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Playwork is a recognised profession in the United Kingdom (UK) and is currently a growing area of interest internationally. However, debates about the nature and purpose of playwork have raged in the playwork field since the profession was invented in the early adventure playgrounds. This study is the first to capture data about what the now international playwork workforce understands to be the purpose of playwork. The International Playwork Census (IPC) was an online survey which asked participants from 19 different countries about their knowledge and experience of playwork. This paper reports on one question from the IPC: what is the purpose of playwork? A thematic analysis was undertaken from 193 responses on what was considered "the purpose of playwork" and three themes emerged: Facilitate and Provide for children's play; Support and Advocate. This paper describes how these three themes reflect both the historical change in understandings of the purpose of playwork and how different understandings of playwork are developed through the experience of practitioners working in range of different contexts.

Playgroups are a unique form of early childhood provision involving parents and their children attending together. Parents' attendance at playgroups provides opportunities for involvement in play. However, little is known about parents' practices of co-play in playgroups and the potential for these practices to enhance children's play experiences in early childhood. Drawing on practice architectures theory, this paper identifies parents' practices of co-play in a community playgroup, and the enablers and constraints on those practices. Data were collected through ethnographic methods, which included participant observation and informal individual interviews. The findings show that parents' practices of co-play consider the child's needs and interests in ways that support development and enhance children's play in the community playgroup. This research contributes new knowledge about the range of co-play practices engaged in by parents with children in community playgroups.

The importance of a positive start to school has been highlighted in a range of national and international research. This has stimulated considerable ongoing research attention, as well as initiatives across policy and practice, all with the aim of promoting a positive transition to school for all children. Despite the common interests across these sectors, the links and/or relationships between and among research, policy and practice remain unclear. This article maps the potential online users of the "Transition to School: Position Statement"--a document developed collaboratively by researchers, policymakers and practitioners--and organisations whose ambit includes transition to school. Using network analysis, the authors identify the online network of stakeholders involved in the field of early childhood and the links between these, before considering how such links might influence discourse and policy formation around transition to school. The analysis highlights weak cross-sectoral links and online networks dominated by government departments and agencies. Implications of these results are explored and the potential for digital research methods in research about transition to school is considered.

Purpose: This article examines the educational decision-making of hearing parents for their deaf children born during a period (1970-1990s) before the introduction of new-born hearing screening in New South Wales, where the study was conducted, and prior to the now near-universal adoption of cochlear implants in Australia. Design/methodology/approach: We present findings from an oral history study in which parents were invited to recall how they planned for the education of their deaf children. Findings: We propose that these oral histories shed light on how the concept, early intervention--a child development principle that became axiomatic from about the 1960s--significantly shaped the conduct of parents of deaf children, constituting both hope and burden, and intensifying a focus on early decision-making. They also illustrate ways in which parenting was shaped by two key structural shifts, one, being the increasing enrolment of deaf children in mainstream rather than separate classrooms and the other being the transformation of deafness itself by developments in hearing assistance technology. Originality/value: The paper contributes to a sociological/historical literature of "parenting for education" that almost entirely lacks deaf perspectives and a specialist literature of parental decision-making for deaf children that is almost entirely focussed on the post cochlear implant generation. The paper is distinctive in its treatment of the concept of "early intervention" as a historical phenomenon rather than a "common sense" truth, and proposes that parents of deaf children were at the leading edge of late-20th and early-21st century parenting intensification.

Objects in early childhood education (ECEC) experiences have begun to receive a great deal more attention than ever before. Although much of this attention has emerged recently from new materialism, in this paper we turn to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concern with the (in)visibility of 'things' to illuminate the presence of objects within infant transitions. Drawing on notions of "écart" and "reversibility," we explore the relational perceptions objects are bestowed with on the lead up to, and first day of, infant transitions. Recognizing the intertwining subjectivities that perceive the object, a series of videos and interviews with teachers and parents across three ECEC sites in Australia and New Zealand provided a rich source of phenomenological insight. Our analysis reveals objects as deeply imbued anchoring links that enable relational possibilities for transitions between home and ECEC service. Visible and yet invisible to adults (parents and/or teachers) who readily engage with objects during earliest transitions, the significance of things facilitates opportunities to forge new relationships, create boundaries and facilitate connections. As such, our paper concludes that objects are far more than mediating tools, or conceptual agents; they provide an explicit route to understanding with potential to play a vital role in supporting effective early transitions when granted visibility within this important phenomenon.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services and families, impacting family access to services and their communication and engagement with educators. This study aimed to examine parents' perspectives of family engagement with ECEC services during the pandemic. Primary caregivers in Victoria at the time of recruitment (September-November 2020) were invited to participate. Of the 66 participants who completed an online survey, 25 also took part in semi-structured video call or phone interviews; qualitative findings from these interviews are reported in this paper. Four key themes were conceptualised using a reflexive thematic approach: (1) disruptions to ECEC access and attendance impacting on family routines and relationships, and child development; (2) barriers to family engagement; (3) ECEC educators' support of families and children during the pandemic; and (4) increased parental appreciation of the ECEC profession. Findings revealed that disruptions to ECEC access and routines during the pandemic adversely impacted family engagement, and child learning and social-emotional wellbeing for some families. These were aggravated by other stressors, including increased parental responsibilities in the home, financial and health concerns, and changed work conditions. Findings also demonstrated successful methods used by educators to maintain communication and connections with families. Importantly, parents expressed increasing appreciation of the profession and an increased awareness of the value of family involvement in children's learning. Learnings regarding strategies for effective and alternative ways of engaging families are discussed.

