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…
