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ECEC Values as a Tool for Strengthening the Image of the Child and Families
Copyright (c) 2026 Denisha Jones; Helge Wasmuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Early childhood is a formative period when the emotional, social, and cognitive foundations for lifelong wellbeing are established. This paper introduces the Compassionate Framework (CF), which comprises the EPIK Reflective Tool (EPIK RT) for assessing professional practice and the EPIK Observation Tool (EPIK OT) for enhancing approaches for children. Collectively, the tools are designed to heighten awareness and practice of compassion as the bedrock of strong pedagogy. Drawing on evidence from developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social and emotional learning, the CF leans on four interconnected components: Emotional Awareness, Perspective Taking, Inclusive Practice, and Kindness (EPIK). Applied collectively, these components enhance children’s personal, social, and emotional development while positioning compassion as a deliberately shaped pedagogical orientation that supports practitioners in facilitating equitable early childhood experiences for every child aligned with child development philosophies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Hazel Marian, Kyle Moore, James Hughes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Editorial: When Preparing for an Uncertain Future, Let Your ECEC Values Guide You
In 1963, African American author and activist James Baldwin warned about the dangerous times we were living through, in reference to the ongoing racial injustice in the United States (U.S.). His words are just as poignant today as we navigate concurrent global challenges, some of which include climate change, racial injustice, and housing unaffordability. While education is incapable of solving all of these complex issues that require a systematic approach through governmental intervention and policies to sustain solutions, values inherent in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) can guide us as we face global challenges collectively, moving towards a more just and humane world for all. This paper is based on a narrative inquiry study that took place in the U.S. with six Black families enrolled in ECEC programs throughout the Bronx and Brooklyn, two boroughs in New York City, in 2024. Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were conducted to learn about the experiences young Black children and families were having in a variety of ECEC programs. Data was examined through the lenses of Critical Childhood Studies, Intersectionality, and Anti-Blackness, with the counter-storytelling tenet of Critical Race Theory serving as the overarching umbrella. Findings demonstrated that Black children and families resisted anti-Blackness and relentlessly pursued care, strong collaborations with educators, and basic needs that allowed for thriving childhoods. In this paper, I reexamine three findings through the lenses of ECEC values to demonstrate how they can provide guidance to navigate global challenges that will exacerbate in the future.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tara Kirton http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Trust, Play, and Place: How Early Childhood Education Values Shaped Collaborative Research in the U.S. Southwest
Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is not widely theorized in infant and toddler education, and home-based educators are not typically respected as early childhood theorists and curriculum experts. In this paper, we share findings from a community-based participatory action research project to theorize and curricularize CSP in infant/toddler education. Our team is made up of home-based educators, university faculty and students, and members of community organizations. We share what we learned about applying early childhood education values and approaches to collaborative research. Through the perspectives of diverse members of our team, we demonstrate that prioritizing trusting relationships, inviting a diversity of perspectives, learning through play, honoring routines and rituals, and planning interactions with the natural environment are early education values that should be applied to education research and wider problems of our times.
Copyright (c) 2026 Rhianna Thomas, Adriana Cardenas, Valeria Holloway, Olga Grays, Alejandra Gonzalez, Abigail Wisniewski, Alisha Walls, Leanna Lucero, Diana O'Brien, Candace Cichuniec http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Examining the Teaching Practicum in Zambia:
The teaching practicum is a critical component of teacher education programs, as it allows pre-service teachers to put into practice the knowledge acquired during their training. This study examined the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching practicum for pre-service primary grades teachers in Zambia. Data was collected through interviews and focus group discussions in three colleges of education and two universities and analyzed thematically. Strengths were identified related to institutional commitment and shared purpose. Gaps included limited preparatory micro-teaching opportunities and weak relationships across teaching practicum stakeholders. We conclude with suggested steps to improve teacher preparation in Zambia.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ana Marty, Stephanie Zuilkowski http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cultural Identity Agency: An Allyship for Recentering Culture & Identity with Children
This article argues for a renewed educational commitment to allyship with children by centering culture, identity, and agency as fundamental rights. Drawing on theoretical, empirical, and autoethnographic evidence brings into conversation a critical examination of how contemporary schooling shaped by the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and neoliberal ideology, diminishes children’s cultural identities, agency, and full personhood. To counter these reductive structures, the article introduces cultural identity agency, defined as the ability to maintain and sustain one’s cultural identity by resisting assimilation and colonizing practices. Rooted in the preservation of cultural identity, home language, and community knowledge, cultural identity agency extends beyond skill‑based or meritocratic notions of agency by centering culture, identity, and justice‑oriented learning design as essential components for children’s participation and empowerment. The article concludes by calling on educators to reimagine the image of the child as capable sense makers and to enact an allyship that sustains children’s cultural identities to rehumanize early learning environments.