There is a consensus that the crises children encounter during the transition period might impact negatively on children's learning and development. However, from cultural-historical perspective, qualitative leap in development can hardly be achieved without crises. This paper, drawing upon cultural-historical theory as the framework and by using 'role adjustment' as the unit of analysis, discusses what the crisis means for children's learning and development. Through a case study of two second generation Chinese Australian children's role adjustment in school transition, this paper finds that the crises provide both potentials and dangers depending on how the crises are managed within the child's social situation of development. It argues against the advocates for making children's transition seamless, as it is important to utilize the developmental potentials of crises instead of eliminating them. It also enriches the cultural-historical studies by exploring not only the developmental aspect but also the dark side of the crises.

There are some studies indicating that parents make a significant contribution to children's conceptual learning through play, whereas very few studies have been done to identify parents' pedagogical positioning in children's imaginative play for supporting their learning and development. This paper is seeking how Indian-Australian immigrant parents involve themselves and support the development of abstract concepts by taking on their children's perspectives in imaginative play. Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory was used to analyse the data to answer the research question. The data have been collected through video, audio and semi-structured interviews from four Indian-Australian immigrant families. Approximately 17 hours of data were collected from four focus children's families. The finding of this study show how to extend the play that the parent and child develop from an individual perspective by moving between inside and outside of the imaginative play. However, the study also reveals that the play participants might miss the opportunity to understand each other's perspectives by only being outside of the play. The paper suggests that future research should concentrate on studying the pedagogical positioning of the adult, which is an important dimension for understanding adults' involvement in children's imaginative play for supporting learning and development.

Over past decades in early childhood education, there has been an emerging critique of developmental discourses. Despite this, the universality of child development theory persists and along with it, expectations of a linear progression via prescribed stages and ages. Developmentalism produces a normal in the classroom that sanctions comparisons, positioning any difference to the normal as problematic. In this paper, using observation and conversation data from a larger poststructural ethnographic study of three inclusive early childhood classrooms in Australia, the effects of developmental discourses on the classroom and on inclusive practice are examined. Providing an alternative view of inclusion, the paper focuses on the operations of the normal, exposing the exclusionary effects of developmental discourses on children, and among children. As children negotiate difference in the classroom, they draw on sanctioned developmental understandings in coming to know themselves and others. Interrupting the power and authority of these discourses and the way they produce certain ways of being and becoming could provide some promise for inclusive practices.

Knowing how children become oriented to imaginary play can help educators in centres better support development. But how this begins in the first years of life is not well understood. How toddlers transform through their imagination concrete objects (such as play accessories, figurines, and books) to become props in play (placeholders and pivots) for conveying meaning, remains low. Drawing upon cultural-historical theory, the study reported in this paper sought to understand the role of props for supporting the development of imagination during toddlerhood. Four toddlers aged 1.9-2.1 years from an early childhood centre in Australia were followed as they used objects as props during imaginary play. The study design was an educational experiment of a Conceptual Play World (CPW): a collective model of practice for developing play and imagination. Digital data of the CPW being implemented in the toddler room were collected through video recordings over two months. Thirteen hours of data were collected and analysed using the Vygotskian concepts of play and imagination. The findings revealed that through differentiated use of props, toddlers made transitions from the embodiment of the experience to sharing an intellectual and abstract space where objects became props in play, suggesting the genesis and development of early forms of imagination. The outcomes of the study advance theory and inform practice about the early development of imagination in toddlerhood.

This paper presents data from interviews undertaken with teachers and parents of children who attend Australian bush kinders (kindergartens). The bush kinder approach is a recent adaptation of the European and UK forest school approaches, one that continues to gain momentum as increasingly teachers and parents come to understand the benefits associated with this type of outdoor learning environment. The research was undertaken using ethnography (Delamont, 1992; Madden, 2012), a useful method of research in this type of setting as ethnography enables a deep understanding of how children 'notice' in nature over time. The paper applies a discourse analysis (Gee, 2011) of teacher and parent interviews critically exploring the learning and development benefits children experience from attending a bush kinder program. Findings reveal that through their noticing, preschool children make a transition from being nature novices to nature experts. The data demonstrate the benefits preschool children can gain from learning and being 'in' and 'with' nature and the important role adults play recognising young children's noticing in nature.

