The principle of the “unique child” has become a central element of early childhood policy and practice, encouraging practitioners to recognise children's individuality, capabilities and diverse experiences. While this framing has supported important shifts towards child-centred approaches, it can position the child as the primary site through which difference and development are understood. This paper suggests that such a focus risks leaving part of the relational picture unseen. Drawing on relational, posthuman and new materialist perspectives, the paper argues that children's identities, behaviours and experiences emerge through encounters involving practitioners, materials, environments and wider relational conditions rather than through the child alone. In this sense, the story of the unique child remains only partially told when the practitioner who participates within these encounters remains outside the frame. The paper introduces the unique practitioner to explore how practitioners’ histories, identities and assumptions participate in shaping what becomes noticeable, meaningful and possible within practice. Through practitioner vignettes, multiplicity and the metaphor of relational superposition, reflexivity is conceptualised as a means of making aspects of this participation visible while holding alternative interpretations open. The paper argues that recognising the unique practitioner does not simply place two unique individuals alongside one another but makes visible the shared relational conditions through which the child becomes encountered, interpreted and known.
Literacy in early childhood is often treated as a neutral, autonomous set of decodable skills, overlooking cultural and linguistic resources all children bring to school and marginalizing those of children from historically minoritized communities. This critical interpretive review examines how literacy is represented and constructed within culturally responsive teaching in early childhood (pre-kindergarten through second grade), and what that reveals about the boundaries of literacy. The review began with a broader exploration across English-dominant contexts. During searching and screening, a notable pattern emerged in how often relevant studies appeared from other contexts relative to the United States. Given the contested U.S. educational and sociopolitical climate surrounding literacy and culturally responsive pedagogy, this pattern prompted us to focus the final synthesis on U.S.-based research. Working from a sociocultural and critical literacy stance, we synthesized 17 United States-based empirical studies through reflexive thematic analysis. Two themes emerged: the expansion and questioning of what counts as literacy, extending beyond reading and writing toward multimodal literacies that include visual, social, artistic, and critical forms of meaning-making; and the relational and political dimensions of culturally responsive literacy, including family and community knowledge, identity, and social justice. These themes suggest two interconnected reorientations: expanding what is recognized as literacy and repositioning whose knowledge, identities, experiences, and meaning-making are recognized within literacy education. These findings are especially consequential within the United States context, where debates surrounding culturally responsive pedagogy, diverse texts, and the boundaries of literacy instruction make questions about what and whose literacy counts particularly urgent.
With the widespread use of technology in children's home learning, the home literacy environment (HLE) has been gradually digitalized, and the digital home literacy environment (DHLE) is put forward based on the HLE framework. However, the components and developmental dynamics of DHLE remain underexplored. Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this qualitative study investigated the components of the DHLE for English as a foreign language learners and how it is informed by parents’ perceptions. Data were collected from eight families through semi-structured interviews with both fathers and mothers of children aged 5–6 years, and hybrid thematic analysis was employed. Findings showed that the DHLE comprised digital and artificial intelligence (AI) devices and related resources, digital and AI-assisted language learning activities, and parental mediation strategies. Parents’ attitudes toward digital and AI-assisted learning, subjective norms including cultural values and societal influence, and perceived behavioral control, including parents’ time and resource constraints, digital and AI literacy, and English proficiency, jointly informed their intentions to support children's digital English learning, thereby influencing DHLE. The study extends the theoretical understanding of HLE by introducing a digital facet. It highlights the importance of parental mediation in children's language learning with digital technologies and contributes to the research on AI-supported education by exploring its application in home language learning environments, an area that has received limited attention. The study has implications for practice and policy in digital early childhood education.
Assessment in nursery education (0–3 years) has increasingly shifted from traditional approaches focused on measuring developmental outcomes towards formative, contextualised, and pedagogically meaningful practices. Within this perspective, observation, pedagogical documentation, and reflective interpretation have become central to understanding children's learning and informing educational decision-making. This article examines assessment in nursery education through the lens of contemporary early childhood education and presents a conceptual framework for an assessment portfolio to support pedagogical practice. Drawing on Portuguese and international literature on formative assessment, pedagogical documentation, Learning Stories, reflective practice, and early childhood pedagogy, the article analyses the conceptual foundations of assessment in nursery settings and discusses the educational potential of portfolios as tools for documentation, professional reflection, and communication with families. Based on this theoretical framework, a flexible portfolio guide is proposed to support educators in organising observation, documentation, interpretation, and pedagogical planning. The portfolio is conceptualised not merely as a repository of evidence but as a process of assessment of , for , and as learning that promotes shared meaning-making among educators, children, and families. The article argues that portfolio use can strengthen formative assessment, foster professional reflection, enhance family engagement, and support more ethical, participatory, and child-centred assessment practices in nursery education.
Immigration in high-income countries has increased due to policies addressing economic, workforce, and population challenges, with a growing focus on filling specific labour shortages, such as in early childhood education. Immigrant early childhood educators have become essential in supporting the shortage in the sector leading to an evident demographic shift in the composite of early childhood educators, yet more research is needed globally to understand their experiences and improve retention in the sector. This study conducted a scoping review across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States to explore what is known about their experiences, aiming to identify challenges, supports, and strategies for fostering more inclusive practices. We searched four databases, screened 1930 articles, and included 13 articles for synthesis and analysis. Four themes were identified to answer the research question: defining their identity as educators in a new country; challenges to their ways of caring; their reflection on play-based learning; and their deep understanding of immigrant families. Our review suggests the requirement for more research that amplifies the voices and perspectives of immigrant educators through methodologies that enhances their active participation in research.
