First published in 1979, this book looks at the subject of childminding in Britain at the time it was written. It is based on a national survey that was commissioned by the Social Science Research Council and on action to help childminders funded by the Wates Foundation at Manchester University, UK. Previous to this study it was calculated that more than one million children under the age of five had a working mother, but little research had been done into childminders themselves. This book evaluates the number and nature of the childminders in Britain that were looking after the nation's children in the 70s. It argues that parents have a right to choose to work if society can guarantee loving and skilled care for their children. However, the authors suggest that this was not the case at the time and state that childminders were in need of better governmental support.

Co-published with the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), "Educational Change in International Early Childhood Contexts: Crossing Borders of Reflection" examines the role of teacher reflection in a variety of educational contexts worldwide. Using a case study approach that integrates research, theory, policy, and practice, international contributors show how, in some settings, local traditions and values are honored while, in others, foreign educational ideas and programs become modified to suit local needs. Cases from Japan, China, Palestine, South Africa, Kenya, Finland, Italy, and New Zealand are discussed, as well as models from the United States.

Through its thorough investigation into teacher reflection practices throughout the world, "Educational Change in International Early Childhood Contexts: Crossing Borders of Reflection" focuses on the transformative value of these practices to promote change in early childhood education. Framing commentary from Linda R. Kroll and Daniel R. Meier provides context and places the case studies in conversation with one another, allowing for productive international comparisons in this dynamic collection.

Jenny Mosley's quality circle time model involves establishing an on-going, timetabled process of circle-meetings for adults and children. As a basis for teaching relationship skills, enhancing self-esteem and building a positive behaviour management and anti-bullying policy, circle time will not only increase confidence and "emotional intelligence" in pupils, but should also contribute towards a positive whole-school ethos.

Fully updated in light of changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage, this highly practical book will explain how to put the principles for early years education into practice through well-structured and purposeful circle time lesson plans. Jenny Mosley, the UK's leading expert on circle time, provides accessible guidance on:

• incorporating the curriculum for personal, social and emotional development
• enabling children to understand universal moral skills
• developing young children's emotional intelligence
• helping children to practise problem-solving skills.

Each chapter in this book explains circle time in a 'why? what? how?' format, and includes tick-sheets, bullet-pointed pages and examples showing how the theory works in practice.

This is an invaluable and fun tool for developing young children's understanding of their feelings and relationships. "

Bringing Hygge into the Early Years is a "how-to" guide for every early educator who wishes to bring more calmness and balance into their day, in turn, leaving them feeling empowered to teach and live well. Drawing from the author's experience of embracing the Scandinavian way of living well, "hygge," this book explores how this approach can have a positive impact across your early years setting, from improved mental health and wellbeing, to embracing child-led play and high-quality outdoor provision. With step-by-step guidance on how to embed the approach alongside examples of hygge from early educators around the world, the book is divided into four main parts: Re-balance you The hygge environment Slow teaching Embracing nature Throughout each chapter, case studies and activities provide the opportunity to reflect on existing practice and support you as you make positive changes to both your wellbeing and provision. This guide will be essential reading for all early years professionals, offering further support to improve mental health and wellbeing, as well as valuable tools to lead early years practice with confidence and joy.

When the first edition of this seminal work appeared in 1990, the sociology of childhood was only just beginning to emerge as a distinct sub-discipline. Drawing together strands of existing sociological writing about childhood and shaping them into a new paradigm, the original edition of this Routledge Classic offered a potent blend of ideas that informed, even inspired, many empirical studies of children s lives because it provided a unique lens through which to think about childhood. Featuring a collection of articles which summarised the developments in the study of childhood across the social sciences, including history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, feminist and developmental studies, scholars and professionals from developed and developing countries world-wide shared their knowledge of having worked and of working with children.

Now with a new introduction from the editors to contextualise it into the 21st century, this truly ground-breaking text which helped establish childhood studies as a distinctive field of enquiry is being republished.