This paper aims to explore the impacts of a Learn to Play programme in specialist schools for children with multiple developmental issues. Specialist schools are schools dedicated to children with IQs below 70 and who may also have other developmental issues. The Learn to Play programme focusses on facilitating children's enjoyment and ability to self-initiate pretend play. Staff views were sought on the importance of pretend play for children with developmental delay and disability within a special school, and their views on the impacts of the Learn to Play programme and its implementation in specialist schools. Participants included 14 staff members across four schools for children with developmental disabilities and delay located across Victoria, Australia. The 14 staff members included six teachers, one assistant principal, two speech pathologists, one occupational therapist and four integration aide staff members. Data were collected through focus groups and Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the data. Five themes emerged which included: 'schools create successful programs', 'Learn to Play has created shifts in children's development', 'assessing pretend play is really important', 'structuring Learn to Play to allow for the challenge of play with children with developmental delay and disability' and 'communicating with parents about play'.

The advancement of inclusive education policies worldwide has given greater weight to social justice practices in educational settings. However, inclusion in preschools has received less attention from researchers. This article examines a 4-year-old child's participation in a mainstream preschool in Australia from a cultural-historical perspective. In particular, this study used the concept of secondary disability to analyse the data, and in this process identified a contradiction between the teacher's perceptions of the child's abilities and the teacher's reported understanding of the parent's perceptions of the child's abilities, which 'clouded' the child's position within the preschool setting. Eight hours of video data were gathered across eight months. The findings indicate that understanding the child's personality and potential can operate as a 'pedagogical password' for the teacher to enter on to the child's unique developmental trajectory. This paper argues that identifying the unique developmental pathway of the child is essential to reduce secondary disabilities.

This paper attempts to move beyond a critique of historically dominant ways of thinking about teaching and learning relationships to offer a conceptualization of relational pedagogy from a theological perspective. It offers commentary on the potential of relational pedagogy for Christian faith-based schools informed by the scholarship of German theologian Karl Rahner and the dialectical child psychotherapy of D. W. (Donald) Winnicott. An argument for a theological-relational pedagogy is outlined, followed by discussion of three features linking Rahner, Winnicott, and relational pedagogy: realizing our human-ness through relationships with others; the role of a dialectical unity between self and other; and the mystery of human subjectivity. The paper concludes by signalling some of the implications for faith-based curriculum and pedagogy arising from our argument, centred on the emergence of a new theology of childhood.

Otitis Media (OM) is an important global issue that can have a long-lasting impact on a child's life. There is no easy fix! For a family who has a child with OM, the ramifications can be short term and have minimal consequences, or they can be very complex and involve medical, educational, behavioural and wellbeing issues, and may even be life-threatening. Navigating diagnosis and then the combinations of interventions in all areas is just the start of a very daunting journey. As a preventable disease, we have the opportunity to make a difference. This paper presents the development and implementation of the Hear our Heart Ear Bus Project (HoHEBP) within a regional city in western New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The HoHEBP supports families of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous children with OM through a transdisciplinary approach incorporating health and education, in partnership with families and communities to ensure the best possible outcomes for children and young people. We present how the HoHEBP provides a unique vehicle for change in the way we approach OM as a transdisciplinary team. Longitudinal data from 2014 to 2019 shows that numbers of children and young people being tested and diagnosed with OM, and referred to medical and educational specialists through the HoHEBP have increased, with over one third identifying as Indigenous (in this paper Indigenous is used respectfully to refer to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples).

This paper reports on a project aimed at investigating teacher wellbeing in remote communities in Australia. It utilised a multiple case study methodology to investigate the lived experiences of remote Australian teachers, particularly how remote teachers simultaneously manage the wellbeing and academic needs of their students. Findings show how the challenges of working in remote places impact teacher wellbeing and provides six practical recommendations about how to better support remote teachers. There is a present need to develop a framework of remote teachers thriving, so systems and communities are not over-reliant upon teachers' individual resilience in hard-to-staff places.

Transition to school is a critical period in child development and has raised great concern among contemporary studies. However, most studies focus on vertical transition and only a few investigate vertical and horizontal transitions as a whole. To bridge the gap, this paper explores how an immigrant Chinese child makes the horizontal transition between dominant institutions within a bicultural-context and the vertical transition from preschool to the primary school period as a whole unity, and how the child learns and develops throughout this trajectory. The data (46 hours) being analysed are selected from observations and interviews. Drawing upon the cultural-historical theory, this paper argues that: (1) transition process is not linear, (2) every child has his/her unique transition trajectory and mapping the trajectory is a way to identify the child's challenges and needs, and (3) culture is not a separate factor, but rather is embedded in the social situation of development in which the child is situated.

