International Journal of Early Years Education 

About: International Journal of Early Years Education is an academic journal published by Routledge. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Early childhood education & Early childhood. It has an ISSN identifier of 0966-9760. Over the lifetime, 843 publications have been published receiving 14268 citations.

Do home numeracy and literacy practices of Greek and Canadian parents predict the numeracy skills of kindergarten children

Abstract: Children’s experiences with early numeracy and literacy activities are a likely source of individual differences in their preparation for academic learning in school. What factors predict differences in children’s experiences? We hypothesised that relations between parents’ practices and children’s numeracy skills would mediate the relations between numeracy skills and parents’ education, attitudes and expectations. Parents of Greek (N = 100) and Canadian (N = 104) five‐year‐old children completed a survey about parents’ home practices, academic expectations and attitudes; their children were tested on two numeracy measures (i.e., KeyMath‐Revised Numeration and next number generation). Greek parents reported numeracy and literacy activities less frequently than Canadian parents; however, the frequency of home numeracy activities that involved direct experiences with numbers or mathematical content (e.g., learning simple sums, mental math) was related to children’s numeracy skills in both countries. For Gr...

Free choice and free play in early childhood education: troubling the discourse

Abstract: This article troubles the established discourse of free choice and free play in early childhood education, and develops post-structural approaches to theorising children's agency in the context of institutional and relational power structures. It is widely accepted that planning a curriculum based on children's needs, interests and patterns of learning promotes agency, self-regulation and control. However, contemporary research extends this discourse through critical examination of child-centred and developmental perspectives, and by theorising children's agency as a means of enacting power relationships in play. Using naturalistic, interpretive methods for documenting children's choices of play activities, this small-scale study focuses on 10 children in an Early Years Foundation Stage setting in England. Combining contemporary sociocultural and post-structural theories, the findings indicate that children's choices are situated within shifting power structures and relationships, involving conflict, nego...

The risk is that there is ‘no risk’: a simple, innovative intervention to increase children’s activity levels

Abstract: School playgrounds offer everyday opportunities for physically active and social play that combats obesity, develops skills, and promotes well‐being. However, teachers’ fear of the legal consequences of injury can elicit over‐zealous risk reduction with the result that playgrounds lack challenge, and the potential benefits of play become limited. In this research, we trialled a simple, cost‐effective strategy to encourage children to be more active and social on a school playground. Over 11 weeks, we made available materials with no fixed purpose (e.g. car tires, boxes) to a playground of children aged five to seven. Accelerometers showed children became significantly more active. Interviews with teachers suggested children also became more social, creative, and resilient. However, despite no incidence of injuries, teachers perceived an increased risk and encountered dilemmas regarding duty of care. We conclude that future interventions should address issues of ‘surplus safety’ at individual, school, syst...

Young children talking and drawing

Abstract: Research related to how young children’s drawings change and develop is well documented and an extensive literature on this area can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Most of this literature, however, focuses on developmental aspects and largely fails to explore what would seem to be an essential ingredient in each drawing’s production—children’s simultaneous utterances which might potentially inform the nature and content of the work and help elucidate their intentions and processes of thinking. In this respect, Kress (1997) suggests that at times it seems as though it is only the end product being interpreted, whilst utterances which could help understanding are ignored; and Jameson (1968) opines that what children want to do is to talk to themselves in pictures, thereby weaving stories around the marks being made as a parallel to active fantasy play. These may or may not be true, but although the end products are something tangible which can be viewed by other than those present, what they cann...

Documenting ‘possibility thinking’: a journey of collaborative enquiry

Abstract: Drawing on existing work in the area of creativity and early years education, this paper maps the process of an exploratory study which sought to identify what characterizes ‘possibility thinking’ as an aspect of creativity in young children’s learning. With the aim of developing a framework for identifying ‘possibility thinking’ in the contexts of three early years settings, the authors explore key tenets of a model for conceptualizing (and rethinking) ‘possibility thinking’ and attempt to reconcile some of the methodological challenges inherent in documenting this aspect of creativity in early years contexts. With the co‐participation of five early years teachers as researchers, three university‐based researchers worked collaboratively, in a funnel‐like process, over the three‐phase development of the project. With the emphasis on mapping the developing conceptualizations of ‘possibility thinking’ and the appropriateness of multimodal methods in naturalistic enquiry, the research team explicates and arg...