"

The characteristics of effective learning - playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically - underpin young children's learning and development and are central to the revised Early Years Foundation Stage. Practitioners need to be confident of planning, observing and assessing characteristics of effective learners and understand how they support children's learning and development. The book explores what the characteristics of effective learning look like and how practitioners can create opportunities for children to express them. It considers the ways in which they connect with children's natural explorations, play, enjoyement and the environments created by adults. Throughout the focus is on building on children's own interests as practitioners plan for, observe and assess playing and exploring, active learning and creativity and critical thinking. Including encounters from authentic settings and provocative questions for reflective practice, the book covers: children's well-being and motivations creating effective learning possibilities for all children engaging children's interests the role of the adult and environment sustained shared thinking This timely new text aims to help practitioners and students develop their understanding of the charactersitics of effective learning and show them how they can support young children in become effective and motivated learners.

A Co-Publication of Routledge and NAEYC Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years offers early childhood teacher educators, professional development providers, and early childhood educators in pre-service, in-service, and continuing education settings a thought-provoking guide to effective, appropriate, and intentional use of technology with young children. This book provides strategies, theoretical frameworks, links to research evidence, descriptions of best practice, and resources to develop essential digital literacy knowledge, skills and experiences for early childhood educators in the digital age. Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years puts educators right at the intersections of child development, early learning, developmentally appropriate practice, early childhood teaching practices, children's media research, teacher education, and professional development practices. The book is based on current research, promising programs and practices, and a set of best practices for teaching with technology in early childhood education that are based on the NAEYC/FRC Position Statement on Technology and Interactive Media and the Fred Rogers Center Framework for Quality in Children's Digital Media. Pedagogical principles, classroom practices, and teaching strategies are presented in a practical, straightforward way informed by child development theory, developmentally appropriate practice, and research on effective, appropriate, and intentional use of technology in early childhood settings. A companion website (http://teccenter.erikson.edu/tech-in-the-early-years/) provides additional resources and links to further illustrate principles and best practices for teaching and learning in the digital age.

Jenny Mosley's quality circle time model involves establishing an on-going, timetabled process of circle-meetings for adults and children. As a basis for teaching relationship skills, enhancing self-esteem and building a positive behaviour management and anti-bullying policy, circle time will not only increase confidence and "emotional intelligence" in pupils, but should also contribute towards a positive whole-school ethos.

Fully updated in light of changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage, this highly practical book will explain how to put the principles for early years education into practice through well-structured and purposeful circle time lesson plans. Jenny Mosley, the UK's leading expert on circle time, provides accessible guidance on:

• incorporating the curriculum for personal, social and emotional development
• enabling children to understand universal moral skills
• developing young children's emotional intelligence
• helping children to practise problem-solving skills.

Each chapter in this book explains circle time in a 'why? what? how?' format, and includes tick-sheets, bullet-pointed pages and examples showing how the theory works in practice.

This is an invaluable and fun tool for developing young children's understanding of their feelings and relationships. "

RIGOROUS DAP in the Early Years: From Theory to Practice provides teachers with a roadmap for teaching that helps children meet academic expectations and maintains focus on the appropriate development of the whole child. A construct of eleven practices, RIGOROUS DAP supplies teachers with strategies for 1) making instructional decisions that meet the needs of the individual child; 2) sustaining culturally relevant practices; 3) engaging stakeholders in conversations about educating young children for school success through practices that attend to their individual, sociocultural, and developmental needs; and 4) ensuring all children experience high-level learning and succeed in school. The eleven practices comprising the construct are: 1. Reaching all children 2. Integrating content areas 3. Growing as a community 4. Offering choices 5. Revisiting new content 6. Offering challenges 7. Understanding each learner 8. Seeing the whole child 9. Differentiating instruction 10. Assessing constantly 11. Pushing every child forward An academically rigorous learning environment allows all children to learn at high levels through hands-on learning experiences that address the whole child and connect to the child's world in and out of school. A developmentally appropriate learning environment considers the children's developmental, cognitive, social, emotional, linguistic, and physical development, as well as the sociocultural worlds in which they live.

