The Victorian Government has engaged in multiple reforms in early childhood education and care, marketed to support quality education and increase investment in social reform. Initiatives accompanying reforms, aiming to assist teacher knowledge and skills. However, with each new initiative more pressures are placed on early childhood…

This paper considers the pedagogical collaborations between early childhood teachers in kindergarten (4 years) and the first year of school (5 years) in one Australian State. We report on a year-long project that brought these early childhood teachers together as we asked them to design STEM learning ecologies that would not only support new…

In this article I discuss how discourses of democratic early childhood education and care (ECEC) as a child's right, and enterprise discourses of ECEC as a commodity, have constructed teachers' work and professional identities in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past two decades. I illustrate two prevailing identity constructions of teachers emerging…

Kindergarten in the United States has fundamentally changed. It is the new first grade where children are taught increased academic content and experience more standardized testing. There is much debate among education stakeholders about these changes, but such discussions are often siloed-- making it difficult to know whether these changes…

Miss Isabel Little was a Scottish infant teacher who immigrated to New Zealand in 1912. She was described as a "Froebel trained Scot from Edinburgh" and known around Wellington education circles for her "modern methods". In contrast to known Froebelian pioneers, Miss Little's historical footprint is light but the few glimpses…

This narrative inquiry concerns preschool education in the USA. It describes and analyses the barriers and possibilities for inclusion/exclusion that educators and parents of young children in a West Virginian community believe that it poses. The researchers present a case study designed to examine the context of inclusive education as revealed in…

This qualitative study was an exploration of mothers' perspectives on home-school connections to better understand the variable ways families engage with schools in early childhood. The study was conducted in the USA, and included 47 mothers with preschool-aged children who participated in semi-structured interviews concerning their children's…

This article explains early childhood inclusion in Croatia from its beginnings up to challenges in current policy and practice. The first preschool education for children with disabilities dates back to the 1980s and was provided in special institutions. In the last 10 years, mainstream kindergartens have been enrolling children with disabilities…