Vygotsky (in: Rieber, Carton (eds) The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, vol 1, Pleneum Press, Newyork, pp 167-241, Retrieved from http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/edf5411/04118997.pdf, 1987) stated that academic or scientific concepts require a level of conscious awareness on the part of the child within everyday situations. Academic concepts can be any kind of concept, such as science concepts, mathematics concepts, language concepts and so on. Vygotsky theorised how these academic concepts could be developed by school aged children, but he said less about the prior to school period. Scientific concepts do not instantly develop in their final form but rather follow a process of conceptual development guided through adult--child interaction. It is understood that not any kind of social interactions can be considered developmental, but rather it is interaction which is purposeful and which is viewed as useful for a child's development. Any kind of conceptual development requires the interaction with the ideal form as presented through adult interaction in social contexts. In any stage of development, ideal forms need to be present in the real context. Ideal in the sense that it acts as a model for that which should be achieved at the end of the developmental period; and in contrast, the real form represents the beginning point of child development (Vygotsky, in: Veer, Valsiner (eds) The Vygotsky reader, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp 338-350, 1994). Many studies have documented the interactions between adults and children for developing scientific concepts in formal settings but little is understood about what happens in family homes for the prior to school age period. We do not know how scientific concepts develop during infants-toddlers everyday life at home. What kinds of social interactions in everyday family life support infants and toddlers to develop early forms of science concepts? This paper presents the findings of a study of infant and toddler learning of science at home. A total of around 30 h of video data were collected from three Bangladeshi families in Australia and Singapore. Three children aged from 10 to 36 months were filmed over 1 year in their everyday context. Informed by cultural-historical theory, the findings indicate that a form of conscious collaboration between parents and infants-toddlers is the key for developing "small science" concepts from rudimentary to final form. Small science has been defined as simple scientific narration of the everyday moments that infants and toddlers experience at home with their families. It was found that it was the families who filled the gap in understanding, through actively supporting the development of their infant-toddler's higher mental function. Here the relations between infant-toddler real forms of development were carefully considered by the parents in relation to the ideal form that they created through collective dialogue of small science moments in the environment. If infants-toddlers learn these small concepts in their everyday settings, it is probable that they could link these early forms of understandings to learning abstract concepts later in school. This study contributes to understanding the nature of social interaction patterns for developing small science concepts in the everyday context of family life. This paper also provides pedagogical suggestions for early childhood science education.

Teachers have the ability to influence a child's sense of belonging and peer relationships in the classroom which are important for a child's social development. Currently, little is known about the ways in which they do this. Vygotsky's concept of the social situation of development and Hedegaard's model for learning and development were used to discuss the conditions teachers created that promote peer relationships within the classroom. Digital video observations and interview of one grade 1 classroom teacher from the western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria were analysed using Hedegaard's dialectical-interactive approach. This paper demonstrates how the societal demands on institutions influence the activity settings that students participate in and argues that teachers need to create conditions for peer interactions that satisfy societal needs as well as being meaningful for their students and their social situation of development.

The emotional aspects of children's social relations have generally been marginalised in social science discourse. Children, who participated in the Australian segment of the Children's Understandings of Well-being (CUWB) project used various media to 'voice' the importance for their well-being of emotional relatedness with family, friends, animals and places. In this paper we place our construction of children's discussion of emotional relatedness in the context of the 'emotional turn' in research and briefly describe how the methodology for our project facilitated an understanding of the importance of children's emotions for their lives in the present. We then focus on the significance for child protection policy and practice, of what children tell us about feeling safe, as this relates to the importance of agency and relatedness with people and also with places.

Government guidelines are demanding greater educational outcomes and intentional teaching in Australian preschools. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study of how children incorporate concepts into child-initiated play. A cohort of 18 children (aged 3.0-5.8, mean age of 4.8) were digitally observed over seven weeks (153.3 hours' digital video observations). It was found that rather than formalising preschooling to increase cognitive outcomes, the leading activity of the preschool child to play can be preserved when children experience a PlayWorld where curriculum concepts act in service of the children's play.

Play acts as the source of children's development in the preschool period. Yet, the global pandemic has changed children's play conditions in ways that are not yet fully understood. With movement restrictions, families have struggled to find ways of bringing children together for play. We studied how family day care (FDC) educators across a remote region of Australia used a digital platform to collectively play in a Conceptual PlayWorld. The central question was: How do the dialectical digital and real world conditions of play create developmental opportunities for children? To answer this, we researched how family day care educators, their leaders (n = 7) and the children (n = 38) from their respective FDC homes, simultaneously played at home and remotely using a zoom platform with a storyteller-player. 797.46 min of digital data were generated and analysed using the Vygotskian conception of the dialectical relation between rudimentary/real and ideal/mature forms of play. In drawing on previous cultural-historical theorisations of digital play, this paper discusses the new developmental conditions created in this real world and virtual context of FDC. We introduce new concepts for explaining the developmental processes and outcomes for these children.

The approaches to teaching and learning mathematics in Australian preschools and schools can be quite different. These differences arise from what can be termed different "cultures" within the prior-to-school and school settings. Even the first years of school can be characterized by teacher-centered, syllabus-driven lessons and written, group-based assessment, while the preschools tend to adhere to their child-centered, play-based approaches. The result of these differences can be a hiatus in the children's mathematics learning and the teachers' assessment of this learning. This paper reports on one attempt to bridge this gap, not, as so often happens, by "forcing down" the primary school curriculum into the preschool but by maintaining a focus on appropriate learning approaches in this period of the children's lives. The Southern Numeracy Initiative (SNI) was established in 2004 in high schools, primary schools, and preschools situated in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. Its general aim was to improve mathematics and numeracy outcomes through a sustained, collaborative program of professional development and action research, particularly in the areas of pedagogy and assessment. This paper reports work done with preschool educators as part of SNI. It traces how "powerful ideas" in mathematics were identified in current preschool practice, how they were linked to the Developmental Learning Outcomes in the mandatory curriculum documents, and how the technique of learning stories (narrative assessment) was established as a valid assessment regime compatible with key principles of preschool education. The professional development focus on children's powerful mathematical ideas, combined with action research that encouraged educators to identify these ideas within children's experiences and to document these through learning stories, form the basis of this paper.