Copyright (c) 2026 Robert Macias http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Safeguarding ECE values in elementary school classrooms in the United States
Current and consistent trends in the US affecting the field of early childhood education (ECE) threaten the preservation of key ECE values in public elementary schools (Allee-Herndon & Roberts, 2021). Values that have served as the foundation of ECE, such as embracing play and relationships as the context for learning and centering diversity, are continuously pushed aside with the ongoing “schoolification” of early childhood around the world (Bradbury, 2020). In our work as early childhood teacher educators, our aim is to develop teachers who are prepared with the skills, knowledge, and values that will enable them to protect what they know to be good teaching in the face of ever-increasing pressure for standardization and other threats related to the current political climate. To understand how graduates of our program fare in their ability to live out ECE values, we conducted five rounds of in-depth photovoice-centered focus group discussions. Qualitative critical analysis revealed significant ways in which ECE values informed teaching. As our participants worked to align the knowledge and practices learned in ECE teacher preparation with pressures faced in public school contexts, they were bolstered by their ability to define themselves as early childhood educators existing in elementary school spaces. This deep connection to ECE values appeared to provide a sense of confidence in their teaching moves and served as an impetus to engage acts of resistance and enact socially just commitments.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emmanuelle Fincham, Carolyn Brennan, Margarita Ruiz Guerrero , Meilan Jin http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In our meta-ethnographic synthesis of two separate studies, we analyze the lived realities of early childhood educators and children in Oklahoma, U.S. navigating the persistent and intensifying pressures of efficiency and normative accountability metrics. Both studies are centrally concerned with advancing play-based curricular contexts in ECE, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Oklahoma, U.S. The first study engaged teacher action research with six pre-kindergarten-third grade Oklahoma teachers to understand how the increased pressures of standardized curricula and testing impacted teachers’ capacity to enact play-based learning. The second undertook a two-year critical participatory ethnography with six ECE children in a pandemic homeschool cooperative. The study investigated practices of anti-authoritarian community and play-based inquiry as a process of authorizing children’s perspectives in their learning alongside the pressures of readying the children to return to public elementary school. Through an interpretive and iterative process, we suggest that play can be conceptualized as children’s and teachers’ educative enactment of public space-times and reclamation of agency and autonomy. We read and understand play as a form of resistance to curricular tendencies toward order, control, and top-down authority.
Copyright (c) 2026 Robin Holly, Erin Dyke http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Children in action: Envisioning sustainable futures through place-based learning and rural literacies
This qualitative action-based study involves research with a group of children 7-8 years of age in a school located in an underserved rural area in North Idaho, U.S.. Incorporating health and agricultural content areas, children navigated the relationship between food choices and food security, and they collaboratively proposed strategies to help reduce food waste. Through place-conscious learning and connecting with local food sources, children also understood how rural literacies serve as a powerful tool to increase their capacity for food and nutrition, as well as engage in cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration to develop balanced dietary and sustainability practices in an uncertain future. These children’s efforts to advocate for change within their communities and beyond emphasize how local participation can lead to a broader global influence. The ultimate purpose of this study is not only to contribute to the research on rural literacies and nutritional awareness but also to inform decision making and actions for children, educators, and communities.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jue Wang http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
“Why Can’t You Just Honor The Professional I Am?”:
This paper contends that qualitative research of early educators’ lived experiences is one conceptual and methodological step toward bridging early childhood education and care (ECEC) values, social and political-economic systems of power, and the daily practice of living alongside young children. Early educators are the least compensated and most marginalized teacher workforce in the U.S., tasked with sustaining the ECEC system without being afforded a certain future within it. Theorizing policy as processual and situated in the neoliberal political-economy of ECEC, this paper draws from life history interviews of six California teachers working in differently-funded preschool programs. Across policy contexts, teachers emphasized a sense of fidelity to developmental and social-constructivist principles, making them resistant to standardization and putting them at critical odds with teacher-directed, rote, or deficit-based approaches to education, which they framed as a norm of traditional schooling. This common purpose undergirded teachers’ meaning-making and resistance to political and organizational encroachments on their working conditions and professional autonomy. These educators' agentic, values-based, and tenacious experiences across policy contexts have important implications for ECEC research regarding teachers' lives within the field and the futures they seek to create and protect for the children in their care.
