Search

This article draws on case study findings of educator leadership in an online gifted education school, which emerged from a larger study exploring online engagement practices used by specialist gifted education teachers to (re)engage gifted learners. The gifted education teachers and their team leader were interviewed about leadership practices for supporting online engagement of gifted primary and high school students. Semi-structured interview data were transcribed, coded, and thematically analysed. Findings related to teachers voicing the importance of a passionate and committed team leader who understood giftedness and who acted as a facilitator in both the continuous development of teaching team skills and facilitation of online engagement practices for gifted students. Findings indicated five key themes related to transformational leadership practices: (1) understanding requirements of online practices for teaching gifted students; (2) supporting digital and online innovation and creativity for engaging gifted students; (3) leveraging the unique skills of the specialist teaching team for teaching gifted students in the online space; (4) actively facilitating and encouraging (re)engagement of gifted students through online participation; (5) follow-through to meet the needs and concerns of the specialist teaching team, gifted students, and their parents and/or carers. These leadership practices are of importance for actively supporting gifted education teachers and their students in online learning environments in order to achieve positive student engagement and learning outcomes commensurate with student potential.

This article discusses what resilience is and how to think about resilience from intersectional and neuroscience viewpoints. It provides practical resilience-building strategies that educators can apply in the classroom. Understanding resilience from different perspectives will help early childhood educators build resilience capacity in young children so they can be best prepared to handle the traumas and hardships that occur in their lives.

Young children are growing up in a digital age that is constantly evolving. They are experiencing new and emerging technologies, such as mobile devices, virtual reality, smart toys, voice-activated assistants, and social robots. This article focuses on exploring what social robots are and how they could disrupt and transform early childhood education. Social robots and have been defined as "an autonomous or semiautonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans by following the behavioural norms expected by the people with whom the robot is intended to interact." With these characteristics, social robots have the potential to take on different relationship-based roles, such as companions, friends, peers, and tutors. Children may anthropomorphize social robots, assigning human emotions, such as feeling happy or sad, to them. This tendency to view social robots in anthropomorphic ways can influence how children respond to social robots. Young children may even believe social robots have biological functions, such as eating and growing. Because of these perceptions, it is important to understand children's views and expectations of social robots, especially when they are used for educational purposes.

Social robots communicate through human-like behaviours and are being used in preschool settings. However, the ways in which young children interact with social robots and how these impact upon early educational experiences are not fully known. This observational study explored preschoolers' (Mean age = 4.58 years; N = 40) interactions with a social robot called NAO during a drawing activity, in South East Queensland, Australia. Most children (83%) engaged in the drawing activity and 60% talked to the social robot. A smaller proportion (10%) of children did not talk to the social robot or attempt the drawing task. Overall, the social robot successfully engaged and instructed preschool children during the drawing task however, not all children interacted with the social robot. It is recommended that a thoughtful approach to introducing social robots to preschools is needed to meet the individual and personal learning needs of young children.

The use of tablets by young children is increasing and more research is needed to understand how to evaluate and map the emergence of digital writing. To explore this, children (aged 2-5 years; N = 48) were asked to write on an iPad using a drawing app (1×10-minute session/week over 9 weeks). Traditional frameworks for early writing development were used to map the types of marks young children created with their fingers on iPads. The types of digital writing children created ranged across 'scribble marks', 'invented marks', 'invented letters', 'conventional letters', and 'word writing'. In contrast to viewing children as having writing abilities at only a single level of writing development, individual children were observed to produce digital marks representative of different stages of writing development. Providing new ways of mapping the emergence of digital mark making will help early childhood educators better understand digital writing development.

It is well-recognised that disengagement is a growing problem in schools across the globe. Furthermore, statistics show that nearly 60% of all gifted students are not actualising their potential, exposing the loss of potential for both the individual and society. While disengagement and underachievement are complex issues with no one root cause, it is well-established that when students are actively engaged in their learning, they learn more effectively. Talent actualisation is not guaranteed just because a student is gifted. As such there is heightened concern about student (dis)engagement, where there is a failure to adequately support (re)engagement so that gifted potential can develop into talent actualisation, which is evidenced through mastery. This conceptual article provides a new lens through which to explore (re)engagement opportunities for gifted students by conceptualising the interrelationship between three interconnected constructs: (1) four engagement dimensions (behavioural, affective, social, and cognitive); (2) Neihart and Betts' six profiles of the gifted; and (3) appropriate pedagogical approaches aimed at (re)engagement. The authors' focus on proposing new conceptualisations of these three interdependent constructs through a framework titled the "(Re) Engagement Nexus Model." This model is intended as a starting point for future research in personalising (re)engagement opportunities for gifted learners and preventing underachievement and disengagement before it becomes entrenched.

