The current study explored the link between mouthing and fingering and vocal behaviours directed to objects and caregivers. Nine infants were tracked from the ages of 8-16 months by video recording their mouthing and fingering vignettes and vocal behaviours and vocal behaviours resulting in a total of 2,061 coded behaviours. Microanalysis revealed…

An expansive view of care is vital to understanding children's sense-making of their care experiences in early childhood education. Yet, scant literature explores how toddlers enact and express understandings of care in their play with objects and others. This article identifies play situations where toddlers enact and express understandings, and…

The goal of the study was to examine preschool teachers' (N = 96) and parents' (N = 82) perceptions of seriousness, empathy, likelihood to intervene, and intervention responses for perpetrators and victims of hypothetical scenarios depicting relational and physical aggression. After establishing differential associations between relational and…

This small-scale study aims to explore acceptance and preference dilemmas in choosing playmates with physical disability of typically developing 6-8-year-old Cypriot children. Eighteen participants were interviewed individually in a simple process involving scenarios and questions with the use of images of hypothetical peers with and without…

The aims of the current study were (1) to replicate findings regarding the mediator role of emotion regulation (ER) between attachment and empathy; (2) to extend current knowledge by testing the moderator effect of ER on the relationship between attachment and empathy; and (3) to test an integrative moderated mediation model in which attachment…

This study examines how acceptable play was framed for a class of pre-Kindergarten children by their teacher and classroom aide. Using comic subjectivity theory [Zupancic, A. (2008). "The odd one in: On comedy." Cambridge: MIT Press], the author explores how children's playing at pretend violence (bad guy and pretend gun play) is…

Using mixed methods to analyse the experience of a 4-month-old and a 10-month-old infant in a high-quality New Zealand education and care setting, this paper utilises dialogic methodology to foreground the importance of key teacher proximity to infant relationships with adults, peers and artefacts in a group context. Quantitative findings…

The current study investigates the influence of situational context on perceptions of playful aggression. Using an online data collection instrument embedded with video vignettes showing young boys engaged in aggressive play behaviour, 36 situational profiles that are defined by the unique combinations of variables believed to influence attitudes…

This article examines the prosociality of four-year-old girls and boys in childcare centres. More specifically, it aims to measure gender differences in prosociality among children, based on three sources and methods of evaluation: (1) the early childhood educator's (ECE) perception (perceived prosociality), (2) the children's own responses to…

Rough and tumble play has been found to be positive for physical, social and cognitive development; it is often erroneously misinterpreted as aggression and generally stopped by preschool teachers. The current study sought to examine the relationship between teacher training and education and judgements about aggression in children. Ninety-four…

Children's experiences of empowerment in relation to preschool peers and in child-adult interactions were studied, involving 25 four- to six-year-olds from four Swedish preschools. Group interviews using puppets comprised pre-constructed scenarios to examine preschools' activities. Children took photos of indoor and outdoor preschool environments,…

In early childhood education, opportunities for developing children's thinking skills are unlimited. One of the most effective teaching strategies for this purpose is open-ended questioning. The study presented here aimed to explore the degree to which Greek early childhood teachers promote the development of thinking skills in their pupils. Data…

This study investigated female and male early childhood educators' (ECEs) perceptions of young children's aggression and rough-and-tumble play in the Canadian early childhood classroom. Participants were drawn from a larger sample of ECEs who completed an online questionnaire regarding their perceptions of young children's behaviours in the…

The goal of the present study was to explore attitudes and responses to different forms of social withdrawal in China and Canada. Participants in this study were children in early elementary school in the People's Republic of China (n = 213; 113 boys, 100 girls, M[subscript age] = 6.11 years) and Canada (n = 162; 60 boys, 102 girls, M[subscript…

In this study, the ethical decision-making of preschool teachers (N = 26) in Samsun, on the northern coast of Turkey, was examined. For this analysis, six real-life dilemmas were prepared, chosen from the problems that most often arise in kindergartens in Turkey. These dilemmas addressed the commitment of the teacher to the child, to self, to the…