Environmental contributions to childhood cancers

Recent increases in incidence of childhood cancers cannot be explained by genetic factors. Identifying the environmental risk factors that may explain increases in cancer incidence is an important step to reduce the overall burden of disease. The risk factors for which the most evidence exists include ionising radiation, ultraviolet radiation and chemicals such as benzene and pesticides, biological agents as well as parental smoking and parental substance use. Regarding the link between exposure to non-ionising radiation and development of cancer, the evidence was limited. Maternal vitamin supplementation may reduce the risk of cancer in offspring. Environmental exposures encountered during development and early childhood may be even more important contributors to the risk of cancer than exposures in adulthood and the early developmental period presents an important opportunity for cancer prevention.

Continuity and change in family engagement in home learning activities across the early years

This research utilised data from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and explored continuity and change in parental engagement in home learning activities with young children. The findings indicated a decrease over time in parental engagement with children, from age to 2-3 years to 6-7 years. Rate of decrease impacted negatively on learning outcomes for language and literacy, and mathematical thinking, in the early years of school, when children were aged 6-7 years. Shared reading with children and interactions around everyday home activities and play, in which children and parents participate together, impact on children's later development.

Forward: Which childhood? Whose deficit?

A commentary on Whiteness studies, linguistic and cultural minority and Indigenous studies in early childhood language and literacy socialization. When the literature on ‘Whiteness’ first emerged in the 1990s, I was offended and skeptical. As an Asian who has lived in White-dominant cultures most of my life, my reflex was to say something like: “Yeah – they want to be ‘special’ too. After all our struggles to get beyond an unmarked place of deficit in the fields of disciplinary knowledge and social sciences – now they want ‘Whiteness’ as their own ethnic studies”...

Early mathematical learning: Number processing skills and executive function at 5 and 8 years of age

This research investigated differences and associations in performance in number processing and executive function for children attending primary school in a large Australian metropolitan city. In a cross-sectional study, performance of 25 children in the first full-time year of school, (Prep; mean age = 5.5 years) and 21 children in Year 3 (mean age = 8.5 years) completed three number processing tasks and three executive function tasks. Year 3 children consistently outperformed the Prep year children on measures of accuracy and reaction time, on the tasks of number comparison, calculation, shifting, and inhibition but not on number line estimation. The components of executive function (shifting, inhibition, and working memory) showed different patterns of correlation to performance on number processing tasks across the early years of school. Findings could be used to enhance teachers’ understanding about the role of the cognitive processes employed by children in numeracy learning, and so inform teachers’ classroom practices.

How to choose a healthy, eco-friendly childcare centre

The early years have been recognized as a “natural starting point” for education for sustainability. ECEfS is a newly emerging area and Australian educators, teacher educators, and researchers are leaders in this field. Indeed, there is a growing list of exemplary kindergartens, child care centres, preschools, and preps across the country engaged in EfS focusing on a range of topics that include, for example, water education, reducing energy use, recycling, growing gardens, and cleaning up parks and creeks. Some centres focus more on the social dimensions of sustainability – strengthening Indigenous communities, working with the elderly, supporting the unemployed, fostering gender equality in their communities, being more socially inclusive. There is mounting evidence that early lessons in sustainability help reshape adult sustainability actions in homes, schools and communities.

Introduction

Australian perspectives and practices within early childhood education and care are underpinned by understandings of children, how they learn, their emotional and physical needs and their connectedness to family and their communities. There is strong international research evidence supporting the value of providing high quality and accessible early childhood education and care, and this evidence base continues to grow. Drawing on international and Australian research, this book provides an introduction to this complex and multifaceted field.

Psychological resources, their social antecedents, and association with well-being and health behaviour in early adulthood