Resilience can be a protective trait to promote mental health when implemented in the early years. This study explored the use of storytelling to foster children's learning of resilience. A pedagogically appropriate storybook was used to facilitate and embed the skills of resilience in children at primary school. Teachers (n = 2) and community-based sports officers (n = 2) read the storybook to children enrolled in Kindergarten (first formal year of schooling) (n = 20), Year 1 (n = 20) and Year 2 (n = 20). The total number in the participant group was 60, aged 4-8 years old. Following the initial reading, teachers continued to deliver the storybook to children over a 4-week intervention period. All participants were interviewed about their perceptions of the storybook, and their responses were coded into key themes mapped by the Grotberg Resilience Framework. Results indicated that storytelling as a tool provided children with positive resilience-based behavioural intervention opportunities.

The concept of resilience and mindfulness is becoming increasingly popular in schools worldwide in response to critical issues such as escalating teacher stress and burnout. This article explores the concept of mindfulness as a supportive practice to build resilience in times of stress in relation to reducing or preventing teacher burnout. It aims to provide practical strategies for psychologists and counsellors in schools to empower teachers with coping strategies when encountering stress. What current research literature reveals about the effectiveness of resilience and mindfulness for supporting the wellbeing of preservice and inservice teachers is discussed. Overall, the research shows that practising mindfulness to build resilience is beneficial because it helps teachers focus on the present and improves attention, self-awareness and emotional regulation, which can reduce stress and enhance wellbeing. However, further empirical studies are needed to provide deeper insights of these benefits for teachers. Recommendations for psychologists and counsellors in supporting teachers on practising mindfulness and resilience are provided.

Use of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) in education has become more widespread in recent years. This article explores what VR, AR, and MR are and the benefits and barriers they may have with regard to early learning. Deepening the understandings of these digital tools will help inform principals, teachers, policymakers, and other stakeholders who are interested in these digital technologies for early educational purposes.

The concept of emergent literacy presents the view that from the time they are born, young children develop their knowledge about language and literacy through their sociocultural interactions with others. Emergent literacy encompasses knowledge about the alphabet, letter sounds, words, and language, and such skills are predictive of future reading, writing, and spelling ability. The significance of cultural context, language background, and social interactions experienced by young children within their homes, preschools, and communities cannot be underestimated. These experiences help shape children's unique learning journeys, especially within this hybrid world of the digital and non-digital. Using quality assessment and providing individualized feedback to children on their emergent literacy growth is vital for learning success. Several advantages can be gained when using digital tools to assess emergent literacy skills such as increased efficiency in test administration, ability to personalize digital assessments to meet young children's specific preferences, and a potentially more enjoyable experience for children because they are user friendly and touch based. Digital assessment tools and methods should be practical and age appropriate, reflect development and abilities, and view young children as lifelong learners. This article offers five approaches that are important to consider when using digital tools to assess emergent literacy skills in young children.

YouTube has become a popular digital media platform used by young children. However, concerns have been raised around inappropriate video content and limited quality. A lack of research and theoretical discussion exists on how best to evaluate the quality of YouTube videos made for children. In this study, we reviewed research and developed a set of design principles that informed the production of a YouTube video rubric used to evaluate the quality of YouTube videos targeted at young children 0 to 8 years old. From this, four key criteria were used to evaluate each video: Age appropriateness, Content quality, Design features and Learning objectives. These criteria demonstrated substantial inter-rater reliability between scorers. This evaluation tool has the potential to be used by educators to assess the quality of videos for early learning and guide YouTube creators in their production of educational videos for young children.

This article uses a sociomaterial perspective to explore how deficit views of young children's language and literacy are sustained and can be challenged. Foregrounding the notion of multiplicity, it considers how diverse sociomaterial relations work to uphold particular kinds of practice and particular arrangements of bodies and things over others. These relations may interfere with and interface with each other in different ways, sometimes sustaining but also potentially disrupting deficit discourses and practices. Our sociomaterial perspective is illustrated with a short vignette from a study of children and touchscreen tablets in an early years setting. An initial analysis is followed by a series of alternate and tentative tracings of other kinds of relations that play through those moments. The article contributes to debates about social inequality by troubling the certainties generated though deficit models of children's literacy, whilst working proactively to envision and produce alternate possibilities that foreground the potentialities generated as people and other materials assemble together.

