This colloquium brings information about a second cycle of OECD's International Early Learning and Well-being Study (IELS) to the early childhood community, and offers a further critique of the approach to comparative research that the IELS embodies.

This research examines one lead teacher's and two assistant teachers' emotional discomfort as they participated in an eight-month collaborative ethnography of 19 children's peer-culture aggression in an early care and education classroom in the USA. Two questions guided this analysis: (1) What are the emotional themes of teachers in relation to…

In this colloquium, the authors provide an update on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's proposal for an International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, the 'first wave' of which is now being implemented in three countries: England, Estonia and the USA. The authors argue that as the International Early Learning…

This study aims to conceptualise a drama-integrated curriculum devised from process drama as an approach to play-based pedagogy and curriculum to realise the policy initiative of learning through play. By investigating teachers' perspectives and practices in relation to the curriculum of a local kindergarten, examples of effective…

This article draws on the literature in development economics, psychology and sociology to explicate how decolonised early childhood education and care services can reverse the metacolonial cognition lingering in the postcolonial era. In particular, the author shows that colonial institutions persist even after formal colonisation has ended…

In this article, the authors discuss the light and dark side of attachments and attachment style in physical and digital worlds. They argue that many games offer opportunities for the generation of new and meaningful attachments to both physical and digital others. They discuss two "fundamental attachment errors" and show how these can…

In an online graduate-level early childhood education course, the authors sought to playfully disrupt and transform educators' conceptions of children's "dark play," as provoked by contemporary popular culture. Embracing the imaginative potential of darkness and liminality, the course participants problematized and expanded their…

In this paper we grapple with the ways in which real-world issues directly impact children's lives and ask "what else" gets produced through encounters with children's global news media, specifically within the contexts of the United Kingdom and Norway. Our aim is to experiment with storytelling and worldling practices as a means to open…

Attending to current affairs and news within schools' curricula is a potential pedagogical strategy that holds promise for addressing children's knowledge, perspectives and agency in the world. However, our research suggests teachers' good intentions may be compromised by tension between the details of news media content and the curriculum as…