Introduction: Screen-time has become a regular occupation for young children at home and school, with little evidence of its impact on children's developmental skills. This study explored the association between children's screen-time, fine motor, in-hand manipulation (IHM), visual-motor integration (VMI), sensory processing (SP) and parent-reported play skills., Method: The fine motor, IHM, VMI, SP and play skills of a sample of 25 Australian children without disabilities (M age = 6.2 years, SD = 1.03; 64% girls) were assessed using the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Second Edition, Test of In-Hand Manipulation-Revised, Berry Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration Sixth Edition, Sensory Processing Measure-Home Form and Pretend Play Enjoyment Developmental Checklist (PPEDC). Parents completed a week-long log of their child's screen-time. Spearman's rho correlations and linear regressions with bootstrapping were used for data analysis., Results: Statistically significant moderate level negative correlations were found between Total Screen-Time (TST) and VMI skills (r = -.67, p < .01); Interactive Screen-Time and IHM abilities (r = -.46, p < .05) and TST and bilateral coordination skills (r = -.42, p < .05). There were significant negative correlations between SP ability and both TST (r = -.53, p < .01) and Watching Screen-Time (r = -.66, p < .01). When the PPEDC Object Substitution variable was entered into a regression model as a co-variate of hand function, it appeared to lessen the impact of TST as an independent predictor variable of children's VMI and bilateral coordination skills (p < .23 and p < .61)., Conclusion: Playing with toys and using object substitution in play (e.g. a child uses an object for something else other than its intended use when playing with it) potentially appear to be a moderating factor of the impact of children's screen-time on their bilateral coordination and VMI skills. Clinicians can encourage children's active and dynamic involvement in games and play pursuits to counteract the potential impact of increased use of devices that involve screen-time., (© 2020 Occupational Therapy Australia.)

Background: The Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) provides a measure of early child development upon school entry. Understanding which combination of factors influences Aboriginal child neurodevelopment is important to inform policy and practice., Objective: The primary objective was to use latent class analysis (LCA) to model AEDC profiles and identify the highest need profiles. The secondary objective was to determine the associations of these high need profiles on the likelihood of a child becoming developmentally vulnerable., Methods: We designed a prospective population-based birth cohort study (n = 2715) using linked data sets with information on Aboriginal cohort children, and their mothers and siblings in Western Australia. Specific developmental indicators in the 2009 and 2012 AEDC were used to assess developmental vulnerability. LCA methods were used to determine need profiles and their association with developmental vulnerability., Results: 49.3% of Aboriginal children were vulnerable on at least one developmental domain, and 37.5% were vulnerable on two or more domains. LCA found six unique profiles. High needs family, High needs young mother, and Preterm infant comprised 42% of the cohort and were considered to have high need configurations. These groups were at least 1.7 times as likely to have children who had at least one or two developmental vulnerabilities compared with the Healthy family group., Conclusion: Many Aboriginal children in Western Australia enter school with at least one developmental vulnerability. This study highlights a range of unique profiles that can be used to empower Aboriginal families for change and develop targeted programmes for improving the early development of young Aboriginal children., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

This paper reports findings in relation to one aspect of the "I Go to School" research project carried out in South Australia which tracked children attending integrated pre-school/childcare centres as they made their transition to school. Eight centres participated in the study involving 347 children. In order to measure some of the outcomes of the children's participation in integrated early childhood programmes, parents and teachers completed questionnaires regarding some aspects of the children's cognitive and social development in the year the children turned four and then again in the term they started school at age five. The researchers were thus able to ascertain some of the changes that had occurred in the children's development during their participation in early childhood programmes. This paper reports on the comparison between parent and teacher judgements of particular aspects of the four-year-old children's cognitive development at one point in time. The analysis presented here compares the teacher and parent/carer judgements from a subsection of the Child Development Inventory). This comparison led to the conclusion that parent ratings of particular aspects of their four-year-old children's cognitive development were reliable and relatively consistent when compared with those of teachers.

Child development for a cohort of urban Aboriginal children was assessed at three time points: 12 months, 3 years and 4.5 years. This paper reports developmental findings and explores the impact of child, family, home and community variables over time. Overall, child development at 4.5 years was significantly below the standardised mean. Female gender, preschool attendance, and having 10+ child-appropriate books in the home were significantly related to better performance. Over time the children demonstrated strengths in the locomotor and personal-social domains. Maternal factors were most predictive of performance at 3 years. These results are discussed in relation to their meaning within the Aboriginal community.

Discourse on quality, within the context of childcare, has moved beyond the level of licensing to consider children's right to belong. Within Western Australia (WA), there has been a paradigm shift as international research literature on quality childcare has advocated the long-term benefits for individuals and the community when children experience high quality early education and care. This paradigm shift has resulted in new legislation in WA that articulates the components of quality across childcare, as well as the criteria on which centres are assessed. This paper reports the findings of an investigation into the constructs of quality from two stakeholder groups; parents and educators. Findings from this study indicated that, when it comes to quality, what matters most to both parents and educators are the types of interactions children have with others and their environment; the ways in which children's needs are met; and children's experiences for development and learning. These findings align with the themes of the nationally mandated early years' document--The Early Years Learning Framework (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR], 2009) Belonging, Being and Becoming.