Many pre-service and beginning early childhood teachers question if critical literacy is do-able with young children, particularly in the current top-down educational climate. "Critical Literacies and Young Learners" shows how it is possible, even in the context of the mandates and pressures so many teachers experience, and honors the sophisticated and complex social theorists that young children are. Featuring a mix of groundbreaking work by iconic researchers and teachers and original contributions by emerging scholars and educators in the field, the text illustrates a range of approaches to doing critical literacy with young children and, at the same time, addresses the Common Core Standards.

Part I provides several orienting frameworks on critical literacy, giving specific attention to its relationship to the Common Core Standards. Part II features chapters describing critical literacy in practice, grouped in 4 thematic clusters: using texts from popular culture and everyday life; focusing on issues-oriented texts and cultural identity; functional linguistic analysis of texts; interdisciplinary that engage young learners in critical social action projects. Part III addresses the micro-political contexts of teaching critical literacy.

This popular text articulates a powerful theory of critical literacy in all its complexity. Critical literacy practices encourage students to use language to question the everyday world, interrogate the relationship between language and power, analyze popular culture and media, understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice. By providing both a model for critical literacy instruction and many examples of how critical practices can be enacted in daily school life in elementary and middle school classrooms, "Creating Critical Classrooms" meets a huge need for a practical, theoretically based text on this topic.

Pedagogical features in each chapter

Teacher-researcher Vignette

Theories that Inform Practice

Critical Literacy Chart

Thought Piece

Invitations for Disruption

Lingering Questions

New in the Second Edition

End-of-chapter "Voices from the Field"

More upper elementary-grade examples

New text sets drawn from "Classroom Resources"

Streamlined, restructured, revised, and updated throughout

Expanded Companion Website now includes annotated Classroom Resources; Text Sets; Resources by Chapter; Invitations for Students; Literacy Strategies; Additional Resources "

Recent scholarship on children s literature displays a wide variety of interests in classic and contemporary children s books. While environmental and ecological concerns have led to an interest in ecocriticism, as yet there is little on the significance of the ecological imagination and experience to both the authors and readers young and old of these texts. This edited collection brings together a set of original international research-based chapters to explore the role of children s literature in learning about environments and places, with a focus on how children s literature may inform and enrich our imagination, experiences and responses to environmental challenges and injustice. Contributions from Australia, Canada, USA and UK explore the diverse ways in which children s literature can provide what are arguably some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children might have with nature . Chapters examine classic and new storybooks, mythic tales, and image-based and/or written texts read at home, in school and in the field. Contributors focus on exploring how children s literature mediates and informs our imagination and understandings of diverse environments and places, and how it might open our eyes and lives to other presences, understandings and priorities through stories, their telling and re-telling, and their analysis.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research."

Doing Children s Geographies provides a useful resource for all those embarking on research with young people. Drawing on reflections from original cutting-edge research undertaken across three continents, the book focuses on the challenges researchers face when working with children, youth and their families. The book is divided into three sections. The first section provides alternatives to some of the difficulties researchers face and highlights methodological innovations as geographers uncover new and exciting ways of working. The second part specifically addresses the issues surrounding children and youth s participation providing critiques of current practice and offering alternatives for increasing young people s involvement in research design. Finally, the book broadens to a consideration of wider areas of concern for those working with children and youth. This section discusses the nature of childhood in relation to research, the place of emotions in research with young people and the process of undertaking applied research.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Children's Geographies"

This easy-to-read series provides an introduction to some of the most important early years philosophies and shows how they can be incorporated into your setting. Each book provides:

• an outline of the background to the approach
• clear explanations of the relevance to contemporary thinking
• suggestions to help you plan a successful learning environment
• examples of what the individual approach can look like in practice.

These convenient guides are essential to early years practitioners, students and parents who wish to fully understand what each approach means to their setting and children.

How has Forest School helped to change attitudes about risk and challenge in the early years? What are the benefits of using this approach for children s development, health and overall wellbeing? "

Bringing the Forest School Approach to your Early Years Practice "provides an accessible introduction to Forest School practice. It identifies the key issues involved in setting up, running and managing a Forest school environment and offers clear guidance on resources, staffing and space required for successful play and learning outdoors.

