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The ½¿É«µ¼º½ Blog: Highlights of 2025

½¿É«µ¼º½ Blog end of year highlights

Snow-dusted salutations and tinsel-tinged tidings to all our readers, authors, curators and guest editors around the globe. In this, the ½¿É«µ¼º½ Blog’s tenth anniversary year, I look back over the...

Opportunity to support children’s reading for pleasure and wellbeing: Are primary libraries undervalued and underused?

Research by The Open University Reading for Pleasure consortia shows the advantages of reading for pleasure and the subsequent benefits for children, but is there evidence that children are...

Serendipity in motion: Navigating the unexpected in research

Vignette: The unexpected It was near the end of the workshop, and the materials table – once a neat arrangement of brushes, papers and pigments – had become a glorious mess. Most of the...

Breaking the sound barriers: Understanding the academic risks of mild and unilateral hearing loss

Rose Ayling-Ellis’s recent documentary, Signs for Change, has brought significant attention to the experiences of the deaf and hard of hearing community, offering a moving and honest portrayal...

Structured freedom: Supporting children’s agency in primary education

In a recent article published in the British Educational Research Journal, I explore how children’s agency operates within England’s primary education system, and propose the concept of...

Vignettes from the museum and the classroom: Illuminating young children’s engagement with objects

Objects in early childhood education Object-based learning is familiar in early childhood practice. Sociocultural theories of learning conceptualise objects as tools that support children’s...

Beyond the checklist: Building a primary curriculum that sparks joy and includes every child

With the UK Labour government commissioning Professor Becky Francis to review England’s national curriculum, we have an opportunity to reconsider not just what children should learn but how. As...

The need for clearer parental engagement policies: Evidence from England

Parental engagement significantly boosts children’s academic success, with evidence from around the world demonstrating an average of four months of additional progress over a single academic...

Listening to young children: Are they happy in the nursery?

½¿É«µ¼º½ Conference 2025

For Aristotle, wellbeing and happiness (eudaimonia) are the ultimate end and purpose of human existence. Yet, the United Kingdom demonstrated lower levels of life satisfaction and poor mental...

Nonresident fathers’ contribution to their children’s social competence in early childhood

½¿É«µ¼º½ Conference 2025

Divorce and nonmarital childbearing have become increasingly common, leading to more children growing up with a father who lives elsewhere (Sheffield & Winship, 2020). This shift raises important...

‘Small things that no one sees’: Acts of advocacy in early childhood education and care

In this reflective blog post for this special issue, we draw on a vignette of the nursery practices that are everyday acts of advocacy. Our commentary foregrounds the unacknowledged labour of...

The complex problem of the education and care of babies: Could independent nurseries have the answer?

In this blog post, two managers of independent nurseries critically review the expansion of publicly funded childcare in England to include children aged nine months. Specifically, we examine the...