Guest post by Debi Keyte-Hartland Over the past two decades, I have had the privilege of working alongside educators in nurseries, schools, and international settings as a pedagogical coach-mentor. Across these diverse contexts, I have noticed a recurring pattern. Meaningful pedagogical change rarely begins with a new framework, policy document, or instruction to do something…
Guest post by Dr Amelia Ruscoe What does engagement look like in early childhood education, and how can we recognise it more meaningfully? This blog explores an international research collaboration into children’s engagement, visual learning environments, the power of dialogic drawing, and the emerging concept of viscourse—highlighting how children’s own perspectives can help educators design…
Guest post by Wendy Briggs and Sharon Phillips Figure 1. My granddaughter building a den in the forest, immersed in the experiences, relationships and sense of place that shape her cynefin. Through exploring, creating and problem-solving in a meaningful local environment, she demonstrates how place-based pedagogy supports children’s agency, participation and belonging. Photo credit: Wendy…
Guest post by Christiane Schulte Physical activity is recognised worldwide as essential for young children’s health, learning and development. Yet what factors shape its everyday implementation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings remains an important question. This question became the starting point for my doctoral research. While physical activity is widely recognised as…
Guest post by Janey Maxwell For early childhood practitioners (ECPs), the voice is the main mode of communication between themselves and the children in their care. So, what help is provided during and after initial training, to ensure ECPs have a voice that enables them to engage with young children in a safe, healthy and…
Guest pot by Margareth Eilifsen Picture Credit: Bergsjø, et al., 2025 A digital society Children grow up in a world where digital technologies are not separate from everyday life, but woven into play, communication, family practices, learning environments and social participation. In early childhood education, this raises an important professional question: how can kindergarten teachers…
Guest post by Alessandra Pimentel and Mônica Appezzato Pinazza The PALUDICON Research Group (Program of Playful Activities in Different Contexts), originally created as a university extension program, aims to promote professional development through playfulness, grounded in Historical-Cultural Theory (HCT) and the Reggio Emilia Approach. Between 2022 and 2025, the program was carried out by a…
Guest post by Shuolin He Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash Digital technology is now part of many young children’s everyday lives, both at home and in educational settings. In early childhood education, however, its use remains a complex and sometimes contested issue. While digital tools may support communication, documentation, literacy, creativity and home-school links,…
Guest post by Jasmiina Leskinen & Sini Kontkanen Figure 1. Children gathering natural materials from the forest to build huts for their Bee-Bots. What happens when a small yellow robot meets pinecones, twigs, and childrens’ imagination? In our project BeeConnected, we set out to discover precisely this — how playful making with Bee-Bot robots and…
Guest post by Vanessa Neves The EnlaCEI research group is all about understanding how babies and toddlers develop culturally when they’re in collective care and education settings. Between 2017 and 2019, we followed a group of infants (aged seven to ten months) as they began their journey at a Brazilian Early Childhood Education Centre, EMEI…
What a study in Mongolian kindergartens reveals about technology, participation, and democratic learning Guest post by Tserennadmid Shagdarsuren and Tala Fig. 1. A child explores light and shadow with toy animals.* When we talk about children’s agency, we often imagine a child making an independent choice—selecting an activity, taking the lead. But what happens when…
By Anne Marie Villumsen and Katrine Nøhr Young children are increasingly recognised as important contributors to research about their own lives. Yet this recognition raises a fundamental question: how can researchers create opportunities for children to share their perspectives in ways that are meaningful for them? Within the Danish research project TRoLD (Flourishing Through Play),…
Guest post by Gila Hammer Furnes Photo by Gabriel Gonzalez on Unsplash For many years, discussions about digital technologies in early childhood education focused primarily on access, use, and digital competence, while questions of ethics and judgement often remained in the background. Today, children are increasingly protected from digital technologies through restriction and control, while simultaneously expected to…
Guest post by Prof. Dr. Armin Schneider According to the German Law (not dissimilar to laws in other countries) parents are considered the main guardians of their own children. They are responsible for caring, educating and raising their children, instilling their own ideas, beliefs, rules, and attitudes. Children’s and parents’ rights and the state’s supervisory…
Guest post by Lesley Wood and Mariëtte Koen Across the globe, early childhood education (ECE) is widely recognised as the foundation for lifelong learning, well-being, and sustainable development. Yet in many resource-scarce contexts, achieving high-quality and sustainable provision remains a pressing challenge. Our upcoming EECERA presentation offers a different perspective that moves beyond deficit views…
Guest post by Debra Williams Traditionally, reflection in Early Childhood Education has been positioned as an individual professional competency or a compliance requirement linked to quality assurance systems. However, this framing is increasingly insufficient in the context of digital documentation platforms and data-driven pedagogical environments. This research explores how reflection is being reshaped by digital…
By Tracy McElheron Maynooth University, Ireland EECERA Narrative – How we grow together I think I need to provide some personal context to really convey the significance of attending EECERA 2025 for me this summer. Without turning this into an online CV, it’s important to state that I have been in practice, working directly…
By Jane Spiteri When we talk about climate anxiety or eco-emotions, we usually picture teenagers marching with placards or adults lying wide awake at night worrying about the future. Rarely do we imagine a four-year-old quietly lining up toy animals because “the forest is on fire”, or a five-year-old asking whether the sea will still…
By Valerie Sollars- University of Malta, Malta* 1998: My initial encounter with EECERA. I found myself attending the EECERA conference in Santiago de Compostela. Although relatively close to Malta, it took three flights and twelve hours to reach Santiago de Compostela – from noon to midnight for the outbound journey and 6 a.m. to 6…
By Gerry Mulhearn- Charles Sturt University, Australia Membership of EECERA for over twenty years has been a major influence both professionally and personally for me. Many aspects of EECERA have contributed – the journal, SIGs, and identifying mutual interests and contexts, but most of all attending many annual conferences. Living in Australia and working in…
