This study seeks to understand how children express themselves socially and emotionally in play negotiations in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. It addresses the following research questions: What strategies do children employ in play negotiations? How do these strategies manifest themselves socially and emotionally? The study…

This study explored the socioemotional experiences of Wuhan preschool children and their parents, focusing on father-child relationships during lockdown. Mixed methods were employed with semi-structured interviews with 12 families and an online questionnaire involving 748 parents. The results show that the parents were generally positive about the…

High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) is related to childrens' socioemotional and cognitive development, and the most important aspect regarding quality in ECEC is staff's interpersonal or interactive skills. Despite this, research on staff's interactive skills is currently sparse in Norway. This study uses the Caregiver…

The present study examines the effects of a family support program on children's socio-emotional and language development. We analyze how participating in courses that aim to improve the relationship between parents and their children is associated with child development. Two different course formats (parenting skills-focused and parent-child…

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder whose symptoms may involve deficits across three domains: communication, socialization and atypical behaviors or interests. With a high prevalence across populations and a tendency to impact males more than females, early and accurate diagnosis appears critical. The most…

Scientific and policy advances are putting early childhood development (ECD) at the center of efforts to improve human development. This study was undertaken to understand what knowledge and attitudinal barriers exist that 25 hinder the full-scale roll-out of services for the youngest children and their families. We used anthropological methods…

Early childhood advocates agree that positive teacher-child relationships are critical to classroom quality. Much research has emphasized quantifiable teacher characteristics and child outcomes without fully capturing the complexity of these relationships. Drawing on extensive classroom observations, two video-recorded free play sessions and…

Toddlers' peer conflicts offer meaningful opportunities for toddlers to learn social-emotional skills, including learning to understand another's perspective and learning how to regulate emotions. This study explored 31 teachers' self-reports of their roles, teaching practices and the conditions that influenced their pedagogical responses to…

Early childhood is an important time for the development of resilience. A recently completed study has followed three cohorts of resilient children and young people living in disadvantaged areas in Victoria, Australia, through different transitions in their educational careers. This paper focuses on the early childhood cohort, where we have…

This study explores educators' reflections on professional childcare practice in different national contexts. The data were collected by showing video clips of classroom activities in Japanese, Dutch and German pre-schools to experienced German and Dutch pre-school teachers. The clips were used to elicit their opinions on playing and learning in…

This paper reports on an investigation into the quality of the learning experiences for 4-5-year-old children in Northern Ireland schools in the context of the debate about play-based and formal approaches to learning and teaching. Detailed observations were carried out in 70 Year 1 classes: 38 in traditional Year 1 classes where the Northern…