This book, written by an international team of experienced researchers, investigates unique and dynamic approaches to key issues in policy transformation, curriculum reforms and teacher training in three cultures - China, Japan and the United States - in a globalized world. By examining their respective policy choices and evidence-based practices, the authors show how best to provide for young children based on their needs and interests, and the three countries' strategies for doing so. This book provides the latest information on the rapid developments already underway and further changes to be expected in these diverse cultures.

- part of the CEC series, with appeal to organisations such as EECERA also - global appeal with international case studies included - the Slow Movement is gaining momentum and there are currently no direct competitors within ECE

This volume details the Yew Chung Approach and the Twelve Values that exemplify the approach as a unique contribution to the field of early childhood education. The Yew Chung Education Foundation (YCEF) in Hong Kong is a nonprofit organization and a high-quality early childhood program that promotes a global lens and multilingualism through an emergent curriculum. This book explores the Twelve Values that exemplify the approach, including relationships, the emergent curriculum, inquiry-based pedagogy, and the multilingual and multicultural approach. Grounding these values in daily classroom practice and the broader sociocultural context of Hong Kong, it shows how the Yew Chung Approach effectively supports additional language learning through a progressive emergent curriculum with a high degree of child agency. It also explores the unique history of Hong Kong as an incubator and setting for the Yew Chung Approach and considers the relationships between the colonial history of the city, Hong Kong's current status as a global city, and the mission of Yew Chung to provide children with a global lens. An important study which exemplifies and investigates a unique program and perspective within the field, this book will benefit scholarly and practitioner audiences within the global early childhood community, as well as appealing to academics, researchers and postgraduates working within early childhood education, comparative education, and bilingual education.

Provides practical strategies for supporting students' social skills, relationship development, and mental health Features background information, real examples, case studies, and action steps for implementing SEL into early childhoold environments

This volume details the Yew Chung Approach and the Twelve Values that exemplify the approach as a unique contribution to the field of early childhood education. The Yew Chung Education Foundation (YCEF) in Hong Kong is a nonprofit organization and a high-quality early childhood program that promotes a global lens and multilingualism through an emergent curriculum. This book explores the Twelve Values that exemplify the approach, including relationships, the emergent curriculum, inquiry-based pedagogy, and the multilingual and multicultural approach. Grounding these values in daily classroom practice and the broader sociocultural context of Hong Kong, it shows how the Yew Chung Approach effectively supports additional language learning through a progressive emergent curriculum with a high degree of child agency. It also explores the unique history of Hong Kong as an incubator and setting for the Yew Chung Approach and considers the relationships between the colonial history of the city, Hong Kong's current status as a global city, and the mission of Yew Chung to provide children with a global lens. An important study which exemplifies and investigates a unique program and perspective within the field, this book will benefit scholarly and practitioner audiences within the global early childhood community, as well as appealing to academics, researchers and postgraduates working within early childhood education, comparative education, and bilingual education.

The book provides an up to date account of the research conducted in the area of coaching children and youth athletes. The volume has a clear structure and will provide state of the art reviews on a range of important topics. The contributing authors are drawn from a variety of leading universities around the world. Will provide a resource to students and academics in which a large amount of coaching content is accessible in one place.

Learn how to tap into and illuminate the creative potential in all learners with this inspiring and practical book. This book teaches educators to unlock the creativity in all learners while celebrating inquiry at its highest levels. Each chapter explores how to create learning spaces that invite deep inquiry, initiate thoughtful conversations, invite wonder and curiosity in learning each day, and maintain high levels of engagement. The approachable framework is built around the three-phase project model and is broken down into a user-friendly planning tool, explaining how to approach project-based teaching and learning in any early childhood classroom. Coupled with noteworthy true stories, sample units, and example pictures, early childhood educators will come away with tools and plans to enhance teaching and learning practices in their classroom through a project-based approach.

This volume presents current research on the connections between the home and family environment on children's mathematics development. Focusing on infancy through first grade, it details the role of parents and other caregivers in promoting numeracy and the ways their active participation can prepare young children for learning about formal mathematics. Research data answer key questions regarding the development of numeracy alongside cognitive and linguistic skills, early acquisition of specific math skills, and numeracy of children with atypical language skills. The book also provides practical recommendations for parents and other caregivers as well as implications for future research studies and curriculum design. Included in the coverage: Ways to optimize home numeracy environments. Individual differences in numerical abilities. Cross-cultural comparisons and ways to scaffold young children's mathematical skills. Mathematics and language in the home environment. Center-based and family-based child care. Games and home numeracy practice. Early Childhood Mathematics Skill Development in the Home Environment is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals in infancy and early childhood development, child and school psychology, early childhood education, social work, mathematics education, and educational psychology.

Aims to do for Religious Education what developmental psychology has already done for learning in science, maths and literacy. Informed by research with both children and teachers and offers perspectives from a range of faiths and traditions - Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish. Essential reading for all developmental psychologists researching religious and spiritual development, and special teachers and researchers of RE who want to better understand children's knowledge, teaching and learning.

*A step-by-step guide which leads teachers through the process of teaching children to read. *An accessibly written, research-based resource that teachers can pick up and get on with teaching. *Written by an experienced classroom teacher for teachers.