Copyright (c) 2026 Micah Card http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
An Exploration into the Spiritual Dimension of Froebelian Philosophy and Pedagogy
There is little doubt that the ideas of Friedrich Froebel have transformed the way society views early childhood education (Bruce, 2019; Brehony, 2024). Although Froebel’s perspective is not the only foundation of modern early childhood education, Montessori, for example, pursued a distinct pedagogical path, and traditions such as Reggio Emilia and Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) emerge from broader constellations of influence (Lilley, 1967; Hinitz & Lascarides, 2000; National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2025), his “children’s garden” metaphor remains particularly influential, positioning education as the careful cultivation of conditions in which children can flourish (Herrington, 1998; Tovey, 2018). Yet, beyond this well-recognised aspect of his work, there is a dimension that underpins and coheres his entire pedagogical vision, often less visible in current readings, namely the spiritual orientation through which Froebel understood education as relationally binding human beings, nature, and the divine (White, 1907; Lee & Evans, 1996). Aslanian (2023) describes spirituality as Froebel’s “invisible” foundation, which knits together the more readily discussed elements of his approach (Wasmuth, 2024) and reflects Froebel’s conviction that spirituality is intrinsically implicated in human life and meaning making (Eliade, 1959; Giesenberg, 2000). This characteristic remains one of the least explored within Froebelian philosophy (Lee, 1993; Lee & Evans, 1996; Wasmuth, 2020; Best, 2016; Aslanian, 2023). This article explores the spiritual dimension of Friedrich Froebel’s educational philosophy. Employing a narrative literature review, it examines Froebel’s original writings alongside interpretations of key scholars, addressing the nature and role of spirituality in his thinking. Extensive research reveals that Froebel’s spiritual philosophy, while non-dogmatic, was firmly grounded in his Christian faith and was central to his pedagogical approach. Nearly all aspects of Froebel’s vision, including his concept of Unity, his elevation of play, his reverence for nature, and his high view of humanity, hold a spiritual characteristic, ultimately pointing to a relationship with the Divine.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lynn McNair, Costica Darie http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Moral Politics of Authoritarian Practice in a Post-Truth era
This study examines the ideological reshaping of early childhood education standards, focusing on how the concept of family is constructed and governed within state social studies curricula. Critical discourse analysis within a case study methodology reveals how official knowledge is strategically reordered to serve emerging authoritarian nationalist agendas fused with neoliberal managerial logics. This process narrows discursive possibilities, enforcing a moral and social order that restricts pluralism and critical inquiry. The study highlights education’s role as a contested site where competing visions of identity, knowledge, and democracy are materially enacted and politically contested.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sara Michael Luna http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Editor’s Introduction: Continuing a conversation about ECE amid authoritarian chaos
Copyright (c) 2025 Helge Wasmuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
What Happened to the Creative in the Creative Curriculum?