The success of entering work life, young people s psychological resources and self-reported well-being were studied in a longitudinal setting from a life-span developmental-contextual perspective in early adulthood. The aim was to analyse how psychosocial characteristics in early childhood and adolescence predict successful entrance into work life, how this is associated with well-being, and to assess the level of psychological resources such as dispositional optimism, personal meaning of work and coping in early adulthood. The role of these and social support, in the relationship between regional factors (such as place of residence and migration), self-reported health and life satisfaction was studied. The association between a specific coping strategy, i.e. eating and drinking in a stressful situation and eating habits, was studied to demonstrate how coping is associated with health behaviour. Multivariate methods, including binary logistic regression analyses and ANOVA, were used for statistical analyses. The subjects were members of the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort, which consists of all women and men born in 1966 in the two northernmost provinces of Finland (n= 12,058). The most recent follow-up, at the age of 31 years when 11,637 subjects were alive, took place in 1997-1998. The results show, first, that social resources in the childhood family and adolescence school achievement predict entrance into the labour market. Secondly, psychosocial resources were found to mediate the relationship between migration from rural to urban areas, and subjective well-being. Thirdly, psychological resources at entrance into the labour market were found to develop from early infancy on. They are, however, influenced later by work history. Fourthly, stress-related eating and drinking, as a way of coping, was found to be directly associated with unhealthy eating habits and alcohol use. Gender differences were found in psychosocial resources predicting, and being associated with success in entering the labour market. For men, the role of attitudinal and psychological factors seems to be especially important in entrance into work life and in the development of psychological resources. For women, academic attainment was more important for successfully entering work life, and lack of emotional social support was a risk factor for stress-related eating only among women. Stress-related eating and drinking habits were predicted by a long history of unemployment as well as a low level of education among both genders, but not excluding an academic degree among men. The results emphasize the role of childhood psychosocial factors in preventing long-term unemployment and in enhancing psychological well-being in early adulthood. Success in entering work life, in terms of continuous work history, plays a crucial role for well-being and the amount of psychological resources in early adulthood. The results emphasize the crucial role of enhancing psychological resources for promoting positive health behaviour and diminishing regional differences in subjective well-being.

Healthcare users’ experiences of communicating with healthcare professionals about children who have life-limiting conditions: A qualitative systematic review protocol

REVIEW QUESTION / OBJECTIVE The objective of this review is to identify and synthesize the best international qualitative evidence on healthcare users’ experiences of communication with healthcare professionals about children who have life-limiting conditions. For the purposes of this review, “healthcare users” will be taken to include children who have life-limiting conditions and their families. The question to be addressed is: - What are healthcare users’ experiences of communicating with healthcare professionals about children who have life-limiting conditions? INCLUSION CRITERIA - Types of participants: This review will consider all qualitative studies that focus on users of healthcare services for children who have life-limiting conditions. These users are anticipated to include children who have a life-limiting condition and their family members. In instances where children are not under the legal care of one or both parents, service users may also include other types of legal guardians. - Phenomena of interest: This review will consider experiences of communicating with healthcare professionals about children who have life-limiting conditions. - Context: This review will consider studies relating to communication with healthcare professionals about children who have a life-limiting condition, irrespective of whether the healthcare service is based in a hospital, hospice, or community setting. There is no restriction on the country in which a study was conducted.

Onko varhaisen tuen päiväkoti mahdollinen? : Tutkimus varhaiskasvatuksen yhteisöllisestä kehittämisestä

Is the early childhood day care facility possible? The research considering communal development of the early education. In Finland mothers and fathers look after 400 000 pre-school children. Half of these attend day care facilities, in which 50 000 staff are employed. The aim of this research is to develop co-operation practices within the day care centre. This research refines and expands my own interest in and knowledge of day care management and content development. The basis of the research draws upon ethnographic material covering the period 1999–2005. The day care centre chosen as a central informant was the first suburban centre founded in 1963, and it provided a rich local and welfare state research perspective. It became clear that the day care facility’s co-operation practices formed the basis of bringing up children and at the same time produced a new multi-operational and multi-layered community for child participation. Adult day care centre workers bringing up the children as a professional work and solutions defining the conditions for the work are expressed in a child’s upbringing. This obviously has an impact in where as the development of communities. From the human and community scientific point of view, the group of youngest children will take up a future position as key players in communities as essential actors and reformers. The research was carried out as multiphase and multiscientific practical research and iterative data formation. The results verified that the co-operation between parents and day care staff produces important benefits for all the stakeholders. However, the day care staff has difficulties in implementing the benefits. During the research process, it became clear that conceptually day care staff saw the practices as ”very important, but not easily realised in practice”. As a result this demanded further research to address this issue and to extend this to the carefacility’s co-operation practises and their communal and social conditions. The research looks at the carefacility’s co-operation with key stakeholders. At the same time it undertakes an analytical and historical examination of carefacilitys’s with an experimental focus as two day care centres chosen as experimental objects. The results of the research showed that the benefits gained by children were determined by the day care centre’s socio-political structure and the parent’s resources. The research framework categorised early childhood education as generational and gender based structures. As part of the research, the strains endemic to these formations have been examined. The system for bringing up children was created as part of a so called welfare state project by implemented by the Day Care Act in year 1973. The law secured the subjective right for every pre-school child to have access to day care facilities. The law also introduced a labour and sosiopolitical phase and the refinement of the day care facility’s education-care concept. The latest phase that started during the early 1990´s was called the market-based social services strategy. As a result of this phase, state support was limited and the screening function of the law was relaxed. This new strategy resulted in a divisive and bureaucratic social welfare system, that individualised and segregated children and their parents, leaving some families outside the communal and welfare state benefit net. The modern day care centre is a hybrid of different aims. Children spend longer and more irregular time in day care. The families are multicultural and that requires more training for the staff. The work in day care has been enhanced, for example he level of education for the staff has been lowered and productivity has been improved. However, administrative work and different kinds of support and net work functions together with the continuous change have taken over from the work done face to face with children. Staff experiences more pressure as the management and the work load has increased. Consequently the long-term planning and daily implementation of the nuclear task of the day care facility is difficult to control. This will have an effect on both motivation and manageability of the work. Overall quality of the early childhood upbringing has been weakened. The possibilities for the near future were tested in the two day care centres chosen as an experi-ment objects. The analysis of these experiments showed that generative interaction work will benefit everyone: children, parents and employees. The main results of the research are new concepts of an early support day care centre, which can be empirically and theoretically possi-ble for development the near future. Key words: Day care facility’s co-operation practises, early childhood education as generational structure, child’s multi-operational and multi-layered community, multi-subjective operator, generative interaction work, communal composition.

