by Rosie Walton and Susan Young I’ve often found that as soon as the article is written, reviewed, revised and accepted for publication – in EECERJ, hurray! – that I come across an idea which would have exactly captured what we were trying to say when we wrote the article. So it is that I…
Guest post by Kappa Grealy Background Interagency collaboration is a core part of both the methodology, and the success of community and voluntary organisations in reaching and serving their target audience. The Early Learning Initiative (part of the National College of Ireland (NCI)) is a charity that empowers vulnerable/marginalised children and families, through education programmes…
Guest post by Maija Kulinska and Liga Aboltina What kind of digital support helps five-year-olds become genuine agents of their own learning — and when does “helpful” technology quietly take the thinking away from the child? A randomised study of 100 children in Latvia offers evidence, and some of it surprised us. The three seconds…
Guest post by Cecilia Wong and Natasha Tania Stansilas Image by Google. (2026). Gemini (July 2026 version) Child-centred, participatory practice is now widely endorsed. Yet in real classrooms, participatory practice stays uneven, often squeezed out by institutional pressures and daily behaviour-management demands. Singapore preschools operate under stringent government guidelines and quality-assurance frameworks. Educators often face…
Guest post by Maria Barbara Donnici In both formal and informal educational settings, we often grapple with a central challenge: How can we truly cultivate creativity and recognize children’s inherent competences? This is the exact question that drove our recent pilot action-research project, The Questions Playground. Building on international research around learning through play (LEGO…
Guest post by Jie Gao, Ziyi Wan, Junqing Zhai Children’s social-emotional learning (SEL) has long been a central concern of early childhood education worldwide. Yet, in an increasingly digital age, discussions of SEL often remain confined to classrooms, focusing on structured interventions, emotional literacy programmes, and behaviour-management strategies. This risks overlooking an important dimension of…
Guest post by Deniece Toh For many educators, supporting children with diverse learning needs is not a question of commitment but of capacity. Inclusive practice can easily become another expectation layered onto an already demanding role. Yet inclusion need not be experienced as additional workload. When it is intentionally embedded into curriculum design, responsive teaching…
Guest blog post by Nina Hogrebe and Solvei Wiederhold, TU Dortmund University, Germany Photo by Solvei Wiederhold “We’re being told: ‘Please work in a highly professional way.’ But in the end – to put it very bluntly – you still only get your babysitter pay.” This statement from a German home-based childcare provider captures a…
Guest post by Sharmin Heena Quality pre-primary education (PPE) is now seen as essential for children’s lifelong learning and well-being. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2 highlights the importance of quality early childhood education for building literacy, numeracy, social-emotional skills, and school readiness. While many countries have expanded access to PPE, ensuring consistently high-quality learning environments…
Guest post by Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, Jen Duncan-Bendix and Ruben Fukkink What does it mean to have a good childhood? In Nordic countries there is a shared ideological framework related to a good childhood (GC), en god barndom in Danish, based on the idea that children have fundamental rights to a high quality of life, including…
Guest post by Gisselle Tur Porres What this blog is about? This blog traces how an autobiographical reflective exercise during a Currere Cymru retreat in Powys (January 2025) revealed curriculum as something lived rather than simply designed. It explores how currere (as an autobiographical inquiry and reflective methodology) supports early childhood/practitioners to develop democratic, agentic…
Guest post by Lauren Henderson While participation rights apply equally to infants and young children (United Nations 1989; CRC 2009), compared to school-aged children we know relatively little about how babies, toddlers, and young children experience those rights in practice. It was this gap that motivated my doctoral research exploring how children aged 0-5 experience…
Guest post by Mariana Estrela and Rita Rovisco Can babies participate democratically even before they acquire verbal language? Our research suggests they can. Through a series of arts education ateliers developed in a day-care centre, we explored how babies exercise agency, communicate through their bodies, and co-construct pedagogical experiences, challenging traditional understandings of participation in…
How social scaffolding and blended pedagogy are shaping quality early childhood education for the digital age. Guest post by Yasotha Veerappa Educators providing social scaffolding during an interactive, technology-aided language learning session with a diverse group of preschool children. Image created via Google AI Image Generation. The Evolving Landscape of Early Literacy As digital technologies…
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 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…