This empirically-grounded commentary questions the basis for New York City Public Schools’ (NYCPS) adoption of the Teaching Strategies products—the Creative Curriculum (CC) and Teaching Strategies GOLD—as the mandated curriculum and assessment systems for early childhood education (ECE) programs administered by the New York City Public Schools. In an analysis shaped by our hybrid positionalities as early childhood educators, parents, policy makers, and researchers, we argue that this decision is a local case of neoliberalism’s simultaneous narrowing of educational quality and a transfer of public funding into private hands under the guise of the free market. Our commentary, which is augmented by examples from our research and practice, begins with an overview of New York City’s (NYC) ECE system, contextualized within national systems issues in ECE. This provides important framing for discussing the evolution of NYC’s ECE curricula and assessment as the city expanded its public preschool programs. We end by considering how U.S. ECE was ensnared by the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), sounding a call to action for scholars, advocates, and educators to mobilize against a (seemingly) unassailable GERM through organizing and coalition-building.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lacey Peters, Mark Nagasawa, Maria Mavrides Calderon, Abigail Kerlin, Helen Frazier, Beth Ferholt, Erica Clarke Yardy, Marjorie Brickley, Alisa Algava http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Constructivism in the Shadow of Centralism
This study examines the role of international education the Primary Years Programme (PYP), in mitigating authoritarian tendencies within Poland's early childhood education (ECE) system. Employing qualitative content analysis of legislation and media reports, the research examines how these programmes apply constructivist theory and seeks to provide an option to overly centralised education systems. The study shows that such international programmes promote active learning where the students are of great importance as opposed to authoritarian classroom cultures that often rely on pedagogical dictators. Results show that the Polish education system is gradually incorporating more topical and constructivist facets, especially in the context of early childhood education institutions, a trend that is being registered in legal reforms. The application of dual curricula within international schools is also noteworthy as it combines international and local educational requirements. This method offers an alternative approach that is less rigid and beneficial as it would not totally resist the internationalization of education. The study ends with a positive assessment of externally oriented programmes providing necessary mechanisms for educational reform in Poland in the prevailing conditions of change in the teaching environment.
Copyright (c) 2025 Joanna Leek, Elzbieta Szulewicz http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Editors’ Introduction: Engaging ECE in times of chaos and authoritarianism
Editorial for volume 12 (2025), issue 2
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel J. Castner , Sara Michael Luna http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The dominance of the English language as a challenge for the field of Early Childhood Education and Care
Copyright (c) 2025 Tomas Ellegard, Helge Wasmuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Making and Remaking of the British Elite
A review of Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite by Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman
Copyright (c) 2024 Eric Martone http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Many colleges and universities are increasingly relying on grant funding to supplement their efforts to educate and support their growing diverse student populations. Mercy University has a long history of preparing excellent teachers and educational professionals. This article explores how the School of Education at Mercy University has secured and employed federal, state, and local grants to not only strengthen their endeavors to prepare future educators, but to drive innovative change through unique programming and mentoring support.
Copyright (c) 2024 Roseanne Vallice Levy, Elena Nitecki, Shoshana Peterson, Jennifer San Diego, Kristen Napolitano, Amanda M. Gunning, Meghan E. Marrero, JungKang Miller, Bahar Otcu-Grillman , Sudha Ramaswamy http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Reconciling Caring and Market Imperatives in Global Early Childhood Education and Care Practice
Globally, early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners face the unique challenge of balancing market-driven demands with caregiving imperatives, navigating these competing rationalities in complex and multifaceted ways. This study systematically reviews 32 empirical accounts from academic scholarship to answer the question: how do early childhood practitioners balance the market imperative with the imperative to care? Educator efforts are dimensionalized according to three levels of professional engagement: micro- (interpersonal, caring-learning interactions), meso- (organizational and community-level engagement), and macro- (collective or national systems of provisioning and governance). Grounded in the concept of discursive governance, the discussion examines how market and caregiving imperatives are negotiated at both interpersonal and structural levels within ECEC. The findings highlight how educators prioritize care when resisting commodification pressures, illustrating the relational nature of teaching and learning and the importance of stakeholder governance for meaningful early learning experiences. Embracing the complexity and multiplicity of these negotiation efforts is crucial for advancing equitable ECEC experiences, recognizing that education depends on the balancing of both economic and social imperatives to sustain social reproduction and cohesion in liberal market economies.
Copyright (c) 2024 Shiraz de Vreede http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
An Explanation of My Educational Principles
Access to Friedrich Fröbel’s essential writings continues to be a challenge for non-German-speaking scholarship. Many essential writings have never been translated, and existing translations are outdated. This article discusses the challenges of translating Fröbel by translating and analyzing one of the essential letters during the establishment of kindergarten. The article demonstrates the benefits of such modern translations by translating essential parts and arguments of this letter. Furthermore, the article discusses key ideas and terms of Fröbel’s pedagogy of kindergarten and play by comparing key passages from the letter with Fröbel’s general concept, as outlined in his various writings on kindergarten.
