This book uses the concept of exploration as a way of understanding transitions in children between the ages of 5 to 18 years old. Written by an international group of scholars from Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, India, Norway and the UK, the chapters offer a diverse set of case studies. The topics and themes covered include transitions in outdoor playtime, the transition to daycare, compassion in kindergarten, learning with fathers, transitions of Chinese traditional culture and disability. The chapters are organised into two parts, the first part covering macro transitions and the second covering micro-genetic transitions. The contributors show how both macro and micro-genetic transitions influence children's everyday lives, and how these different transitions open up new possibilities for play, learning and development. The contributors draw on Vygotsky's cultural historical theory and the understanding that children's cultural formation takes form in a dialectic relation between children's interests and motives and the institutional settings they participate in.

"This book uses the concept of exploration as a way of understanding transitions in children between the ages of 5 to 18 years old. Written by an international group of scholars from Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, India, Norway and the UK, the chapters offer a diverse set of case studies. The topics and themes covered include transitions in outdoor playtime, the transition to daycare, compassion in kindergarten, learning with fathers, transitions of Chinese traditional culture and disability. The chapters are organised into two parts, the first part covering macro transitions and the second covering micro-genetic transitions. The contributors show how both macro and micro-genetic transitions influence children's everyday lives, and how these different transitions open up new possibilities for play, learning and development. The contributors draw on Vygotsky's cultural historical theory and the understanding that children's cultural formation takes form in a dialectic relation between children's interests and motives and the institutional settings they participate in"--

How can qualitative researchers make the case for the value of their work in a climate that emphasizes so-called "scientifically-based research?" What is the future of qualitative research when such approaches do not meet the narrow criteria being raised as the standard? In this timely collection, editor J. Amos Hatch and contributors argue that the best argument for the efficacy of qualitative studies in early childhood is the new generation of high quality qualitative work. This collection brings together studies and essays that represent the best work being done in early childhood qualitative studies, descriptions of a variety of research methods, and discussions of important issues related to doing early childhood qualitative research in the early 21st century. Taking a unique re-conceptualist point of view, the collection includes materials spanning the full range of early childhood settings and provides cutting edge views by leading educators of new methods and perspectives.

What are the fundamental elements of good quantitative and qualitative research? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach? What does research offer early childhood education? Are quantitative and qualitative approaches compatible? This book presents the research process and its components in a straightforward, easily accessible manner. Using real examples from early childhood education, authors William L. Goodwin and Laura D. Goodwin "bring to life" for the first time the various methods of research and how they may be studied and applied. They explore the major aspects of both quantitative and qualitative paradigms and techniques, stressing the compatibility and complementary nature of the two approaches that are so often seen as mutually exclusive if not downright contradictory.

This collection brings together studies and essays which represent the best work being done in the area of qualitative research in early childhood settings. The research spans the full range of early childhood settings from infant-toddler and home day care programs to primary classrooms. The volume is designed to appeal to scholars doing early childhood research and to graduate students and their instructors in general early childhood research courses, specialized early childhood qualitative research courses, and general qualitative research courses. Experienced scholars doing qualitative work related to early childhood will see the book as essential because, for the first time, a comprehensive treatment of this emerging area of inquiry is provided. Less-seasoned researchers will find the collection useful in providing fundamental knowledge and concrete examples to guide their scholarly development.

This textbook of selected qualitative studies is concerned with the exploration of current educational issues in relation to teachers, students, parents, the scientific community and common readers. Using scientific and comprehensible methods, the contributions explore individuals’ attitudes, viewpoints and behaviours through studies conducted in Greece and Cyprus, yet in topics common in the European and international educational and social space. Therefore, this textbook addresses an expanded audience of scientists and common readers, who can be informed about contemporary research methodology and corresponding theory. It allows the reader to communicate with science through a “reader-friendly” manner, while, at the same time, corresponding to scientific ethics and every person’s interest in understanding and being informed about social situations. At a time when lifelong education is enhanced, scientific tools must be readapted so that social and educational discourse is both scientific and comprehensible.

This open access book addresses the growing trend in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) research named collaborative knowledge building in which researchers and ECEC personnel collaborate. This kind of research encompasses a number of approaches, such as design studies, action studies, Learning Studies, Lesson Studies, and combined research and development studies. There are important differences between these approaches, but they also share some features, which makes it possible to see them as examples of a particular tradition of knowledge building. Collaborative knowledge building constitutes close ties between developing practices of early childhood education and care, and generating empirically grounded theoretical knowledge. This book contributes to the methodology of practices-developing research by mapping this movement through exemplifying themes actualised in such studies, and through conceptualizing important and recurring gains and challenges. It also describes how the latter can be taken on.