Embedding sustainability in a real-world context: Developing a world class early learning centre

This symposium describes what is possible when early childhood professionals work with designers to develop a vision for an exemplary early childhood centre with a focus on Education for Sustainability (EfS). The symposium provides insights into cross-disciplinary initiatives between QUT Early childhood and Design staff and students, who have worked together with the iconic Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane, to explore imperatives around EfS, including leadership and professionalism. This practical, real world project has seen all stakeholders engage in a focus on sustainability which has opened new ways of thinking about early childhood centre design. Cross-disciplinarity has created space to re-think the potential of the disciplines to interweave, and in so doing opened different ways for thinking about early childhood centres – their operation and their function. For the first time in Queensland, this project creates strategic alliances between EfS, childcare, business and sustainable design. EfS is essential for addressing local and global environmental issues and early childhood EfS research has been gaining international momentum, with governments nominating this area as having significant capacity to empower communities and promote change. While models for collaboration exist in the early childhood programs in Reggio Emilia, we offer sustainability as a unique and contemporary focus with immense potential to generate international and national interest. To date Early Childhood degree students enrolled in a leadership and management unit/subject have worked collaboratively with Design students to explore the sustainable design of the proposed Lone Pine early childhood centre. Providing students with a ‘real world’ project sees them re-positioned from ‘novice’ to ‘professional’, where their knowledge, expertise and perspectives are simultaneously validated and challenged. These learning experiences are enabling students to practice a new model of early childhood leadership, one that is vital for leading in an increasingly complex world. The symposium will be comprised of three discrete, though interconnected presentations, that work together to tell the story of this project. Three key facets of the project will be explored during the 90 minute session, as the perspectives of key stakeholders are shared. The first presentation (A/Prof Julie Davis, Dr Lyndal O’Gorman& Dr Megan Gibson) will outline the role of QUT School of Early Childhood staff and students, with attention to the ways in which the project was embedded in students’ work in the final year of their degree program of study. The second presentation (Ms Lindy Osborne) will provide insights into the Design students’ collaborative work in the project. Finally, the key role of the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and their commitment for EfS (Ms Peta Wilson & Dr Sue Elliott) will map out the philosophy that underpins the project. Together, the authors will conclude key project outcomes that have been achieved through this real-world, cross-disciplinary work.

Lapsi, lapsuus ja perhe varhaiskasvatusasiakirjoissa 1967-1999

The aim of this study is to describe and interpret discourses in Finnish national early childhood education and care (ECEC) documents concerning the child, childhood and family, including preschool education of six-year-old children. The study begins with preparation phase of the Act on Children s Day Care (1967) and concludes with the definition of ECEC policy (1999). The research data consists of committee memoranda and national ECEC curriculum guidelines. The total number of documents studied was 20, comprising some 1700 pages. The research data was examined with qualitative text analysis and employed a discursive approach. A semiotic square (Greimas rectangle) served as a tool for clarifying the discourses and constructions reflected in the research data. The theoretical framework of the study consists of the theories of childhood and family studies. The main concepts from childhood studies used in this study were childhood as a cultural construct and child-centred pedagogy in ECEC. The theoretical approaches from family studies used were the formation of modern and late-modern parenthood and family, as well as the concept of familism. Two main discursive lines were constructed from the ECEC documents. The notion of universalistic childhood suggests that early education and care aim to create the same good childhood for all children, regardless of their family background or living area. The second discursive line followed in the documents is the familistic discourse. This discourse contains emphasis on the priority of parental care. The construct of the competent child was found in the research data as early as in the mid-1970s. On the other hand, the construct of the weak family is distinguishable throughout almost the entire research period. This raises the question of whether Finnish ECEC system has been developed for the competent and self-sufficient child of a weak family which needs constant support and guidance of welfare experts. According to the study, it appears that within the Finnish ECEC system the relatively heavy emphasis on social work rather than on early education has been legitimised by the construct of the weak family. This study also shows that a more thorough analysis should be given to what we mean when we say that the main task of ECEC system is to support families in the upbringing of their children. The study was completed during the period when historical decisions concerning the administration in Finland were in the making (i.e. the potential transfer of ECEC services from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to the Ministry of Education). Also, over the past decade, a major reformation of the Act on Children s Daycare has been on the agenda, but no concrete measures have been implemented. Based on the findings of this study, we can ask for what kind of child and family we are preparing the ECEc reforms of the new millennium. Key words: ECEC policy Finland, childhood, family, familism, discourse analysis, semiotic square