Copyright (c) 2024 Helge Wasmuth http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The roles of early childhood educators in England have been marked, in recent times, by prescriptive occupational standards, surveillance, and responsibilisation. Over the last thirty years, early educators have been discursively positioned through workforce policy in multiple, competing, and everchanging ways. In addition, ideal professional identities have been institutionally shaped and bounded by qualifications criteria, regulatory requirements, and by intersections with broader (and at times, authoritarian) policy reforms. This constitutes a process of policy bordering (Archer 2022), which delineates professional identity territory, creating a space for a particular version of professional identities whilst closing down others. In response to this bordering process, a more dynamic, generative perspective recognises spaces for expressions of educator agency. Analysis of empirical data suggests such borders are, in fact, permeable with educators expressing their individual agency through these boundaries. Early childhood educators appear to be exploiting cracks and fissures in the borders to disrupt authoritarian demands upon them and exercise their personal power (Gallagher, 2000). Drawing on professional life story interviews of educators (n=18), this paper offers novel conceptualisation and analysis of borderland narratives, revealing how early educator agency and activism are asserted in interstitial spaces. By considering the role of borders (conceptual or otherwise) as sites of struggle, where the right to become is contested and negotiated, the borderlands concept illuminates the spaces of political possibilities (Brambilla, 2014), in which alternative professional subjectivities are enacted.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nathan Archer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Reggio Emilia approach, including the concept of the hundred languages that children use, offers expansive opportunities for affirming and sustaining the multilingual identities of young children (Fyfe et al., 2023). This paper counters the authoritarian culture of power (Delpit, 1988) in schooling that privileges monolingual, monomodal English as superior and dominant. We examine the intersections of multilingualism and a Reggio Emilia approach in the early childhood context. We draw on data from a study with a public, Reggio-inspired preschool dual language program in a large Midwest city in the US, created and operated in close collaboration amongst administrators, families, teachers, and staff. Through individual interviews and focus groups, families, educators, and administrators shared their perspectives on the history and the current implementation of the program’s curricula, the program structures that sustain the quality of the educators and staff, the impact on children’s development and learning, and the contributions of families and community. We analyze bilingual identity development for young children and their families in the context of dual language schooling, as well as the necessity of uplifting and amplifying multilingualism within foundation pedagogical approaches like Reggio. Finally, we identify ways that multilingual pedagogies, including but not limited to translanguaging and translanguaging universal design for learning (TrUDL) (Cioè-Peña, 2022), are inextricably linked with other seminal approaches to early learning, rather than an afterthought or appendage that must be squeezed into preexisting learning structures.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lilly Padía, Sandra Osorio, Luisiana Melendez http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exploring Shadows: Letter Writing as a Pathway to Counter Authoritarianism in Education?
Our society is influenced by neoliberalism and new public management, and the education system is no exception. Students are navigating a system characterized by market fundamentalism, resulting in the prevalence of standards-based educational policies and an intense focus on assessments and quality measures, making higher education more of an assembly line. As a response to the acceleration in society, which can cause alienation, this article is inspired by Rosa (2022) ideas of resonance and Biestas's (2021) work on subjectivity in education. Our response is based on a search for the students' experiences by looking in the shadows for hidden perspectives guided by the following question, What moves in the shadows of teaching among students, and how can letter writing contribute to counteracting authoritarian structures and conventional discourses in higher education? We have used letter writing as an approach to uncover tacit thoughts and meanings from the students, aiming to provide an opportunity for developing a context and path for uncovering insights and make room for the students' dialogue with the world, subjectification as well as empowering the students to fight authoritarianism partly by raising awareness of resonance as one way to counter neoliberalism in our education and society.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kari Lerbak, Odd Rune Stalheim, Åse Løfblad http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Más Que Palabras [More Than Words]: Chaos, Discourse, and Praxis in Ecuador’s Early Childhood Policy
The Ecuadorian government’s lackluster implementation of its Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policies merits further scrutiny. Seeking to catalyze change, we explored the discourse surrounding ECEC in Ecuador, as represented in government (n = 22) and media documents (n = 110) as well as social media posts (n = 253) to unveil incongruencies between policy and reality. Utilizing Critical Policy Analysis and an ecological lens, our semiotic discourse analysis study uncovered promising ECEC conceptualizations, contrasting the dissonances between propaganda and implemented policy. In a country shaped by political chaos, ecological warfare, and narco-violence, ECEC is not immune to these forces, as reflected by policymakers’ stances and implementations. Findings and recommendations are provided to guide future policies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maria S. Mavrides Calderon, Maria Dolores Lasso http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Corpus-based Study of the Conceptualizations of Childhood in the Iranian Culture and their Implications for Early Childhood Education
This study investigates the conceptualizations of childhood in the Iranian culture through a linguistic analysis of three Persian lexical items for a child (bache, kudak, tefl) and their implications for Early Childhood Education (ECE). Employing a corpus-based approach supplemented with ethnographic insights, the study investigates how the Persian speaking members of the Iranian culture understand childhood as a cognitive cultural concept. The findings highlight a divergence between traditional and modern conceptualizations of children, where a traditional, socially determined, non-chronological definition coexists with an age-based definition. It is shown that the concept of ‘evil’ child as understood in Western societies is absent in the Iranian culture. Diverse cultural conceptualizations of childhood are identified, including children as a source of joy, playful and mischievous, innocent and vulnerable, naïve and simple-minded, compliant subordinates and, in some cases, out-of-control beings, who also attempt to negotiate their agency. The study highlights the heterogeneity of Iranians’ conceptualizations of childhood that are shaped by ongoing negotiations between tradition and modernity. This heterogeneity has direct and vicarious implications for ECE, which highlight both the role of parents and educators in dealing with children and educational materials.