Playful Education provides a guide for you to activate the powers of play to boost your teaching practices and increase your effectiveness as an educator. Based on Virginia Axline and Garry Landreth's play therapy, this book is an operational and practical guide on using play therapy to strengthen your holistic learning development and relationships with students. Chapters offer practical responsive interventions for children with behavioral and academic challenges and preventative practices. You will learn the purpose and goals of implementing play times, (i.e., PlayBreaks), with individuals and groups of students, skills necessary to facilitate playtimes, and how to transfer play skills to the larger classroom. Educators will learn the foundations of play therapy and how they can be used to guide play within a classroom setting. Expanding beyond the classroom, this book is loaded with playful activities to enhance child-teacher relationships and integrate play throughout the school.

Playful Education provides a guide for you to activate the powers of play to boost your teaching practices and increase your effectiveness as an educator. Based on Virginia Axline and Garry Landreth's play therapy, this book is an operational and practical guide on using play therapy to strengthen your holistic learning development and relationships with students. Chapters offer practical responsive interventions for children with behavioral and academic challenges and preventative practices. You will learn the purpose and goals of implementing play times, (i.e., PlayBreaks), with individuals and groups of students, skills necessary to facilitate playtimes, and how to transfer play skills to the larger classroom. Educators will learn the foundations of play therapy and how they can be used to guide play within a classroom setting. Expanding beyond the classroom, this book is loaded with playful activities to enhance child-teacher relationships and integrate play throughout the school.

As the impact of climate change has become harder to ignore, it has become increasingly evident that children will inherit futures where climate challenges require new ways of thinking about how humans can live better with the world. This book re-situates weather in early childhood education, examining people as inherently a part of and affected by nature, and challenges the positioning of humans at the centre of progress and decision-making. Exploring the ways children can learn with weather, this book for researchers and advanced students, works with the pedagogical potential in children's relations with weather as a vital way of connecting with and responding to wider climate concerns.

_______________ The 50 Fantastic Ideas series is packed full of fun, original, skills-based activities for Early Years practitioners to use with children aged 0-5. Each activity features step-by-step guidance, a list of resources, and a detailed explanation of the skills children will learn. Creative, simple, and highly effective, this series is a must-have for every Early Years setting. Early Years expert Judit Horvath presents 50 fun and thoroughly creative ideas in this book designed to get children experimenting and investigating the properties of mud and clay. When given soil, clay or mud to play with, most children are instinctively motivated to explore and experiment. Mud, soil and clay are naturally open-ended, stimulating children to investigate possibilities, look for reasons and think of ideas. They are cheap and easy to source or access, simple to transform to suit any age group or activity, can be mixed with other materials, given a rich sensory experience via visual texture, deep colour, rich smell and tactile feel.

Theories of Early Childhood Education continues to provide a comprehensive overview of the various theoretical perspectives in early childhood education from developmental psychology to critical studies, Piaget to Freire. This revised and updated edition includes additional chapters on Michael Alexander Halliday's view of language learning and the attachment theory work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Each author questions assumptions underpinning the use of theory in early childhood education and explores the implications of these questions for policy and practice. Theories reported in this book are a timely reminder of the importance of the relationship between theory and practice necessary for teacher candidates, teacher educators, and early childhood teachers. Students will learn the fundamentals while in-service teachers and professionals will learn the theory behind field observations for their certification exams.

Aims to do for Religious Education what developmental psychology has already done for learning in science, maths and literacy. Informed by research with both children and teachers and offers perspectives from a range of faiths and traditions - Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish. Essential reading for all developmental psychologists researching religious and spiritual development, and special teachers and researchers of RE who want to better understand children's knowledge, teaching and learning.

* Best-selling authors who run hugely popular training sessions * Follows the worldwide focus on social and emotional wellbeing * The market for easy to use, relevant programmes to develop social-emotional-behavioural skills is growing rapidly * Will also be of interest to those working with autistic children * International appeal

The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism explores how processes of marketisation and privatisation of ECEC have impacted understandings of children, childcare, parents, and the workforce, providing concrete examples of resistance to commodification from diverse contexts. Through processes of marketisation and privatisation, neoliberal discourses have turned ECEC into a commodity whereby economic principles of competition and choice have replaced the purpose of education. The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education and Care: Resisting Neoliberalism offers new and alternative understandings of policy and practice. Written with co-authors from diverse countries, case studies vividly portray resistance to children as human capital, to the "consumentality" of parents, and to the alienation of the early childhood workforce. Ending with messages of hope, the authors discuss the demise of neoliberalism and offer new ways forward. As an international book with global messages contributing to theory, policy, and practice regarding alternatives to a neoliberal and commodified vision of ECEC, this book offers inspiration for policy makers and practitioners to develop local resistance solutions. It will also be of interest to post-graduate students, researchers, educators, and pre-service educators with an interest in critical pedagogy, ECEC policy, and ECEC practice.

