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Background. We are living in challenging times, with an urgent need for transformation that requires new and sustainable ways of living. Young children are exposed to these global challenges. This study responds to the need for further understanding of how education for sustainability (EfS) is being handled in early childhood education (ECE).

Objective. This study investigated ECE teachers in the process of implementing early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS). This was initiated by the 2019 revised Swedish National Curriculum for the preschool, where education for sustainable development is included as an overall value and objective.

Design of study. The data presented in this article was obtained in May 2021. An initial questionnaire was emailed to all Ifous participants. One hundred fifty-three teachers (76.5%) responded. The intention of the questionnaire was twofold: first, to investigate what the teachers considered to be education for sustainability in ECE; and second, to scrutinize the teachers’ knowledge base, for the further planning of the research and development program. Content analysis was used to analyze the data.

Results. The findings of the study showed a tendency to describe education for sustainability as “business-as-usual” rather than treating EfS as a new field, and to contend that the teachers addressed EfS before it became a compulsory task in 2019. There were few connections made to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015) and to the ongoing pandemic. A common trend when describing the content and activities was to divide the content into three areas, following the three dimensions of sustainability. The teachers described the physical changes and pedagogical changes made after the revision of the national curriculum.

Conclusion. The teachers in the study were interested in EfS, and some articulated a longing for more knowledge about ECEfS and for transformative change. The teachers also showed the need for courage and professionalism to lead the way in finding the relevant content and activities for EfS. The teachers were struggling to find new ways to meet the demands from the governing documents especially during a planetary crisis.

The relevance of the topic of the article is due to the need to develop competencies in bilingual children related to the construction of original texts in a second language. We assumed that if children explore the mechanisms for constructing coherent speech in different languages, compare the features of their implementation in these languages, independently carry out transposition (positive transfer of coinciding schemes for organizing coherent speech) and overcome interference (divergent schemes for constructing a coherent text), then the quality of their bilingual utterances may improve.

The aim of the study is to show the results of a study on the implementation of the technology of research-based learning to build a text (coherent speech). Coherent speech is understood in the article as a text created using the following mechanisms: 1) interphrase communication, 2) consistent implementation of structural and semantic units, 3) linguistic means of stylistic unity.

The pedagogical experiment was carried out on the basis of preschool institutions of the Republic of Tatarstan, in which children learn three languages – Russian, Tatar, English. The experiment took place in 2018-2022. The data obtained were compared with control groups in which such tasks were not used. The total number of subjects was 2427 children of senior preschool age. In the pedagogical experiment, we tried to transform the traditional methodological scheme into a technological one – research, in which children stop playing the passive role of performers and turn into researchers of the structure of the text (the structure of coherent speech). Coherent speech becomes the object of research for children, the subject is the mechanisms for constructing a coherent text in the first, second, sometimes third languages.

The results of the study turned out to be significant: if in the experimental groups the number of children who were able to construct an original text in the second language increased by an average of 50%, then in the control groups by only 3%.

Conclusion. Research-oriented technology for the formation of textual competencies can be used in teaching different languages. This technology stimulates independent search, teaches to compare the features of two languages, independently carry out transposition (positive transfer of the laws of one language to another language), overcome text interference (the negative influence of the laws of one language on another), develops competencies in the analysis and compilation of coherent texts in the native language, second and third languages.

Introduction. The article presents the results of the theoretical retrospective analysis of the problem of developing a methodology for the humanitarian research of childhood in the scientific school of the Pedagogical Institute of Preschool Education (1918-1925) and the Department of Preschool Pedagogy of the Herzen State Pedagogical University. The purpose of the study is to analyze and summarize the scientific and theoretical approaches that formed the basis of modern methodology of humanitarian research of pre-school childhood.

The key ideas of the study was considering child as a subject focused on the adult world, and the socialization culture of the preschool child on the basis of the unity of the emotional-sensual world, cognition and activity.

Results. Article provides description and generalization of scientific and theoretical approaches, which formed the basis of preschool pedagogy as a branch of pedagogical science and methods of preschool education, developed by the Herzen State Pedagogical University. Approaches to the renewal of preschool education are presented taking into account modern knowledge about the phenomenon of childhood.

