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Background: Although widely accessible digital technology (DT) provided multiple opportunities for young children's play, learning, and development, it also raised parents and professionals' concerns regarding its impact on children's physical activity. This study aimed to identify practices involving DT that were valued by parents in helping their young child to be physically active. Methods: Participants were parents of ambulatory young children (less than 5 y of age) engaged with a playgroup. The study involved representatives from 3 service organizations, who compiled a list of digital resources related to using DT to promote children's physical activity that were suitable to be shared and trialed by parents and young children. During a pretrial workshop, researchers, participants, and organization representatives collaboratively developed the intervention, which involved the delivery of selected resources by weekly email, over a 12-week period. Participants provided weekly feedback about their experiences and participated in a postintervention semistructured qualitative interview. Results: Thirteen families, with children aged between 15 and 36 months, completed the trial. Participants reported several valued practices to promote their children's physical activity, including those where the child was active while engaging with DT, where child engagement with DT acted as a prompt for later physical activity, where DT assisted parents in planning physical activity, where DT assisted parents in integrating movement with learning and play, and where DT was used to reinforce the child's enthusiasm for physical activity. Conclusions: Parents reported several valued practices where children were physically active, rather than sedentary, while using digital technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This paper identifies the shared features of provision in exemplar school playgroups defined using the social capital concepts of bonding and bridging relationships. Relationships promote capabilities amongst people, with play a known capability for advancing children's developmental and educational outcomes. By attending to the bonding and bridging relationships in each school playgroup, exemplar groups were identified and studied to reveal their shared features of provision. Six main features of provision were identified, including materials, facilitator, space, location, scheduling and health and safety. Awareness of these features may benefit school leaders and/or governance seeking to implement a school playgroup within their own community. Findings from this project suggest high-performing school playgroups can operate in areas of lower and higher socioeconomic status and/or parental education, and in regional and rural areas. more...

This paper reports on the findings from a study investigating the provision of outdoor loose parts materials for upper primary school aged children. Conducted in Queensland, Australia, the study focused on loose parts materials as cultural tools, following the sociocultural argument that tools mediate activity and outcomes. The findings suggest that loose parts materials are used by children in the formation of sociodramatic play, including episodes of trading, bartering and advertising that support their shared understandings. Shared understandings precede collaborative competencies, including engagements with others, working towards and achieving common goals. With collaboration recognised as an important learning disposition for children in twenty-first-century societies, the findings suggest loose parts materials may be pedagogically appropriate for supporting these competencies in primary school settings. more...

A challenge for early childhood (EC) educators internationally is how to increase the integration of popular culture, media and digital technologies in EC settings to promote children's learning with digital media. But an ongoing puzzle is why the practices of some educators change, while others remain the same. Much research about teaching practice positions the locus of change in teacher beliefs, attitudes, values and knowledge. Re-mediation by cultural tools (i.e., concepts and artefacts) offers an alternative explanation, but this still does not consistently result in hoped-for shifts in practice. To gain further clarity, we investigated the idea of multimodal play as a 'threshold concept' for EC curriculum. Multimodal play integrates popular culture, media and digital technologies in ways that can promote children's learning. Considering multimodal play as a threshold concept may assist educators to adopt new practices in response to children's significant interest in and rapidly changing life worlds of popular culture, media and digital technologies. more...

The Augusta University Online Teaching Module is a key assessment administered once during one specified course in each educator preparation program. Augusta University teacher candidates are required to show proficiency in ISTE standards and CAEP [Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation] standard 1.5. The online teaching model measures candidates' ability to apply technology standards in order to design, implement, and assess learning experiences to engage students and improve learning. In order to pass the Online Teaching Module, candidates must score 3 out of 4 possible points on at least five of the six indicators. If a candidate does not pass this assessment, goals will be created along with strategies to require the candidate to improve on area(s) of weakness in technology use. After the strategies have been implemented, the candidate will be able to redo this key assessment. Candidates will not be able to progress to student teaching without passing this assessment. This paper outlines this key assessment's administration, purpose, instructions, and rubric. We hope it will be useful to others as they prepare for CAEP visits. more...

Young children aged birth to 5 years are known users of the internet, both unsupervised and in collaboration with adults. Adults also use the internet to share details of children's lives with others, via sharenting and educational apps. During COVID-19 internet use by children and families rose significantly during periods of enforced stay-home. Internet use by children, and by adults on behalf exposes children to conduct, contact and content risks online. These risks mean that cyber-safety in the early years is increasingly necessary, especially concerning increased internet usage during COVID-19. While cyber-safety is well developed for primary and secondary-school aged children this is not the case for young children, their families and educators. This paper proposes a research agenda for cyber-safety in the early years, using critical constructivism and internet studies to define the internet as a non-unitary technology. Three main objects of study concerning cyber-safety in the early years, including the reference to COVID-19 are identified for targeted research, including: technologies, context and policy. more...

