Cultures of Play: Actors, Affordances and Arenas

The principles of EECERA focus on providing a relevant and rigorous academic forum in Europe;facilitating collaboration and cooperation between European researchers and other researchers around the world;encouraging clear articulation and communication links between research, practice, and policy;and offering interaction, development, and support to those interested in early childhood education. The conference aimed to answer the following questions: * In what ways do cultures shape play in early childhood across time and space? * How is play sculpted by its actors, affordances, and arenas? * In light of the recent global pandemic and other disruptions to daily life, how does play feature in research, teaching, and experience? In addition to these thought-provoking keynote addresses, researchers and practitioners engaged in special interest group presentations in the following areas: birth to three, children from refugee or migrant backgrounds, digital childhoods, multimodality and STEM, disability studies and inclusive education in the early years, gender balance, holistic wellbeing, mathematics birth to 8 years, multilingual childhoods, outdoor play and learning, participatory pedagogy and praxeological research, professionalism in early childhood education and care, rethinking play, sustainability in early childhood education, transforming assessment evaluation and documentation in early childhood pedagogy, transitions, working with parents and families, and young children's perspectives.

Teaching in and beyond pandemic times

In the foreword, Jansen points out that the purpose was not to publish a standard academic book referring to research elements, but rather to use a narrative form to capture teachers' stories while simultaneously dealing with issues peculiar to distance learning: maintaining effective contact with learners;finding inventive ways of dealing with unequal learner access to reliable data and devices;the effects - on the transition to online learning - of varying and age-related levels of technological competence present among teachers;post-lockdown emotional consequences to teachers of re-entry into the system and teacher deployment in cases where colleagues with comorbidities are allowed to work from home. Millar describes this overwhelming transition process that required teachers to be innovative, to develop new technological skills and to assist the learners while fulfilling various roles such as spouse, partner, advisor and Zoom controller. The topics are pressure;pedagogy;preparation;pioneers;poverty;privilege;perspective;parents and parent teachers;peer teaching;perseverance and pastoral care.