This article presents a response to the paper by Li, D'ngiulli and Kendall (2007). The authors address two key aspects of this paper. The first concerns a number of errors and misconceptions in the paper that the authors think are important to clarify and correct. The second issue relates to the significant amount of research and effort that has taken place since this article was first written, particularly the increasing amount of effort, both in Canada and in Australia, to engage the Indigenous/Aboriginal populations.

Contemporary educational policies both at international and national levels acknowledge the educational rights of all children and their inclusion in mainstream educational practices. Like other children at risk, children with disabilities have opportunities to access mainstream education but their participation is not always realised in practice. To address opportunities and challenges of inclusion of children with disabilities, this paper examines the participation of one focus child (four years), with Soto's Syndrome, who attends a mainstream Australian preschool setting. Guided by the cultural-historical theory, digital video data of the focus child's activities in everyday preschool practices (13 h) was gathered over a period of eight months. The findings suggest that although the focus child faces difficulties in expressive language, she created her own developmental trajectory of participation. The focus child used educators as her living auxiliary tools and educators used auxiliary questions to support the child to express and communicate through a process of building shared meaning. Though the findings are limited in regard to generalisation, the understanding about the dialectical effort of adults and the focus child to create a roundabout way to overcome incongruences could be a strong basis for conceptualising inclusion.

The Reggio Emilia approach is identified as a resource and inspiration in the field of early childhood education. The term 'Reggio Inspired' refers to all Reggio Emilia approach-based practices outside of Reggio Emilia, Italy. This paper presents a comprehensive study of Reggio Inspired empirical research. Results from an integrative review of the literature (51 unique studies) reveal the lack of outcome research to support the efficacy of the implementation of Reggio Inspired practices and the varied nature of this body of literature. After providing a survey of the literature on Reggio Inspired approaches from around the world, we propose an integrative framework that offers both a structure for future research and a tool for synthesizing literature rooted in the transplantation of Reggio Emilia approach to other contexts, the Reggio Inspired Research Re-framework.

Recent reforms for the early childhood education and care sector in Australia have led in part to the development of a national Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) which presents play based learning as "a context for learning through which children organize and make sense of their social worlds, as they engage actively with people, objects and representations." While play is considered to be an important element in an early years' environment, many teachers are unsure of how to plan for such a curriculum. This paper reports on the findings from a small-scale research study that sought to investigate and explore the effects a series of play workshop classes had on the pre-service teachers' knowledge of the value of play for children's learning and development.

The importance of pedagogic practices in addressing major social problems is increasingly acknowledged. This is especially so in areas of work not traditionally understood in pedagogic terms, such as services for vulnerable families with young children. Policy mandates for change in relationships between professionals and clients have challenged conventional notions of professional expertise, intensifying and expanding the pedagogic dimension of such work. This paper examines professional-parent interactions, adopting a cultural-historical approach focused on mediation, everyday and scientific concepts, and the space of reasons. Analysis reveals four distinct activities: locating and orienting change, creating new meaning for change, change through joint live action, and planning for change. Each involves different objects and ways in which professional expertise is brought to bear in pedagogic work. It is argued resilience-building works by helping parents learn to interpret and act in their worlds differently, using cultural tools from professional expertise made available through pedagogic work. The paper provides new insights into the importance of professional expertise in these practices at a time when this is in question.

Parents as partners in their children's learning is predicated by a notion of a mutual understanding of the learning as shared by educators. Documenting learning in early childhood education and care (ECE & C) settings has evolved from more traditional developmental approaches to include photographs, artefacts and social stories to make learning visible for parents. However, while educators are using these approaches to document learning in ECE & C settings, the shared understanding of the learning for parents is not always mutually understood. The paper presents a small-scale case study, which examined the way parents in one long day ECE & C service which had recently redeveloped an outdoor play area to bring in more natural affordances to support the children's learning and development. The paper reports on the perceptions of two parents with children attending this centre in how the educators were making visible the learning and development afforded the children through engaging in this newly designed space. The study found that while educators were using a range of documentation approaches, the parents had little shared understanding of their children as engaging in this space.

Research involving the plurilingualism of young people has begun to focus upon how we must re-conceptualise language learning to acknowledge the language resources of children with plurilingual experiences. This is particularly important in countries like Australia with a traditionally monolingual mindset embedded in policy, education, and the views of much of the community. Growing arguments posit that it is more important to focus on the resourceful use of language than attempts to measure skill, competence, or fluency in one language. In this paper, the movement between languages of children with a range of linguistic repertoires is explored in the Australian context. Data are taken from student and teacher interviews and focus groups with parents across five different primary schools, each with a bilingual education programme. The paper argues that bilingual programmes aimed at monolingual background students can have benefits for more than one kind of plurilingual student. It was found that plurilingual children drew on their home language(s) as a resource in school contexts where other languages were used, showed an increased enjoyment of learning, and developed learning strategies which built on their plurilingual experiences. Additionally, the data showed how teachers in these contexts worked towards expanding their own linguistic repertoires.