Due to recent advances in technology, social robots are emerging as educational tools with the potential to enhance early language and literacy skills in young children. Social robots are defined as machines that can socially interact and communicate intelligently with humans. A review of the literature was conducted to explore current knowledge on social robots and early language and literacy learning in typically developing children (0 to 8 years old). The database search terms were "social robots" AND (literacy OR language) AND "education". Twelve databases were searched and 13 studies met the search criteria. Five key themes were identified: A theoretical framework for learning with social robots; Child engagement with social robots; Social robots and language and literacy activities; Social robots and language and literacy learning; and Characteristics of social robots for education. Few studies were found that specifically addressed social robots and early literacy learning. Although social robots were found to support early language learning, further research is needed to investigate social robots and early literacy learning in young children.

This conceptual article examines how ready-made assumptions about literacy both frame and limit understandings of new communicative practices in educational contexts. Proposing a tripartite heuristic that interrogates the appearance of literacy in terms of emergence, semblance and performance, it uses stories from a study of touchscreen tablets in one early years setting to illustrate the social-material arrangements associated with moments when tablets became texts to be looked at, shared or made. The authors argue that a sociomaterial sensibility can not only sensitise researchers to new communicative practices, but also to the ways in which sociomaterial arrangements help to construct habits of noticing often active in accounts of literacy practice and research. It is their contention that exploring the relations between emergence, semblance and performance is particularly valuable at a time when conceptualisations of literacy are being challenged in response to diversifying communicative practices.

The authors present the literacy pedagogical approach LAUNCH and reveal its influence on young learners as engineers of literacy learning through text production. Findings are reported from design-based research in a case study of an Australian early years classroom. Using a qualitative orientation, data were generated from video and audio recordings, cogenerative dialogues, and artifacts. Data pertain to a 5-year-old boy, his teacher, and the first author in the capacity of coteacher and researcher. The authors draw attention to 11 literacy practices that afforded opportunities to give form to and express customary, everyday text production, such as drawing and writing, while introducing new, untried forms of producing text. Central to these literacy practices are pedagogic actions that conceptualize ideas about how teaching and learning text production modalities might occur in the early years of schooling.

A recent report surveyed 3,154 families and showed that 80% of children age 0-7 use YouTube, and 59% use YouTube Kids. While most young children are likely using their parents' accounts, 11% have their own YouTube accounts and 16% have registered with the YouTube Kids app. On average, children spend 1.39 hours each weekday and 1.47 hours each weekend day viewing YouTube videos, which are approximately 4 to 9 minutes in length. The topics most likely to be viewed by children include: play, toys, nursery rhymes, television interests, funny videos, and animal videos. This article presents how children use YouTube, selecting quality videos, the possible benefits, and concerns.

Touch screen tablets are now widely available and due to the increasing use of these technologies in homes and early years centres, it is important to consider parent and teacher views about their use. This paper reports on an interview study which explored the perspectives of four parents of children aged 20-36 months and their two teachers in one early learning centre in the north of England. Key findings were that parents and teachers had a positive perspective on young children's use of tablets and viewed them as educationally valuable. They expressed that they did not wish children to be left behind in learning about new technologies and emphasized having a 'balanced' approach to tablets. However, there were also concerns voiced over the potential overuse and misuse of tablets at home suggesting more guidance for parents is needed to support young children's experiences with tablets.

Young children's development of early literacy and language skills are strong predictors of future reading and writing ability. These skills in turn predict future health, well-being, and success. It is important that young children are provided with positive experiences that foster these skills. In the 21st century, such early learning can occur through interactions with both non-digital and digital forms of language and print. While the benefits of non-digital tools and experiences for literacy and language learning have been well established, the introduction of new digital technologies, such as mobile phones, touch screen tablets, and associated apps, an understanding of the impact of digital experiences on children's development is emerging.

