Common Worlding Pedagogies: Opening Up to Learning with Worlds

Common worlding is a collective pedagogical approach. It is also a deliberate move to open up education to worlds beyond narrow human preoccupations and concerns and beyond its standard framing as an exclusively social practice. In this article, we identify some of the guiding principles that underpin this approach and explain how they work out in practice. We do so by offering a selection of illustrative vignettes drawn from the Walking with Wildlife in Wild Weather Times early childhood research project in Canberra, Australia, and from the Witnessing the Ruins of Progress early childhood research collaboratory in Ontario, Canada.

Is Scientific Creativity Possible in Early Childhood?

It can be stated that scientific creativity is a fairly new research topic for early childhood. Although creativity is one of the skills that are frequently discussed in early childhood research, studies dealing with scientific creativity, a type of creativity specifically related to science, are very limited regarding this period. In this review study, scientific creativity was conceptually examined and research conducted on scientific creativity with children attending primary and secondary school were included. Whether scientific creativity is possible in early childhood was examined according to a limited number of studies examining scientific creativity in this period. Additionally, based on previous studies, suggestions were given on how to support scientific creativity in early childhood.

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Engagement and Achievement in Early Childhood Research

Engagement in early childhood has been linked with later achievement, but the relation between these variables and how they are measured in early childhood requires examination. We estimated the overall association between academic engagement and achievement in children prior to kindergarten entry. Our systematic literature search yielded 13,521 reports for structured eligibility screening; from this pool of studies, we identified 21 unique data sets, with 199 effect sizes for analysis. We coded eligible studies, extracted effect sizes, accounted for effect size dependency, and used random-effects models to synthesize findings. The overall correlation between academic engagement and achievement was r = .24 (range: −.08 to −.71), and moderator analyses did not significantly predict the relation between the two constructs. This study aligns with previous research on this topic and examines issues related to these measures, their constraints, and applications as they pertain to early childhood research.