Search

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the vulnerable refugee populations of the world need more support than ever before. As refugees (both children and adults) struggle to make sense of this pandemic with very few to no resources, iACT, an international nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian action to aid, empower, and extend hope to those affected by mass atrocities, is working with refugee leaders, other humanitarian organizations, and volunteers to provide the necessary resources to help refugee children and families stay safe and healthy. While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated suspension of iACT's innovative and cutting-edge early childhood education program Little Ripples (LR), iACT is nevertheless honoring LR's core values of peace, helping, and sharing by working with refugee and displaced community leaders living in Chad, Tanzania, Cameroon, and Greece to mitigate the consequences of program closures. The LR children's program is based on four fundamental program components: (1) Establishing a routine; (2) Building inner peace and outer peace within the learning environment; (3) Storytelling; and (4) Health and well-being. The aim was to create a COVID-19 resource sheet for families outlining home-based activities that relate to these components--thus, ensuring familiarity with the suggestions. This article describes how LR's fundamental programming ideas connect with home learning and well-being activities. Additionally, it describes how the LR early learning program has provided children with a safe space for learning through play and for developing tools that promote well-being, which are especially important for children living in emergency contexts.

This study investigated the implementation of a full-day kindergarten programme in Ontario, Canada. Key to the implementation of this programme has been a new kind of educator team consisting of a certified teacher and a registered early childhood educator and a complementary partnership in which each team member contributes equally. Our research examined team members' perceptions and practices related to their roles and responsibilities. Findings suggest that the care work for which early childhood educators are disproportionally responsible is accorded less value and status than the work of educating children. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the care/education split, the social reproduction of care work and social inequities.

Preservice early childhood educators begin postsecondary programs with established beliefs about children, children's learning, and their roles as future educators. The present study examined 26 first-year students' beliefs about children, classroom practice, and guiding children's behavior. Participants completed the Teacher Beliefs Q-Sort (Rimm-Kaufman, Storm, Sawyer, Pianta, & La Paro, 2006) at three time points over the course of their first year of studies. We compared responses across the three time points to explore whether the students' beliefs changed over time. Findings are presented under three main themes: 1) beliefs about children; 2) beliefs about classroom practice; and 3) beliefs about behavior management. Overall, findings reveal that for all three themes, at each time point, practices that are most characteristic of the participants' beliefs are child-centered, whereas beliefs that are least characteristic of their beliefs are teacher-directed. To support students' application of theory to practice, they should be given opportunities during their studies to voice, explore, and critically examine their beliefs in relation to philosophies and teaching approaches.

The article focuses on the challenges of providing early childhood education for all children globally, emphasizing its fundamental right. Despite consistent advocacy by educators, the struggle persists to adequately fund and provide access to affordable early learning and care programs, particularly for children in precarious contexts and the anniversary edition of Childhood Education reflects on the evolution of early childhood education, featuring a posthumous interview with Katie-Jay Scott.

The present study examined how a six-week family literacy programme contributed to supporting the efforts 12 mothers living in a residential shelter were making to foster their preschool children's literacy development. We compared pre- and post-programme interviews to explore whether the mothers applied the literacy strategies discussed in the programme during their daily interactions with their children. Guided by our theoretical perspective, funds of knowledge, data, were analysed through the lens of a Family Strengths Model and thus focused on how learning opportunities were embedded within the families' daily experiences. Findings are presented under two main themes: (1) the mothers' use of the environment as a tool for literacy teaching and (2) use of programme materials and activity ideas in the home environment. Overall, findings indicate that the mothers applied strategies they learned in the programme to their daily interactions with their children, which indicate that the families participating in this study increased their involvement in their children's literacy learning. Our experiences with this transient population illustrate the importance of educators partnering with families, respecting what they are doing to support their children's literacy learning, and building on these efforts by providing them with resources and ideas that support literacy learning. Consideration should be given to the types of resources provided to families living in non-permanent housing in order to maintain their access to literacy activities.

This article describes a research study that investigated three- and four-year-old Canadian preschool children's perceptions about starting kindergarten. Findings from 33 focus-group discussions suggest that children begin to formulate ideas about starting kindergarten prior to school entry. Children's responses were grouped according to three themes, play versus academic activities and homework; getting bigger but still needing help; and rules. Overall, the responses highlighted their expectations regarding continuity and discontinuity between the two environments. These findings support the position that children should be given the opportunity to contribute to the planning of transition practices. (Contains 1 table.)

Literacy programs often target preschool children who are from minority groups, are from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and are second language learners, as they are deemed to be at risk for academic difficulties. The family literacy program described in this article is unique in that it focuses on families who have an additional risk factor--homelessness. Compared with children living in permanent homes, homeless children suffer more from a lack of educational opportunities and from developmental delays (Raising the Roof, 2004) and deal with many stresses that other children do not experience. Children who are homeless deal with disruptions to their home, school, and family structure; consequently, they tend to perform poorly in school (Community Social Planning Council of Toronto, 2006). Thus, the aim of this project was twofold. The first was to offer, to preschool children living in precarious circumstances, literacy experiences that would result in sustained home exposure to reading and writing. The second was to empower their mothers by affirming their role as their preschool child's first literacy mentor. Offering the mothers an opportunity to engage in a family-based literacy program with their children exposed them to literacy strategies that they could then employ with their children; thus, the families could continue to engage in various quality family-based literacy activities after the program was complete. (Contains 1 table.)

The authors conduct a document analysis of the Early Learning for Every Child Today: A Framework for Ontario Early Childhood Settings (2007) to identify children's rights as reflected in a [...]

This article details a two-year small pilot project investigating possibilities for enacting slow scholarship reading practices with first-year undergraduate early childhood studies students. We follow the emerging push to think with “slow” practices as an antidote to the consumptive, reproductive, fast-paced knowledge politics of the neoliberal university. To begin, we review the literature on slow scholarship in the early childhood studies and education context, before sharing the structure and content of the course that housed this slow-reading experiment. Then, we analyse student responses to an optional online questionnaire that gathered insights into their reflective experience of slow reading. We argue that slow reading disrupts quotidian student subjectivities and opens space for reconfiguring our relations with knowledge, which stretches beyond the post-secondary context into work with young children and families. To conclude, we offer provocations for cultivating slow-reading practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a family literacy program for homeless mothers and preschool children in Canada. The author looks at the influence of the home environment on children's literacy and language skills, the impact of homelessness on children's literacy development, and the book "Learning Begins at Home: A Research-Based Family Literacy Program Curriculum," by A. Doyle, K. Hipfner-Boucher, and J. Pelletier.