South Africa's esteem is low with regard to current learner achievement in mathematics. Results from international studies, such as TIMMS and SACMEQ, continuously indicate that South African learners perform below international benchmarks in mathematics. Research and evaluation studies assert that teacher practices and poor early mathematics…

A speech-language pathologist and former primary teacher who is now a researcher conducting action research with kindergarten teachers in northern rural Canadian classrooms collaborate in an analysis of one teacher's interactions with her students in a dramatic play center. We use three principles to show how the teacher supports children's…

Research Findings: This descriptive study used sequential analysis to examine both preschool teachers' responsiveness to children's utterances in sociodramatic play and the children's responses to their teachers' utterances. Eleven teachers in a Head Start program were videotaped while interacting with children in the dramatic play center. Salient…

This pilot study investigates the impact of a 2-week professional development Summer Institute on PK-3 teachers' knowledge and practices. This Summer Institute is a component of [program], a large-scale early-childhood science project that aims to transform PK-3 science teaching. The mixed-methods study examined concept maps, lesson plans, and…

This study examines the discrepancy between teachers' beliefs and practices in Hong Kong kindergartens and the factors that influence this discrepancy. Three kindergartens, considered by the Hong Kong Education Bureau to be of varying quality, were chosen from different areas of Hong Kong. Questionnaires about teaching beliefs were administered to…

The website of the Swedish National Agency for Education states that preschools are to promote entrepreneurial learning. Many Swedish preschools, therefore, have started to work consciously with entrepreneurial learning as a way of fostering pupils' creativity and ability to make their own decisions. This article investigates whether and how…

The aim of this study is to investigate communication between preschool teachers and children in documentation situations. The focus is also on what preschool teachers actually document. The research questions are: What characterizes the communication between teachers and children when these teachers are documenting at the same time? What is the…

The study follows a group of student teachers (STs) facilitated in collaboratively analysing video recordings of their school practice experiences, required for their bachelor projects. Their meaning-making is examined in terms of what they experienced as outcomes, how they constructed understanding and how their interpretation of classroom…

Drawing on the sociocultural view, shared knowledge is regarded as a basis for interdependent working and multi-professional learning in early childhood education. Shared professional knowledge can be seen as a central element in successful collaboration facilitating individual and collaborative professional learning. This study aims to…

Research has shown that the care and education of infants and toddlers is an under-represented area in early childhood teacher education. This is also the case in Australia, meaning that pre-service teachers have few opportunities for learning about infants and toddlers and thus tend to have limited theoretical and practical knowledge about…

This action learning study in a year three classroom explored the implementation of five formative assessment principles to assist students' understandings of the scientific topic of liquids and solids. These principles were employed to give students a greater opportunity to express their understanding of the concepts. The study found that the…

Early literacy skill development at the preschool level is critical for later success in learning to read and other reading-related activities. Professional development (PD), specifically coaching via performance feedback delivered through email, may provide a viable alternative to other types of trainings (e.g. workshops) that are often…

Shared reading is a common practice in preschool classrooms and is purported to develop oral language, print concepts, and listening comprehension. The actual practice of reading aloud differed greatly among observed classrooms resulting in variations in potential positive effects. This study examines the potential effects of professional…

Relatively little is known about the effect of adult interactive style on children's communication. The aim of this study, written by Lila Kossyvaki, Glenys Jones and Karen Guldberg, all from the University of Birmingham, was to explore the effects of adult interactive style on children's spontaneous communication. The study used an action…

This article presents a community-based pedagogical initiative for teaching vocabulary. The research took place in the Innu community of Unamen Shipu in northern Quebec. The study introduced a teaching method grounded in Indigenous knowledge theory that exemplified the multiliteracies pedagogy principles. This exploratory study used participatory…