Including links to the Early Years Foundation Stage and a wide range of case studies, the book covers:

• The beginnings of Forest School and how practice has developed
• Child centred play and learning that allows for risk taking and challenge
• Planning for children s individual needs, learning styles and schemas
• The learning environment
• The role of the adult including health and safety and children s welfare.

Full of practical advice, this convenient guide will help practitioners to deliver new, exciting and inspiring opportunities for the children they care for."

Beginning with descriptions of the ways in which children make sense of their experience and the world, such as fantasy, stories and games, Egan constructs his argument that constituting this foundational layer are sets of cultural sense-making capacities, reflected in oral cultures throughout the world. Egan sees education as the acquisition of these sets of sense-making capacities, available in our culture, and his goal is to conceptualize primary education in a way that over comes the dichotomy between progressivisim and traditionalism, attending both the needs of the individual child and the accumulation of knowledge.

Published long before the importance of early childhood education was formally recognised in the educational landscape this book explores the significance of play for young children. The volume includes an appendix on Montessori education.

Review of the first edition: 'This book provides a very accessible approach to building a better understanding of young children and their development and will be an interesting and useful read for both experienced early years practitioners and for students who are just beginning to build their practical experience.' - Early Years Update This highly practical and fully updated new edition is full of case studies and helpful advice on how to enhance our understanding of very young children. Through working with many practitioners in different settings, Christine Macintyre offers down-to-earth strategies to enhance the learning of children in their care, and asks: What are the key influences in encouraging children to achieve their potential? Are the four aspects of children's development equally important and how do they interact? Does the play - based curriculum truly cater for children with a range of abilities and interests e.g. gifted and talented children and those who need extra support? What new ways are there of enhancing learning? How can we be sure that parents appreciate how we support their children in all aspects of their development? With examples and case-studies drawn from a variety of real-life nursery practices, these interesting and thought-provoking scenarios will help enhance and develop the practice of all students and early years teachers.

During the second half of the twentieth century, Ann Brown was one of the world's premier researchers into the cognitive development of young children. Sponsored by the Spencer Foundation, this edited festschrift honors her work and memory by bringing together a collection of original studies that extend many of the theories and themes of Brown's earlier work. Most of the contributors are researchers who once worked with Brown.

Spirituality is frequently avoided in the public school classroom in an attempt to prevent controversy. However, by ignoring, preventing, or discounting spirituality, educators can also inhibit children's spiritual development. Based on qualitative research and interactions with both children and adults, Jennifer Mata argues that educators should be responsible for addressing children's spirituality in the classroom and for re-introducing these topics into early childhood education. By surveying the existing literature on spirituality, Mata offers a working definition of spirituality as an essential characteristic of humanness, which helps connect individuals to themselves, others, and to the transcendent. The book portrays stories and descriptions of four kindergarten children in their classroom setting, exploring their different modes of expressing and experiencing spirituality. Finally, Spiritual Experiences in Early Childhood Education offers a review of pedagogical strategies to nurture spirituality, for both teachers to implement in the classroom and teacher educators to facilitate in teacher preparation programs.

This easy-to-read series provides an introduction to some of the most important early years philosophies and shows how they can be incorporated into your setting. Each book provides:

• an outline of the background to the approach
• clear explanations of the relevance to contemporary thinking
• suggestions to help you plan a successful learning environment
• examples of what the individual approach can look like in practice.

These convenient guides are essential to early years practitioners, students and parents who wish to fully understand what each approach means to their setting and children.

How has Forest School helped to change attitudes about risk and challenge in the early years? What are the benefits of using this approach for children s development, health and overall wellbeing? "

Bringing the Forest School Approach to your Early Years Practice "provides an accessible introduction to Forest School practice. It identifies the key issues involved in setting up, running and managing a Forest school environment and offers clear guidance on resources, staffing and space required for successful play and learning outdoors.

