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This study investigated the practice of two early-childhood educators and their interactions with 24 children (mean age 5.2 years) in an inner-suburban Australian preschool setting. The study specifically examined the nature of how educators 'intentionally teach' concepts to young children in a child-centred programme. Six hours of educator-child digital video observations and three hours of educator interviews were gathered and analysed using Kravtsova's (2009) concept of 'subject positioning'. The findings suggest that it was challenging to teach intentionally in a child-centred programme based on children's interests. This research is the first phase of a larger study. It is argued that the tensions between educators' beliefs about child learning and their role in relation to fostering children's conceptual development in child-centred programmes could make it difficult for educators to implement intentional teaching as presented in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009).

Problem Based Learning (PBL) has been used with increased frequency in Higher Education settings since first introduced by Barrows and Tamblyn during the 1980's. Since this time PBL has been used in medical, engineering and education faculties to support pre-service students in the acquisition of skills and content knowledge relevant to their disciplines. This paper explores the perceptions early childhood and primary pre-service teachers held regarding their participation in a unit of study structured around the use of a PBL scenario. The paper examines the frustrations pre-service teachers experienced within the PBL scenario as well as the perceived benefits regarding their participation in the unit of study.

Schoolteacher and early childhood educator wellbeing is associated with their ability to provide high-quality educational experiences to students and children in their care. Given the importance of this topic, this systematic review sought to (1) identify available evidence-based wellbeing initiatives for educators and schoolteachers, (2) appraise the quality of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of these initiatives, and (3) summarise the characteristics of these initiatives. In total, 23 studies on 19 distinct initiatives were identified. Although most initiatives improved schoolteacher wellbeing, the quality of available evidence is modest, especially for early childhood educators. Existing teacher and educator wellbeing initiatives predominantly target individual and not systematic determinants of educator wellbeing, even though wellbeing of these groups is determined by a combination of personal and education setting influences. More research is needed to improve the evidence on teacher and early childhood educator wellbeing initiatives, as well as development of initiatives that aim to change workplace demands and education setting culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The telling of fairytales has been a longstanding practice within the field of early childhood education in many communities across the Asia Pacific region. But what do we know about how educators use fairytales for the development of emotions for preschool aged children? In drawing upon culturalhistorical theory (Vygotsky, 1971, 1987, 1999), this paper presents the findings of a study into how fairytales were introduced to preschool aged children (n=30; from 3.3 to 5.3 years with mean age 4.2 years) and theorises the value of fairytales for the development of children's emotions in the context of the pedagogical conditions that are created through the use of fairytales. A pedagogical framework is introduced which captures the unique characteristics of fairy tales in the context of the pedagogical features that were used by the educators in the study presented. The key concept of affective imagination or emotional imagination is used to discuss the fairytale of "Jack and the Beanstalk" from the data set of 74 hours of digital video observations gathered over 16 preschool sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]