Digital play is a pedagogical construct used in early childhood to explain young children's engagement with technologies. Digital play draws upon theories of play to explain young children's learning with technologies. This paper proposes the further development of digital play by examining how the digital aspect of digital play may also be interpreted. This is achieved using the notion of technical code from critical constructivism to show how historically-valued knowledge shapes technology use in practice. Technical code illustrates how alternative knowledge sources can be used to remediate technological understandings in practice, known in sociocultural terms as new knowledge formations. more...

Community playgroups, which are one type of playgroup and early childhood service, operate on a weekly basis under the leadership of volunteer caregivers (including parents, kinship members, family-day carers and other adults in children's lives). Caregivers and children voluntarily attend and participate in community playgroups. Although community playgroups operate throughout Australia and similar models exist internationally, little is known about the benefits and/or otherwise of community playgroup participation for children, families and communities. A review of the research into community playgroup participation, specifically research investigating children and families' participation in community playgroups published between 2000 and 2018, is reported in this paper. The findings from the five peer-reviewed papers identified through the search provide directions for further research needed to build the evidence base for community playgroup participation. more...

What is active learning and what does it look like in the classroom? If students are participating in active learning, they are playing a more engaged role in the learning process and are not overly reliant on the teacher (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2003; Petress, 2008). The purpose of this article is to propose a framework to describe and plan for different types of active learning instruction in middle grades classrooms. All of the teachers highlighted in this article were able to meet the standards that they are responsible for teaching. In some cases these were Common Core Standards, and in some cases these were state standards. more...

A PAL (Peer-Assisted Learning) project supported research that focused on e-learning and Web 2.0 technologies as part of a pedagogical approach in the context of a tertiary institution. This project responded to a call for a rejuvenation of conventional approaches to pedagogy while teaching an early childhood unit in a large Australian university. In the project a variety of methods, qualitative (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative (on-line survey), were used in order to explore the possibilities involved in learning together in innovative ways. The PAL project is connected here to a "rhizome" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). A rhizome is a form of network; it is multiple; and, it is capable of producing surprises. This is reflected in the findings that support the use of technology to create an effective collaborative space and also show that there are advantages to destabilising conventional student/lecturer positions. Finally, this narrative account contributes to a growing literature that connects Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) philosophical ideas to education. more...

Learning how to manage a classroom effectively is a difficult task for preservice teachers. This is compounded by the lack of attention that classroom management receives in many teacher preparation programs and in the field of education in general. This article offers a rationale for the lack of attention to classroom management in teacher education, a lens through which we can discuss classroom management, and five activities and assessments we can use in teacher education courses to prepare teacher candidates in the area of classroom management. This goal is to focus the attention of preservice teachers on classroom management as a means to enhance student learning as opposed to improving student behavior. more...

This paper discusses characteristics of converged play for early childhood education. The characteristics were derived from a four-year study of teachers' interpretation and use of 'web-mapping' as an explicit conceptual tool, designed to mediate teaching practices and learning outcomes according to a definition of pedagogy as the relationship between teaching and learning. Three characteristics of converged play were identified via detailed analysis of ten core converged play 'episodes' drawn from teacher exemplar cases. The characteristics were 'multi-modal', 'global-local', and 'traditional-digital'. The characteristics of converged play presented can help teachers understand teaching and learning in the digital age, providing a starting point for an early childhood pedagogy in which children and teachers can engage in well-established opportunities for play-based learning alongside multi-modal, global-local, and traditional-digital activities in early childhood education and care settings. more...

This paper reports on a systematic review of the literature conducted to inform Early Childhood Australia (ECA) in the development of a national Statement on Young Children and Digital Technologies. The review examines empirical studies published between 2012 and 2017 identified through systematic screening to advise adults on appropriate digital technology use 'by and with' young children aged birth to eight years. Four themes are canvassed in this review: (1) healthy practices; (2) relationships; (3) pedagogy and (4) digital play. Findings from the themes suggest advice for adults working in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector about appropriate digital technology use 'by and with' young children. more...

Socio-dramatic play is an everyday occurrence in early childhood education as children create narratives together in shared imagined worlds. The teacher's role in this type of play is less clear and this paper draws on a study using Lindqvist's "playworlds" approach to gain insight into how teachers participate in children's play. In applying Kravtsov and Kravtsova's concept of children's "double subjectivity" in dramatic play, the paper argues that teachers can also maintain dual affect roles—those of teacher outside the play, and co-player within the play—to co-create with children in their dramatic play narratives. In this study, four teachers in Melbourne, Australia participated in weekly playworlds with the researcher in their kindergarten rooms, resulting in identification of a third affect role for teachers—that of "public performer." This third affect was found to hinder teachers' capacity to maintain simultaneous subject positions of themselves as teacher and a co-player, thereby minimizing the improvised narrative trajectory and potential of the dramatic play. We argue this third affect should be acknowledged to support teacher participation in children's play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Even the largest research library can no longer build comprehensive collections from all countries and in all languages. The pressure to justify acquisitions can be great on non-English language materials, which are often low-use in North American universities. Determining the research need for these materials, and assessing how well it is being met, is challenging. This paper analyzes impact by examining the language of cited references in doctoral dissertations at Berkeley, 2008-2015. more...