This paper reflects on the current state of research in early childhood education and proposes that there is a renewed interest in research evident at present. Multiple perspectives of viewing early childhood are increasing, with research stretching the comfortable boundaries wider than seen before in Australia. This paper discusses how early childhood research is changing the way we consider childhood, and how its methods are now beginning to really embrace the child. Also discussed are some of the thought-provoking initiatives recently taken in such research and how the early childhood sector can benefit from its richness.

Lullabies have existed since ancient times, and are sung across all most all cultures to soothe babies and lull them to sleep. As screen media use pervades contemporary familial lives, it is perhaps inevitable that lullabies have been adopted and adapted as repertoire. This recording of lullabies in audiovisual modes has transformed the ways in which these songs are learned, transmitted, experienced and used within young children's lives. As part of a larger study investigating music and screen media in the lives of young children, this paper reports on evolving lullaby practices in the lives of Australian children. Using an ethnographic methodology, content and production of, and responses to, lullabies presented via YouTube, Apps and television have been analysed. Findings indicated that lullabies presented via YouTube clips and Apps tend to be economically produced, and demonstrate a lack of understanding of young children's social and/or developmental needs. Televised lullabies tend to function as signals for settling, rather than for lulling babies and young children to sleep, and their use plays an increasingly significant role in families' everyday routines.

The relationship between experience, emotions, cognition, and learning is of increasing interest to educators and researchers who recognise that efforts to promote student engagement and learning must take into account factors beyond the purely cognitive and instrumental. The significance of experience considered as a unity in regard to child development was discussed through the concept of "perezhivanie" decades ago in the work of Lev Vygotsky (1934). Contemporary explorations of "perezhivanie" as a concept and phenomenon may be further informed through drawing upon Dewey's work on "Art as Experience" (1934) and the concept of metaxis as understood in drama education literature. This paper will examine the special nature of arts and educational drama experiences for experiencing, realising, and expressing "perezhivanie." It also reflects upon the role of the teacher, their own experiences of arts-inspired "perezhivanie" and the potentially contagious impact of the teacher's experiences for their students.

Studying relationships in infant/toddler play, using visual narrative methodology to identify transitory moments, supports our current research on babies and toddlers. We use Vygotsky's theorisation of play to understand children's affective and intellectual aspirations in play. The theoretical discussion, using cultural-historical concepts, argues for identification of transitory moments as turning points for learning. Through examining transitory moments in screen-capture snapshots from video, researchers illustrate the actual worlds of infant/toddler play where personal and collective meaning, and affect and resolution, are created and located. Our study of infant/toddler relationships in play reveals several transitory moments reflecting imaginative thought in action: agentic imagination. A case example from Long Day Care brings visual narrative together with a dialogue commentary to provide meaning of the playful circumstances in which babies' and toddlers' "affective incentives" (Vygotsky, this issue, p. 9) are realised and resolved in imaginary situations. This paper addresses a gap existing in pedagogical awareness of what transitory moments in play can mean for infant/toddler learning and development in early childhood education.

The application of engagement strategies to ensure democracy of decisions is increasingly valued and adopted by governments to ensure trust in the process and ownership of the outcome. This paper describes the approach and methods used to engage early childhood education and care (ECEC) and outside school hours care (OSHC) stakeholders in the contemporizing and updating of Australia's national Approved Learning Frameworks (ALFs): Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF) and My Time Our Place: Framework for School Age Care (MTOP). Theoretical underpinnings of a robust stakeholder engagement strategy ensured a range of methods were developed to communicate with and encourage participation by the diversity of stakeholders who are invested in ECEC and OSHC in Australia -- broadly defined as approved providers, teachers, educators, families, children and young people, regulatory authorities and other professionals who provide support and advice. A mixed-method, sequential 3-Stage design was developed to gather the insights, responses, and perspectives of stakeholders who provided, worked in, used, attended, or supported ECEC and/or OSHC settings. Stakeholder feedback included survey ratings and written comments, focus group and panel discussions, educator documentation and video-diaries, and the writings, talking, and drawings of children and young people. Evaluation methods focus on the number, diversity, and depth of stakeholder responses. In conclusion, we reflect on the usefulness, benefits, limitations, and effectiveness of our approach to participatory engagement to inform government policy development and decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted with preschool teachers trialling an intervention in which executive function activities are embedded in teachers' daily practices and imaginary play is used to build meaningful problem situations that children solve using executive functions. The participants were 227 preschool children (53% male, M age = 55.5 months, SD = 4.2) in 10 preschool groups from Brisbane, Australia. The intervention consisted of educators and children creating and developing an imaginary situation (playworld) over an extended period (e.g. one school term). Executive function was assessed pre- and post-intervention. A repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated significant differences between Time 1 and Time 2 on all executive function measures. The study found that teachers can develop children's executive functions when executive function activities are embedded in teachers' daily practices, and when imaginary play is used to build meaningful problem situations that children solve using executive functions.

