In the present paper, I explore some of the concrete manifestation of autonomy support in natural childcare and early childhood education settings, under the organising framework of self-determination theory. More specifically, I present the ways in which early childhood educators shape the space of natural settings and use the affordances of the…

Favourable home learning environments (HLEs) support children's literacy, numeracy and social development. In large-scale research, HLE is typically measured by self-report survey, but there is little consistency between studies and many different items and latent constructs are observed. Little is known about the stability of these items and…

Early childhood centres are vibrant social communities where child and adult emotions are integral to learning. Previous research has focused on teaching practices that support children's social-emotional learning; fewer studies have attended to relevant centre-level factors, such as the emotional leadership practices of the centre director. The…