Teachers are increasingly using new technologies such as tablets and apps during shared reading experiences at preschool. However, little is known about how teachers scaffold young children's shared reading with interactive e-books such as tablet-based storybook apps and how it compares to using printed books. In this observational study, a teacher read a storybook app to children ages 2 to 4 years (N = 13) individually or in a small group using an iPad. The same storybook was read to children in printed book form. The teacher's utterances were coded into three types of scaffolding behaviors (cognitive, affective, and technical). Scaffolding was observed for both the storybook app and the printed storybook. The frequency of cognitive scaffolding was similar across both the storybook app and the printed storybook. However, the frequency of affective and technical scaffolding was higher with the storybook app than with the printed storybook. The teacher made more utterances and spent a longer time reading the storybook app than the printed book. The findings suggest that affective and technical scaffolding may be important factors to consider during a shared reading with storybook apps.

Touch-screen tablets are used in the classroom for assessment. Little is known about the psychometric properties of tablet-based assessments. This study examined the validity and reliability of an expressive and receptive assessment app designed to measure literacy skills. Children (N = 45; 3-5 years) completed the app assessments for alphabet and word skills using a tablet. Children (n = 15) were posttested 1 to 2 weeks later to check test score stability. The tablet measures showed good internal consistency (all a > 0.90) and test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] range = 0.87 to 0.98). Agreement between scores for the tablet- and paper-based tests was also high (ICC range = 0.91 to 0.98). This indicates that expressive and receptive tablet tests provide valid and reliable measures.

Touch screen tablets such as iPads are becoming increasingly popular as educational tools to support children's first language learning in pre-schools. Apps can also be used to support early learning of a second language in English-speaking countries. However, little work has been done to evaluate these apps. The present research developed criteria for assessing Mandarin learning apps and applied them to evaluate 28 Mandarin apps for English-speaking pre-schoolers. The criteria included the domains of interactivity, usability, cultural awareness, collaboration, language and literacy content, and learning outcomes. The application of the criteria showed that half the Mandarin learning apps lacked key educational features essential for second language learning. The categories in which the apps scored most highly were interactivity, cultural awareness, usability, and language and literacy content. The apps scored lowest in the categories of collaboration and provision of learning outcomes. The findings suggest that further research is needed to inform best practice, app design, and to provide guidelines that help teachers select quality apps to support second language learning.

Touch screen tablets are being increasingly used in schools for learning and assessment. However, the validity and reliability of assessments delivered via tablets are largely unknown. The present study tested the psychometric properties of a tablet-based app designed to measure early literacy skills. Tablet-based tests were also compared with traditional paper-based tests. Children aged 2-6 years (N = 99) completed receptive tests delivered via a tablet for letter, word, and numeral skills. The same skills were tested with a traditional paper-based test that used an expressive response format. Children (n = 35) were post-tested 8 weeks later to examine the stability of test scores over time. The tablet test scores showed high internal consistency (all a's > 0.94), acceptable test-retest reliability (ICC range = 0.39-0.89), and were correlated with child age, family SES, and home literacy teaching to indicate good predictive validity. The agreement between scores for the tablet and traditional tests was high (ICC range = 0.81-0.94). The tablet tests provides valid and reliable measures of children's early literacy skills. The strong psychometric properties and ease of use suggests that tablet-based tests of literacy skills have the potential to improve assessment practices for research purposes and classroom use.

Young children are surrounded by ubiquitous environmental print (e.g. signs, product labels) on a daily basis in their homes and communities. Parent-child interactions with environmental print has the potential to foster emergent literacy. A randomised controlled pre-posttest study was conducted to examine the effects of a parent-child environmental print programme on emergent literacy skills (letter knowledge, letter and name writing, print concepts, environmental print reading, numeral name knowledge). Parent-child dyads (N = 32, M child age = 3.63 years) participated in an 8-week (30 minutes per week) programme that used multisensory strategies to identify, trace and write letters and words embedded in environmental print. At post-test, the environmental print group showed improvements across all measures, making significant gains in letter knowledge and environmental print reading. These findings highlight potential benefits of coaching parents to use environmental print to support aspects of young children's growth of emergent literacy skills.

