Early Childhood Education and Care Lays the Foundations for Learning and Wellbeing

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "Early Childhood Education".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 September 2025 | Viewed by 568

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Education, Communication and Learning, Goteborgs Universitet, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden
Interests: early childhood education; early child development; children’s learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Children’s first years in life and the childhood they become a part of lay the foundations for children’s learning, development, and wellbeing. Children grow up in an unequal world where experiences related to their family or other humans around them can provide children with strength or limited efforts to become engaged and interested in the world around them, despite the UN Convention’s statement that all children have a right to quality education, care, and play. Often, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is overlooked, not regarded as an important aspect of children’s lives. ECEC starts at birth, and family members are children’s first teachers. However, most children across the globe also become participants of some kind of early education or care outside the home. This education is the first step to becoming a citizen, since it is a collective arena that provides children with many opportunities to socialize and come into contact with people of different values and behaviors. ECEC in different countries has a large variety of staff members, and this variety can result in a higher-quality program for children. To make ECEC and its role in children’s lives more visible, we aim, in this Special Issue, to focus on young children’s learning, development, and wellbeing in a broad sense.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Children.

Prof. Dr. Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • early childhood education and care
  • childhood
  • quality education
  • children's rights and equality

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 631 KiB  
Article
“You Could Sit and Think, I’m Not Alone with This”: A Multi-Agency Early Years Creative Arts Parent Project
by Jessica Tongue, Pamela Qualter and Caroline Bond
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(4), 495; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15040495 - 15 Apr 2025
Viewed by 193
Abstract
Challenges relating to children and families are often complex; however, solutions can be creative. An arts organisation consulted with a multi-professional group on introducing the arts and culture to families from birth. This action research details and evaluates an innovative multi-professional creative project [...] Read more.
Challenges relating to children and families are often complex; however, solutions can be creative. An arts organisation consulted with a multi-professional group on introducing the arts and culture to families from birth. This action research details and evaluates an innovative multi-professional creative project designed to support families in the North of England. Multi-professional stakeholder planning meetings decided the outcome of the project should be to create parental workshops. Evaluative data were collected from six parent semi-structured interviews to discuss their experience. Stakeholders also reflected on the parents’ data and evaluated the research project. Both datasets were analysed using inductive content analysis. Categories from the parents’ data described positive perceived effects on themselves and their families, emphasising the importance of community. Findings highlight the potential of the arts and parent groups for early intervention. Facilitators of and barriers to multi-agency working were also identified from the stakeholder data. The unique experience created using the arts as well as access to professionals contributed to the parental buy-in of the families. Parental commitment and a sense of community are essential for continued engagement in any parent project. Governments should invest in the early years population using parents and multi-agency working groups as an early intervention and proactive response. Full article
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