This paper examines notions of childhood development in a significant Australian policy document. Using Fairclough's approaches to discourse analysis as guides, Foucault's understanding of regimes of truth and discourses as systems of power relations and Nikolas Rose's concept of "responsibilisation," the paper argues that discourses of healthy childhood development as represented in this document produce definitions of "proper" child development and thus, place certain children and families outside this idea. Proper development is understood through Nikolas Rose's concept of "responsibilisation" where the recognition of "at risk" or "improper" groups, and notions of productivity, are addressed through understandings of performativity while highlighting consequences for children and families.

Government policies in Australia and in many other parts of the world, are calling for degree-qualified teachers to work in prior to formal school settings (center-based care, preschool). Yet, many preservice early childhood teachers assume they will end up teaching in primary schools. This paper examines the professional identities preservice early childhood teachers take up and speak into action while participating in classes focused on teaching in child care. Employing poststructural social theory, data drawn from focus groups with preservice early childhood teachers was examined through a Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis. Particular ways in which the preservice teachers talked about images of children and quality in early childhood are scrutinized for how discourses work to constitute the professional identities of preservice early childhood teachers. It was found that the participants drew on a range of competing discourses available to them, through their degree, and from elsewhere to describe the work of teaching young children and teaching in child care. These competing and colliding discourses, it is argued produce an identity of preservice teachers as "heroic victims." The paper raises questions about the discourses in circulation in preservice early childhood teacher education, and considers the implications this has for professional identities and career pathways--particularly work in child care.

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 followed children from kindergarten/preschool into primary school. Using data gathered primarily through interviews with parents (mothers in each case), this paper presents a qualitative naturalistic sub-study that used deductive thematic analysis to explore the different strategies used by families to support their child's resilience. Our findings highlight that resilience was a salient concept for all of the mothers in the study and each mother articulated a range of strategies they used within the family to try and support their child's development and resilience. These strategies were constrained by the settings in which the families lived.

There is increasing acknowledgement of the importance of the early years of school in laying the foundations for children's learning pathways, and interest in the role of mental health in promoting positive early learning experiences. Understanding child mental health requires consideration of both mental health competence and mental health difficulties. The aim of this paper was to determine how profiles of competence and difficulties relate to children's early learning skills in their first year of school. Cross-sectional data from a population census was used to explore whether children's mental health profile (the combination of competence and difficulties) predicted key domains of early learning. In 2015, the Australian Early Development Census (a teacher-rated measure of child development) was completed for 96.5% of Australian children in their first year of schooling (N = 302,003; M = 5 years, 7 months of age). Logistic regression analyses revealed that mental health profiles were strongly related to two key domains of early learning: language and cognitive skills, and communication skills and general knowledge. Anything less than the optimal high competence with low difficulties profile was associated with substantially poorer early learning skills (OR 2.17, p < 0.001 to OR 67.75, p < 0.001). These results suggest that profiles of mental health competence and difficulties are a salient factor as children begin school, and illustrate the importance of recognising both competence and difficulties when considering the mental health of young children.

This paper details and compares the discernible trends observed in a wide-ranging review of the recent starting school literature in Australia and beyond. More than half of the research reviewed considers children's readiness for school. This research is critiqued through a three-way view of readiness: child readiness, school readiness and support available through the family. Distinctions between transition to school and school readiness are made and the consequences of these are investigated for all key participants in the transition process: children, educators and families. The paper concludes with a critical consideration of tensions in the research around starting school.

This paper evaluates UNESCO's recommended sexuality educational framework for junior school students aged 5-8 years. It also compares it to an existing state-designed Health and Physical Education curriculum that includes sexual and reproductive health for the same cohort. Based on the universal values of respect and human rights, UNESCO's" International Technical Guidance" (2009) promotes clear, comprehensive, and evidence-informed sexuality education in the compulsory school years, for all countries. Aimed at education and health decision-makers, the framework addresses knowledge, values and discussion of often-stifled issues that are appropriate for healthy child development, and necessary to counter children's vulnerability to abuse, exploitation and sexually transmitted infections. Most importantly, it emphasises that children are not ready for sexual contact with other people. The results of this paper's evaluation show that the "Guidance" offers timely, definitive, wide-ranging, inclusive and effective sexuality education for children who are usually left "to find their own way". The comparative results show that the sampled Australian curriculum is woefully inadequate for the task of teaching puberty, sexuality and reproductive health and safety education.

Since the moral panic discourse is shutting down discussions about how children are making meaning of gender and sexuality, this paper argues that a new logic is needed for understanding childhood sexuality. A postdevelopmental logic is created by working with Deleuze and Guattari's ["Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizoprhenia." Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London: Athlone and "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia." Translated by Brian Massumi. London: Continuum. (Orig. pub. 1980)] concepts "assemblage", "desire", and "territories" to understand childhood sexuality in ways that do not rely on the notion of a "moral panic". By re-assembling data generated from an exploratory study of talk by young children about gender and sexuality this paper creates new connections about childhood, gender, and sexualities. It does this by moving away from developmental framings, initiating a different dialogue about curiosities, human and nonhuman bodies, and desires, to chart new territories about childhood sexuality in the early years classroom.