Including links to the Early Years Foundation Stage and a wide range of case studies, the book covers:

• The beginnings of Forest School and how practice has developed
• Child centred play and learning that allows for risk taking and challenge
• Planning for children s individual needs, learning styles and schemas
• The learning environment
• The role of the adult including health and safety and children s welfare.

Full of practical advice, this convenient guide will help practitioners to deliver new, exciting and inspiring opportunities for the children they care for."

Through a series of exquisite encounters with children, and through a lucid opening up of new aspects of poststructuralist theorizing, Bronwyn Davies opens up new ways of thinking about, and intra-acting with, children. This book carefully guides the reader through a wave of thought that turns the known into the unknown, and then slowly, carefully, makes new forms of thought comprehensible, opening, through all the senses, a deep understanding of our embeddedness in encounters with each other and with the material world. This book takes us into Reggio-Emilia-inspired Swedish preschools in Sweden, into the author's own community in Australia, into poignant memories of childhood, and offers the reader insights into: new ways of thinking about children and their communities; the act of listening as emergent and alive; ourselves as mobile and multiple subjects; the importance of remaining open to the not-yet-known. Defining research as diffractive, and as experimental, Davies' relationship to the teachers and pedagogues she worked with is one of co-experimentation. Her relationship with the children is one in which she explores the ways in which her own new thinking and being might emerge, even as old ways of thinking and being assert themselves and interfere with the unfolding of the new. She draws us into her ongoing experimentation, asking that we think hard, all the while delighting our senses with the poetry of her writing, and the stories of her encounters with children.

The thought of a looming Ofsted inspection can send even the most positive practitioner into a panic. Julian Grenier leads you through the new updated Ofsted framework, and shows you how to navigate the process. He focuses on doing what is best for children and families to build long-lasting and effective provision that can be maintained before, during and after inspection. This new edition includes: * More downloadable templates and resources * Detailed coverage of the curriculum, and the new 'Quality of education' judgement * Guidance on working with parents and carers to ensure their voices are part of the Ofsted inspection process This book is ideal for Headteachers, EYFS co-ordinators, Nursery Managers and Early Years practitioners.

Providing an accessible introduction to attachment thinking, this practical book offers early years practitioners' advice on translating attachment principles into practice in their settings. It clearly explains how knowledge about attachment theory underpins everyday practice and highlights the crucial role of secure attachments in young children's learning and development. Developing Attachments in Early Years Settings examines the importance of emotional' 'holding' and the nurturing of individual relationships within group childcare. The book aims to help you make a real difference to young children's sense of self and emotional security by being 'tuned in', available, responsive and consistent. With a strong focus on facilitating secure attachments from the beginning and guidance on how to observe young children effectively, this new edition has been thoroughly updated and revised to include: How to make a positive contribution to good practice for Government funded 2 year olds A new chapter on the Emotional Environment and the Developing Brain Expansion of material on the importance of the outdoors, as well as Nurture group practice Additional material about working in partnership with parents and developing positive relationships Each chapter includes a personal reflection exercise and a positive contribution to good practice section. With its accessible approach, this book is essential reading for both practitioners and students looking for guidance on how to nurture secondary attachment relationships in group care settings.

China has become an enthusiastic supporter of and contributor to UN peacekeeping. Is China s participation in peacekeeping likely to strengthen the current international peacekeeping regime by China s adopting of the international norms of peacekeeping? Or, on the contrary, is it likely to alter the peacekeeping norms in a way that aligns with its own worldview? And, as China s international confidence grows, will it begin to consider peacekeeping a smaller and lesser part of its international security activity, and thus not care so much about it?

This book aims to address these questions by examining how the PRC has developed its peacekeeping policy and practices in relation to its international status. It does so by bringing in both historical and conceptual analyses and specific case-oriented discussions of China s peacekeeping over the past twenty years. The book identifies the various challenges that China has faced at political, conceptual and operational levels and the ways in which the country has dealt with those challenges, and considers the implication of such challenges with regards to the future of international peacekeeping.

This book was originally published as a special issue of International Peacekeeping.