Copyright (c) 2025 Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, Ebrahim Talaee http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Perceptions of Preschool Stakeholders on the Impacts of English as the Dominant Language in Early Childhood Education and Care Centers in Yoruba-Speaking States, Nigeria
The study investigated the perceptions of stakeholders on the assumed impacts of English as a dominant language in some selected ECECC in Yoruba-speaking states. 617 stakeholders, 247 preschool teachers, 204 School owners/heads, and 166 parents and community members across the seven states, were randomly selected for the study. Four research questions were raised and answered. A validated questionnaire titled 'Perception of Preschool Stakeholders on the Impacts of English as Dominant Language in ECECC was used to elicit information from the respondents. Data was collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that above-average parents and community members (64%) believe that using English in ECECC will prepare children for future educational activities and global relevance. A notable number of school owners/heads (89%) opined that using English in ECECC prepares children for external examinations and competitions, 86.5% indicating that English language instruction boosts school enrollment. A significant proportion of ECCDE teachers (65%) believe that important educational concepts from local languages can lose their meanings when taught in English. And the majority (183) of the ECCDE teachers in the states indicated that only English is used for classroom activities. It is obvious that all the stakeholders who participated in the study placed a high level of worth on the use of the English language due to the assumed impacts. There is a need to re-orientate stakeholders on the fact that children have more to gain when their mother tongue is used in the preschool classroom during the teaching and learning activities.
Copyright (c) 2025 Oluyemisi Majebi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Juntos effort to preserve children’s bilingualism in English-dominated language landscape
This paper presents a collaborative effort between a Head Start lead teacher and an educational scholar, focusing on a Head Start classroom in a non-traditional migration area in Pennsylvania. The joint initiative, called Juntos, was undertaken to support children's bilingualism in a context where English is the dominant language. The classroom is located in a semi-rural region, a historically White-dominated area that has undergone significant demographic changes in recent decades. These changes have led to cultural, economic, and linguistic tensions between original residents and new immigrants. Such tensions are evident in the Head Start classroom, where approximately 95% of the students come from Spanish-speaking households. English has historically dominated this region, shaping both the educational system and societal perceptions. Despite the growing Spanish-speaking population, these structures have not adapted to accommodate this shift, resulting in English remaining the primary language of instruction, with Spanish-speaking students often placed in ESL programs. Consequently, school readiness has become synonymous with English proficiency. In this local context, a bilingual lead teacher strives to foster bilingualism among her students while ensuring they meet school readiness criteria, even though her classroom is not designated as bilingual. Her efforts, in collaboration with a researcher, have resulted in students becoming proficient in both English and Spanish. This ethnographic study documents her resistance to the hegemony of English as the language of education and seeks to amplify and advocate for the voices of bilingual early childhood educators in linguistically diverse regions where language dominance persists, with the goal of empowerment and representation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kiyomi Umezawa http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Bridging the gap between theory and practice with the dual-focus approach of Design-Based-Research
Introduction to part two of the special issue, "Bridging the gap between theory and practice."
Copyright (c) 2024 Mario Schmiedebach, Claas Wegner http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0