Can digital methods help educators identify and anticipate a child’s learning needs? Digital services can be used more effectively to eradicate loneliness and bullying from children’s worlds and to hear children’s customer perspectives. Digital tools can act as a tool for the operational management of early childhood education staff, in…

Enabling children to participate and be involved in various everyday environments has been raised in general social debate, in speeches by experts in education, social work and rehabilitation. A child’s participation and joining in activities is possible when the child has sufficient skills to participate in meaningful and appropriate activities…

The operating environment of early childhood education is changing The operating environment of early childhood education has changed in many ways in recent years. Several trends are visible, which are already strongly underway and which can be expected to bring new challenges to early childhood education and the necessary expertise…

I often lecture on the development of children’s life skills. When I talk about learning skills in pre-school children, I am asked what all children should know at what age. Comparing to age is based on a previously strongly held notion of so-called normal development. However, I would like to…

When looking at the everyday life of a pre-school child, it seems to boil down to one significant word: PLAY. This is perhaps because, as a researcher of play, I have the kind of glasses on my head that allow me to see the playfulness, fun, and creative activities of…

My overall aim in this research project was to conceptualize play performance as an observable occupation in order to validate a tool for measuring this. The outcome, the Play Assessment for Group Settings (PAGS), is intended for observation-based evaluation of the play performance of children in social settings (e.g. day-care)…

American psychologist James Hillman states that stories about children and childhood never describe only children and childhood. Theories of childhood always take steps towards the social construction of reality, describes sociologist Chris Jenks (1996, 29), who wrote about Hillman’s idea in his book Childhood. Thus, the understanding we have of…

In the peer group at daycare, the child gains experience of functioning as an equal member of the community. With friends, the preschooler enters a world where they practice new skills together, encounter and resolve conflicts, share and create experiences inspired by their imagination, and learn to function as part…