Conclusion. The concept of methodology of the humanitarian study of modern childhood makes it possible to study childhood and design interaction with the child, focused on its subject development.

An international comparative research project was carried out in the Netherlands, Wales, Germany and Finland to understand how trainee teachers reflect upon play. Data was collected among 31 Dutch, 37 Welsh, 40 German and 19 Finnish teacher trainees. They watched four videotaped sequences of preschoolers engaged in an activity. Next, they answered four open ended questions to elicit reflections upon the clips. The data were analyzed to answer two questions. The first was to compare reflections on the presence of play characteristics. The second question considered whether responses differed with regard to appreciation of the preschool teacher’s role in the activity. Using Chi-Square analyses significant differences were found between countries with regard to both research questions. The article discusses that the differences between countries might be explained in terms of differences in teacher education. It raises questions about teacher training curriculum with regard to play since it appears to influence viewpoints on play as well as on classroom practice.

The article describes the tools used to measure preschool educational environment – the ECERS Scales (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales). The authors address the following questions: What are the ideas of quality education underpinning the ECERS Scales, and Are they suitable to us? Is it generally acceptable to use tools developed in another country to assess education quality in your own? Does the scale measure conditions for the child’s future socialization and development at school? How does it work, what are its parameters for measuring quality? How reliable is it? Can this tool be used in different educational practices (e.g. the Montessori system, Waldorf kindergartens, etc.)? Or does it focus solely on specific program? It is noted that the fact that the ECERS scale is used in countries focused on child’s cognitive development is of great importance for Russian education, which has traditionally placed high value on “school readiness”. The authors come to the conclusion that the ECERS Scales fully meet the Federal State Educational Standard requirements and possess distinctiveness and therefore can be used to assess the quality of education in Russian preschool children. The ECERS Scales are highly promising in cross-cultural research that compares the quality of Russian and foreign pre-school education.

Since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified in 1991, children’s right to have a voice, and to have their opinions heard, has led many providers and practitioners in the field of early years to seek ways to involve children’s perspectives in the evaluation and development of practice. Those who value democracy understand that encouraging young children to actively participate has long term implications for participatory citizenship. Researchers in early childhood have also been sensitised to the challenge of inclusive research, in which our youngest children are viewed as active subjects, rather than objects, in a research process that is set in the context of a democratic encounter. The Centre for Research in Early Childhood in Birmingham, England has a strong ethical commitment to including the voices of children as an integral part of all its research and development work. We operate through an ethos of empowerment of all participants, and aim for participatory research practice which has at its heart an active involvement in promoting the rights of children as citizens with voice and power. This paper will trace a brief history of the children’s participatory position in England and explore the struggles and challenges we, as researchers, have faced in making our personal commitment to children’s participation a reality. It will draw upon the work of a series of research and development projects we have undertaken over the last fifteen years in which we tried to work alongside children to explore and document their realities of life in early childhood settings. These projects include the Effective Early Learning (EEL) Programme, the Accounting Early for Life Long Learning (AcE) Programme, the Children Crossing Borders Project (Bertram and Pascal 2007) and the Opening Windows (OW) Programme. Through the work of these projects, and with an especial focus on the Children Crossing Borders research, which was the precursor to the OW programme, we explain how we have attempted to provide space for multiple voices in the research process. We share our learning about how better to support and listen to the voices of young children, who are the most often silenced in the production of knowledge and understandings about their lives. From this experience, methodological and epistemological lessons for researchers and practitioners will be identified and further explored.

Participatory approaches to engaging in research with young children place a great deal of emphasis on children’s rights to choose whether or not they wish to be involved. A number of recent studies have reported a range of strategies both to inform children of their research rights and to establish options for checking children’s understanding of these rights throughout the research process. This paper seeks to move the debate around children’s informed agreement to participate forward by considering the ways in which children might indicate their dissent their desire not to participate at various stages of the research process. Drawing on examples from Iceland and Australia, involving children aged two six years, the paper explores children’s verbal and non-verbal interactions and the ways in which these have been used, and interpreted, to indicate dissent. Reflection on these examples raises a number of questions and identifies several tensions, as well as offering some suggestions for ways in which researchers can recognize children’s decisions to opt out of research participation.