Parents play a key role in supporting young children's interactions with tablets (e.g. iPads). Little is known about the types of scaffolding parents provide during tablet activities and how these relate to child age, SES, and home use. Fifty-five parent-child dyads (M child age = 3.49 years) were videoed as they played on an iPad. All parent utterances were coded into three types of scaffolding behaviours (cognitive, affective, technical scaffolding; CATs). Home tablet use and family demographics were reported via a parent questionnaire. Parents used CATs strategies to support their children's learning. Parents most frequently used cognitive scaffolding and least frequently technical scaffolding. SES was not related to the number of tablets at home. The negative association found between technical scaffolding and child age suggests that younger children require more scaffolding by parents. Coaching parents in using scaffolding strategies during joint-tablet activities has the potential to support early learning.

Mothers play a key role in scaffolding children's writing using traditional tools, such as paper and pencil. However, little is known about how mothers scaffold young children's writing using touch-screen tablets (e.g., iPads) and the associations between maternal scaffolding and emergent literacy. Mother-child dyads (N = 47; M child age = 3.43 years) were video recorded as they wrote words using an iPad and a paper and pencil. Maternal print and grapho-phonemic mediation behaviors were measured. Children were assessed on letter name and letter-sound knowledge, letter writing and name writing, and print concepts. No significant differences were found in the level of maternal mediation provided in the tablet or paper-pencil condition. Maternal print mediation was positively associated with letter name and letter-sound knowledge and emergent writing in the tablet and paper-pencil conditions. Grapho-phonemic mediation was significantly related to children's understanding of letter-sound correspondence and print concepts in the paper-pencil condition, but not the tablet condition. Supporting parents in using grapho-phonemic mediation during tablet use to foster early literacy learning should be considered in future research.

The transcription factor FOXL2 is required in ovarian somatic cells for female fertility. Differential timing of Foxl2 deletion, in embryonic versus adult mouse ovary, leads to distinctive outcomes, suggesting different roles across development. Here, we comprehensively investigated FOXL2's role through a multi-omics approach to characterize gene expression dynamics and chromatin accessibility changes, coupled with genome-wide identification of FOXL2 targets and on-chromatin interacting partners in somatic cells across ovarian development. We found that FOXL2 regulates more targets postnatally, through interaction with factors regulating primordial follicle formation and steroidogenesis. Deletion of one interactor, ubiquitin-specific protease 7 (Usp7), results in impairment of somatic cell differentiation, germ cell nest breakdown, and ovarian development, leading to sterility. Our datasets constitute a comprehensive resource for exploration of the molecular mechanisms of ovarian development and causes of female infertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In today's society, a growing body of literature attests to the importance of young children's early digital literacy skills in their home environments and how acquisition of these digital literacy skills relates to their future learning and digital literacy. Objectives: Research on young children's digital literacy practices at home was reviewed to explore the positive and negative influences on early learning. This is important due to the children's rapid uptake of online digital technologies over the past decade. Methods: Peer‐reviewed research articles on home digital literacy practices of children (aged 0–8 years old) published between 2010 and 2021 from four education databases were carefully selected based upon pre‐determined criteria and examined using content analysis. Results and Conclusion: A high proportion of studies (29 of the 31; 93.5%) demonstrated significant benefits of young children gaining a range of skills, including digital operational, early literacy and language, socio‐emotional, and STEM, through the use of digital technologies at home. Five of the 31 (16.12%) studies reported negative effects of digital technologies in the home context, including distraction, aggressive behaviour, and false self‐confidence. Tablets and smartphone use gained greater momentum in the home context, especially between 2015 and 2021, and there was a positive shift in parental mediation, family involvement, and the children's home digital literacy practices. Implications: By leveraging children's acquisition of digital literacy skills in the home and taking into account the sociocultural context, we can enhance young children's preparation for the future and provide opportunities for skill development across various learning domains. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: The literature shows use of tablets in the home by children have gained momentum.Parents have different attitudes towards using digital technologies in the home context.Parents have used different mediation strategies to control, supervise and support their children's home digital literacy practices. What this paper adds: Within the past decade, parents have extended their mediation strategies to support their children's home digital literacy practices.Young children move from early digital literacy to proficient digital literacy within the home.Home digital literacy practices can foster important skills in young children such as language and literacy, operational, socio‐emotional, and STEM.Artificial intelligence devices such as smart robots are extending children's home digital literacy practices. Implications for practice and/or policy: Understanding the sociocultural differences of young children can help parents, teachers, and policymakers to facilitate digital literacy skill acquisition.Fostering young children's basic language literacy, operational, socio‐emotional, and STEM skills through technology use in the home before formal education is essential.Extending young children's home digital literacy practices to other contexts such as the classroom is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]