This paper explores future digital technology policy for education with reference to the Irish context. Framed within the global context of commercial influence on education and related discourses, it addresses the Irish context with particular reference to identifiable 'push' and 'pull' factors seen as influencing policy provision in any next…

Within education, the importance of creativity is recognized as an essential 21st-century skill. Based on this premise, the first aim of this article is to provide a theoretical integration through the development of a framework based on the principles of complex dynamic systems theory, which describes and explains children's creativity. This…

Quality in early childhood education (ECE) is central to equitable child development and preparation for formal schooling and has been widely studied by researchers and of interest to policy makers. As the federal pre-k program, Head Start is a key ECE context to understand quality and its implications for equity. One central measure of classroom…

The Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018 is an international survey of staff and centre leaders working in early childhood education and care (ECEC), administered in ECEC centres belonging to ISCED Level 0.2, and, as an option, centres providing services for children under the age of 3. The Conceptual Framework provides…

Poor quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) can be detrimental to the development of children as it could lead to poor social, emotional, educational, health, economic, and behavioural outcomes. The lack of consensus as to the strength of the relationship between teacher qualification and the quality of the early childhood learning…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an established approach to support multilingualism in Europe by teaching various school subjects in an additional language. The practices used, however, vary considerably. Our book considers this diversity by looking at CLIL scenarios, defined as learning environments supporting content learning,…

This article examines the relationship between after-school program quality, program attendance, and academic outcomes for a sample of low-income after-school program participants. Regression and hierarchical linear modeling analyses use a unique longitudinal data set including 29 after-school programs that served 5,108 students in Grades 4 to 8…

This article aims to examine dominant discourses and changing paradigmatic views on children's learning and well-being in preschool in relation to theories on learning and research on quality and policy in Sweden. The key question: what are the main changes in policy, pedagogy and views of children's learning? The article builds on research that…

The purpose in writing this autoethnography was to describe, analyze and interpret one leader's experience in leading a group of online teachers. I specifically wanted to identify the characteristics of an online learning environment that triggered teachers to focus on management issues rather than instructional learning issues; that is what…

This report provides a literature review of the evidence on the quality of early childhood education and care for children under three. It considers the implications for policy and practice, particularly for the Government's programme of free early years provision for disadvantaged two year-olds. The review of the research evidence identified four…

This study aims to explore how collaborative teacher interaction is contingent upon teachers' immediate classroom and school-organizational contexts as well as broader societal and policy environments. Notwithstanding the widely acknowledged connection between teacher collegiality in schools and its beneficial effects, little systematic effort has…

At no time in history has the gap between student learning with technology in school and out of school been more apparent. A great deal of students' educational use of the Internet occurs outside the classroom and purview of their teacher, whereas in class, Internet use is often controlled by policies limiting access to filtered web sites or a…

This paper seeks to set the scene for the ensuing articles in this themed issue by placing the recent developments with interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in their historical context. It argues that use of this instructional technology has already had a profound impact upon teaching and highlights the importance of educational researchers considering…

The nature of the American academic workforce has fundamentally shifted over the past several decades. Whereas full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty were once the norm, more than two-thirds of the professoriate in non-profit postsecondary education is now comprised of non-tenure-track faculty. New hires across all institutional types are now…

This paper discusses interactional patterns in classrooms in primary school in rural Tanzania, based on an ethnographic study on literacy practices. The paper argues that the official policy of Swahili-only in primary school, together with the huge gap between high expectations on educational outcome and lack of resources, have resulted in the…