Editorial

The arrival of a new issue of the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal always generates excitement of what challenges it will bring and how this new information and ideas will support or challenge our own academic journeys. In their Editorial to EECERJ in March 2012, Tony Bertram and Chris Pascal characterised the journal as a highly rigorous and scholarly forum for early childhood research, which is multi-professional, multi-sector, multidisciplinary and multi-paradigmatic (Bertram and Pascal 2012, 1). It should certainly be a major ambition of this collective enterprise to empower both practitioners’ and academics’ ways of approaching early childhood practices and solve the problems that go with these practices in a never ending stream of new challenges which by its very nature produces diversity.

This issue of EECERJ presents a variety of articles addressing different problems, all relevant to the improvement of early childhood education, both in practice and in theory. Even though the articles together don't present a complete picture of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care), it is possible to read this collection of articles as one specific narrative about problems in the improvement of early childhood education and care in the future.

A dominating socio-political demand on early childhood education and care institutions all over the world is their duty to give young children a good start for their current and future life as citizens in diverse cultural communities. A major educational task here is to support young children's growing command of language, and improve the educational strategies to achieve this. In the article of Mi Song Kim The Multi-literacy Development of a Young Trilingual Child a rich longitudinal case study is presented of the language development of a young girl (from 2- to 6-years-old) raised in varying cultural contexts in three different language communities. On the basis of careful observations of her daughter, the author proposes a hypothetical learning trajectory that is open for further testing. The article suggests that young children can learn three languages in a relatively short time, if the languages can be used in meaningful ways for real life communication.

In addition to language learning, most societies agree on the necessity to foster mathematical thinking from an early age. Surprisingly, the importance to foster science thinking in young children seems to be less obvious for many kindergarten teachers, as is discussed by Mesut Saçkes, in his article How Often do Early Childhood Teachers Teach Science Concepts?, despite worldwide acknowledgement of the cultural importance of the mastery of science concepts and methods of inquiry for the future society. In his article, Saçkes studies the possible determinants of the frequency of science teaching in kindergarten and the outcomes reveal that it neither relates to the number of years of teaching experience nor to the teachers’ ability to control the curriculum content. The best predictors are the number of science courses the teacher has completed, the availability of science related instructional materials available in the classrooms, and the teachers’ perception of the children's capacity to deal with science concepts (life sciences, physical science, Earth and Space). Obviously there is an important task for teacher professionalisation here (both in initial training and in in-service training).

The problem of professionalisation is a globally discussed and researched issue supported by a universal belief that the quality of the educators is a prime determinant for the quality of early childhood education and its outcomes. Josephine Bleach contributes to this debate in her article Developing Professionalism Through Reflective Practice and Ongoing Professional Development’. She reports about her action-research with teachers in an early childhood curriculum framework in Ireland. The participants in this research project report that the involvement in such collaborative reflections boosted their professional development as reflective practitioners. Their self-perception as teachers changed accordingly, as well as their ways of looking at children and discussing solutions to children's problems. Notwithstanding the promising results from the project, it remains, however, after reading the article still a matter of dispute whether optimal conditions for professionalisation for teaching young children, can be created without paying explicit attention to reflections on the (representation of) subject matter content.

Questions concerning what should be included in professionalisation projects or in early childhood education are not merely empirical matters. Answers to these questions are to a large extent dependent on broader normative-pedagogical, anthropological, epistemological and ontological positions that are always – implicitly or explicitly – taken when discussing or implementing pedagogical practices: what counts as ‘good’ education? What kind of person would we like to see evolving from our pedagogical interactions? What is knowledge in educational settings? At least four articles in this issue address these kinds of foundational problems. In their article Consulting Young Children About Barriers and Supports to Learning, Jan Georgeson et al. propagate an anthropological image that pictures the (disabled) child as a reasonable agent that has the right to be supported from an early age to develop self-advocacy and consequently the right to have their views heard. Even though hearing children's voices is not a self-evident and easy matter (are we really hearing this child's voice or that of her cultural background? – see for further discussion Tertoolen et al. 2012), this article put a complex but highly relevant item on the future research agenda by demonstrating a possible practical approach that cries out for further debate.

Other normative starting points that determine education are discussed in the articles of Pilar Martinez Agut et al. (Education for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood Education in Spain), of Susanne Klaar and Johan Öhman (Children's Meaning Making of Nature in an Outdoor-oriented and Democratic Swedish Preschool Practice) and of Thomas Saar (Towards a New Pedagogy in the After-school Setting). Each article discusses fundamental assumptions regarding the kind of future citizens that schools may want to educate, or regarding the concept of knowledge. It is important that educational approaches are aware of their value-laden assumptions and consider their positive and negative consequences.

Finally, two articles pay attention to the fact that all education is human work and subject to the limitations or whims of the human body. It has long been a well-known fact that stress (based on hormonal reactions in the body, and especially correlated with the release of cortisol) deeply influences human learning and remembering. The articles of Maria Pia Santelices (Stress and Caregiver Sensitivity Among Childcare Staff in Santiago, Chile) and Nina Sajaniemi (Demographic Factors, Temperament and the Quality of the Preschool Environment as Predictors of Daily Cortisol Changes Among Finnish Six-year-old Children) demonstrate how situational and personal factors (such as the transition from preschool to school, or feelings of insecurity) influence both children's and teachers’ stress levels. Stressed educators seem to suffer from impaired sensitivity in their interactions with children, and especially with regard to their cognitive responses. With all our beautiful plans for young children's education, we should never forget that limits may be imposed by the human body, rather than the human fantasy for innovation.

Finally, should we read the whole issue in all its diversity? Too many problems, too little time? Like all cultural practices, research practices also have their negative tendencies. Every reader will recognise the tendency to focus on articles that satisfy one's personal interests (and leave the others for later). This is understandable given the enormous pressure on academic researchers to publish their own research, be quoted and gain money for further research. But this may also turn into a threat for our area of early childhood research. The Dutch psychologist Piet Vroon (1939–1998) once compared the practice of science with an exploding confetti factory, producing colourful bits of paper swirling down over the world. Researchers and readers focusing on a special selection of individual papers amplify the effects of this explosion, but will not succeed in producing the big picture of their discipline and in articulating its value for current practices and future problems. A powerful and progressive ECEC approach will have to connect the pieces collaboratively (be it provisionally) into a coherent narrative, or even better, a family of conceptually sound action frameworks (theories) that serve the world's need for powerful tools: That's the critical reader's job.

So occasionally, allow yourself the pleasure to sit back and read the issues critically from cover to cover (including the articles that are distant from your own projects), and make up your minds. It is after all for our children's well-being.