Written numeracy assessment in the early years: The challenges of pronouns and noun groups

We examine the challenges of pronouns and noun groups in the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) Year 3 National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) Numeracy Example Test (ACARA, 2015a). Framed by discourses of Literacy as a General Capability (ACARA, 2015b) in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (ACARA, 2015c), the pronouns and noun groups used in the Example Test are mapped onto the Australian Curriculum: English Content Descriptions (ACARA, 2015d). The findings are that some of the pronouns and noun groups used in the Example Test are more complex than what Year 3 children are expected to achieve in the Australian Curriculum: English. We thus stress the need for early years teachers of mathematics to account for the unique mathematical register of written mathematics problems so that young children are not only prepared for high-stakes written numeracy assessments, but are also enabled as a numerically literate citizen.

Kumppanuus on tiiviimpää kuin yhteistyö : Maahanmuuttajataustaisten vanhempien näkemyksiä kasvatuskumppanuudesta

The main idea of this study was to find out how immigrants understand and define successful co-operation and professional partnership in early childhood education. Another target of this research was to think over how the parents see professional partnership from their viewpoint, and how willing / ready the they are in engaging in the professional partnership with the day care personnel. The theoretical part of this research is based on theories of immigration and theories of it s different forms, theories of cultural varieties and theory of modernizing co-operation through using professional partnership. Also guidelines and policies for day care and early childhood education play a part in the theory section. Theory part is written to support research problems. The research method used in this study is peer interview. The interviewed are both immigrants and customers of day care services. The data collected is comprised of materials from peer interviews and personal background information. The interviewed were of Somalia and Russian ethnic groups. Interview were carried out in each group in the participants own mother tongue. These peer interviews showed that parents were interested and willing to discuss professional partnership. From this research one can conclude that the term professional partnership is seen as a complex term, and as a term difficult to understand. From the results it is seen that quite often the principles of professional partnership are not carried out in practise. According to the material gathered, the parents feel that lack of common language and prejudice against immigrants effectively prevents the professional partnership from being formed. The cultural differences can become challenging in a professional partnership. Based on this research, one can conclude that when different cultures meet, there has to be mutual will to understand and to be understood in order to make sure that the children s development, both educational and physical, is supported in a best possible way.

Educators of change

Child care is a topic at the forefront of much discussion. From politicians to internet commentators, seemingly everyone has an opinion on child care in Australia at the moment. This media of late should have been an excellent opportunity to share information with parents and the wider community on the advances made in the early childhood profession through the National Quality Framework. It should have provided us with a strong platform to highlight the pedagogy and practice of educators choosing a career in early childhood...

The identification of teaching interactions used in one-to-one teaching of number in the early years of schooling

This research paper reports on phase one of an investigation of video recorded intensive one-to-one teaching interactions with 6–7-year-old students who were in their second year of schooling in Australia and identified by the their teacher as low attaining in early number. The two-phased study from which this paper emerges was originally conducted in 1998 as part of my Bachelor of Teaching Honours (Research) program at Southern Cross University Lismore, New South Wales. That study identified teaching interactions particularly suited to one-to-one teaching in the Maths Recovery Program, a program designed for these students who were at risk of failure in early number. Since that time a great deal has not changed with limited literature available that comprehensively reports on teaching interactions in intensive one-to-one settings. Revisiting the original study is considered timely given the increasing number of withdrawal and intensive programs now funded and adopted by schools and yet, rarely reported on in terms of the effectiveness of the teaching interactions that occur in such settings. This paper then presents a discussion of a preliminary series of teaching interactions that either positively and or negatively influence an intensive one-to-one teaching and learning setting