Contemporary schools are enlivened by a multitude of children with rather disparate linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. These children spend most of their school hours in interaction with other children, engaging in multifarious activities (conflict, gossip, play, humor, task-related activities) that gradually come to constitute the local culture and social organization of their peer group. The book illustrates the multimodal and sequential organization of these mundane peer choreographies, describing the resources through which children co-ordinate their social actions in the complex linguistic and socio-material landscape of diverse classrooms. Moving beyond the focus on teacher-led socialization in previous literature, the analyses shed light on the relevance of everyday peer practices to the negotiation of children’s social roles and identities and to their overall developmental trajectories in the community. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and addresses scholars from different academic fields, including sociology, linguistics, anthropology, social and developmental psychology, and education.

This book draws on extensive research to provide a ground-breaking new account of the relationship between dialogue and children’s learning development. It closely relates the research findings to real-life classrooms, so that it is of practical value to teachers and students concerned that their children are offered the best possible learning opportunities. The authors provide a clear, accessible and well-illustrated case for the importance of dialogue in children's intellectual development and support this with a new and more educationally relevant version of socio-cultural theory, which explains the fascinating relationship between dialogues and learning. In educational terms, a sociocultural theory that relates social, cultural and historical processes, interpersonal communication and applied linguistics, is an ideal way of explaining how school experience helps children learn and develop. By using evidence of how the collective construction of knowledge is achieved and how engagement in dialogues shapes children's educational progress and intellectual development, the authors provide a text which is essential for educational researchers, postgraduate students of education and teachers, and is also of interest to many psychologists and applied linguists.

This ground-breaking handbook provides a much-needed, contemporary and authoritative reference text on young children’s thinking. The different perspectives represented in the thirty-nine chapters contribute to a vibrant picture of young children, their ways of thinking and their efforts at understanding, constructing and navigating the world. The Routledge International Handbook of Young Children’s Thinking and Understanding brings together commissioned pieces by a range of hand-picked influential, international authors from a variety of disciplines who share a high public profile for their specific developments in the theories of children’s thinking, learning and understanding. The handbook is organised into four complementary parts: • How can we think about young children’s thinking?: Concepts and contexts • Knowing about the brain and knowing about the mind • Making sense of the world • Documenting and developing children’s thinking Supported throughout with relevant research and case studies, this handbook is an international insight into the many ways there are to understand children and childhood paired with the knowledge that young children have a strong, vital, and creative ability to think and to understand, and to create and contend with the world around them.

As societies are experiencing increasing levels of immigration from contexts outside of the Western, industrialized world, child care programs are experiencing, simultaneously, increasing diversity in enrollment. A question that has been raised by early childhood advocates and practitioners is whether the former articulations regarding definitions of quality, models of relationships, and peer relations in the child care context are accurate and relevant within the increasing racial, linguistic, and ethnic diversity of the United States. The Culture of Child Care provides a much-needed integration of research pertaining to crucial aspects of early childhood development-- attachment in non-familial contexts, peer relations among ethnically and linguistically diverse children, and the developmental importance of child care contexts during early childhood. This volume highlights the interconnections between these three distinct bodies of research and crosses disciplinary boundaries by linking psychological and educational theories to the improvement of young children's development and experiences within child care. The importance of cultural diversity in early childhood is widely acknowledged and discussed, but up until now, there has been little substantive work with a cultural focus on today's educational and early child care settings. This innovative volume will be a unique resource for a wide range of early childhood professionals including basic and applied developmental researchers, early childhood educators and advocates, and policymakers.

This collection offers an in-depth study of children's peer talk and its potential impact on children's learning.

Imaginative play and story telling occupy key roles in children's psychological development and socialization. Bringing together leading contributors, this volume explores what play and story mean to young children, and how these vital aspects of development can best be supported in child care and educational settings. Vital connections are drawn between children's activities, their interpersonal relationships, and their emerging cognitive and affective capacities. Topics covered include promoting social play in the classroom, storytelling and literacy development, and the influences of early caregiving experiences on attachment and learning. Theoretical and methodological issues in these areas of research are also addressed, as well as social policy implications. The book is inspired by the work of Greta G. Fein, the pioneering teacher, researcher, and child care policymaker, who has contributed an integrative concluding chapter.

Internationally, linguistic diversity is at its highest to date. With increasing numbers of children learning additional languages, it is important to understand the nature of the social relationships that children are experiencing. This volume features the rich, varied and complex aspects of children's friendships in multilingual settings.