Many families and educators are concerned with the school readiness skills that children acquire in preschool; however, they do not realize that these skills begin to develop during the infant and toddler years. Infant and toddler caregivers need to recognize the importance of a high-quality infant and toddler learning environment and learn how they can support children while they acquire essential skills for future success.

* There is no single book, which introduces readers to the Bronfenbrenner's model of development as a context for early years practice * Fully updated with one new chapter and broader coverage on transitions * Bronfenbrenner's theories on 'ecological systems' in human development are one of the most influential models in early childhood education - and yet many practitioners and researchers rely on his original work as the only source of guidance * Draws on practice-based research to identify and animate key elements of Bronfenbrenner's model and how it impacts on early educational pedagogy and practice. * In light of the important research data emerging from the neurosciences, Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model of development provides a rich framework in which to enhance understandings.

* There is no single book, which introduces readers to the Bronfenbrenner's model of development as a context for early years practice * Fully updated with one new chapter and broader coverage on transitions * Bronfenbrenner's theories on 'ecological systems' in human development are one of the most influential models in early childhood education - and yet many practitioners and researchers rely on his original work as the only source of guidance * Draws on practice-based research to identify and animate key elements of Bronfenbrenner's model and how it impacts on early educational pedagogy and practice. * In light of the important research data emerging from the neurosciences, Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model of development provides a rich framework in which to enhance understandings.

Originally published in 1981 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the birth of the Pre-school Playgroups Association, Parents and Playgroups brings together three wide-ranging reports which examine the role of the playgroup movement, its underlying philosophy and the contribution made by both playgroups and Mother and Toddler groups to the lives of thousands of mothers and children throughout Britain at the time. Formed following a letter to the Guardian in 1961, the PPA together with its sister organization the Scottish PPA had a membership of approaching 16,000 playgroups, serving nearly half a million children. Yet there had been very little research into the workings of the movement until 1975, when Barclays Bank funded a major research project which resulted in the three reports Parental Involvement in Playgroups, Mother and Toddler Groups and Patterns of Oversight published in this volume. The many questions explored and debated include: How should the playgroup movement develop in the 1980s and after? What do parents contribute to playgroups - and what do playgroups and Mother and Toddler groups offer in return? Should Social Service Departments take over the running of playgroups and Mother and Toddler groups? Do local authorities give playgroups enough support? Or does statutory 'oversight' inhibit flexibility and imaginative development? Are playgroups and Mother and Toddler groups too middle-class oriented - and do they work equally well in different kinds of neighbourhood? How do playgroups compare with nursery schools? As Lady Plowden writes in her Foreword, 'the three studies will serve as an introduction to the developed thinking of the association, and point to further areas of research. They describe something increasingly vital in our present society, which is so often rootless and purposeless, as the group studying parental involvement says "one of the greatest strengths of the playgroup movement is that overall it is a positive force in a largely negative society."' In the words of Max Patterson, President of the Scottish PPA: 'This is a valuable set of studies... There is a challenge in the material to those with power to effect change. The experience and hard-earned knowledge of the Playgroups Association raises important questions for all whose interest is family and pre-school child.'

Originally published in 1994, the aim of the authors was to provide a comprehensive introduction to recent advances in research which had been made in learning and teaching in the early years of schooling at the time. Emphasis is placed on how subject knowledge is constructed or acquired, and the organization of teaching to promote the learner's active construction of meaning through the integration of new knowledge with existing understanding. The National Curriculum is founded in subject knowledge, though little examination appears to have been made of this in terms of how subject matter is transformed into the content of teaching that young children can understand. It this remains for the teacher to develop instruction through the creation of a curriculum content and sequence which both reflects and advances the structure of existing forms of representation, problem-solving and knowledge which the child brings to the school. The whole thrust of the book challenges the conventional early years ideology with its emphasis on child-centred, concrete and empirical approaches to learning, with a view of teaching which is concerned with making sense of children's understanding, and allowing their active construction of knowledge and information-processing to develop expertise in context.

In its discussion of the three levels of teaching and learning - whole school philosophy, classroom policy and specific teaching frameworks - Educating Young Children, originally published in 1992, addresses the twin themes of teacher ethics and pedagogic theory. In developing their argument the writers draw on both empirical classroom research and philosophical analysis, as well as the work developed within the Roehampton Institute MA programme in which they were both tutors at the time.

Originally published in 1989, Play, Exploration and Learning was a valuable contribution to the evaluation of nursery practice in Britain at the time, this 'natural history' of the activities of children and caring adults presents a comparative study of four types of provision for the under-fives: nursery schools, nursery classes, playgroups and day nurseries. All four types of provision are seen as happy, busy, caring environments, but they vary greatly in terms of staffing levels, training and material provision. The authors look at the 'play' of three- to five-year-old children and the activities of the adults who care for them. They examine in detail children's choices of materials and their use of them, with special attention given to the way language is used by both children and adults during play. They also describe adults' expectations of the various provisions and the values of the activities pursued in them. Of special interest is the emphasis placed by adults upon fantasy play, and the often large discrepancy between expectation and practice. Also covered are the difference in the play activities of part-time and full-time nursery school children, and the transition from pre-school to first school. The book will still be of historical interest to pre-school practitioners, to developmental psychologists and to educational administrators.