising, we utilised the corpus linguistic tools of WordSmith Tools 6.0 to inform content analyses of 121 articles from two major media corporations, News Corp and Fairfax. Our findings highlight the utility of treating our data as two distinct corpora, with each corporation found to have utilised discursive technologies to proffer competing positionings of the Framework. The contested nature of the Framework – generally purported in Fairfax to be a tool that supports quality early education, as opposed to News Corp’s framing of the policy as one that inhibits affordable childcare – poses implications for which advocacy groups are regarded by the media as having authority and thus likely to influence policy through the reporting of their voices. Implications for newspaper media as a discursive influence on parents’ childcare decision-making are also considered.     

Early years teachers’ epistemic beliefs and beliefs about children’s moral learning

There is strong political and social interest in values education both internationally and across Australia. Investment in young children is recognised as important for the development of moral values for a cohesive society; however, little is known about early years teachers’ beliefs about moral values teaching and learning. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationships between Australian early years teachers’ epistemic beliefs and their beliefs about children’s moral learning. Three hundred and seventy-nine teachers completed a survey about their personal epistemic beliefs and their beliefs about children’s moral learning. Results indicated that teachers with more sophisticated epistemic beliefs viewed children as capable of taking responsibility for their own moral learning. Conversely, teachers who held more naïve or simplistic personal epistemic beliefs agreed that children need to learn morals through learning the rules for behaviour. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for moral pedagogy in the classroom and teacher professional development. It is suggested that in conjunction with explicitly reflecting on epistemic beliefs, professional development may need to assist teachers to ascertain how their beliefs might relate to their moral pedagogies in order to make any adjustments.     

早期教育的文化:来自香港幼稚园的观察研究

随着对“幼儿是如何学习的”这一问题认识的不断深入,世界范围内的幼儿教育从知识传授向知识建构教育范式转变。本文对当前香港主流的幼稚园教育实践以及影响香港幼儿教育的社会文化因素作了探讨。系统观察研究的结果显示,香港幼稚园普遍采用直接教学和探究式教学相结合的教学方式。在语言教学中,逐渐接受早期读写萌发教学的观念;在数学教育中,从传统的以讲授和练习为主的教学转向以活动为基础的教学。关于幼儿社会化的文化观念反映在教学实践以及与幼儿的互动过程中。虽然关于幼儿怎样才能更好地进行学习的理念在当前幼儿教育实践中得到了较好的体现,但是中国传统文化中的相关观念仍然在课堂情境中占据主导地位,二者彼此交织和融合在教学实践中。