The rise of so-called challenging behaviour in primary schools continues to be a topic for discussion amongst educators, politicians and the media. Children are often quickly categorised as having Social Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties or as being simply ‘naughty’ within a framework of available discourses dominated by constructed understanding of the ‘bad’, ‘mad’ or ‘sad’ (MacLeod, 2006). This thesis explores how parents and school staff use language to make sense of and share understanding of children’s behaviour that is understood to be ‘challenging’ or ‘problematic’ as they begin the journey through school based education- in Reception Year of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). A qualitative design was followed to provide in-depth research; focussing specifically on language used to share understanding of the behaviour of a five-year-old child. The study explored how key adults around a child drew upon various discourses to construct the child and bring meaning to the child’s actions. Data was gathered from semi-structured interviews with school staff and the child’s parents, followed by a joint consultation involving myself, the school staff and the parents. A critical analytic approach was drawn upon through a synthetic use of Discursive Psychology and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. This provided a framework to explore both how discursive resources were used to make sense of behaviour, as well as what constructs were produced and how they were made available to others (Willig, 2008). This approach was found to be helpful in understanding the ambiguity and complexity of shared understanding of ‘challenging’ behaviour. Emerging discourses of pathology, disciplinary practices and the construction of the ‘normal’ school child within ‘normal’ development emphasised the power dynamics present and active within the EYFS education system. Discursive complexities of what it means to be ‘good’ and how adults position themselves in ensuring such social compliance also became relevant.

The provision of day care in Children's Centres is considered to be one of the key delivery mechanisms to achieve outcomes for children as set out in the Every Child Matters Agenda (DfES, 2003). The outcomes include, being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and economic well-being. The aim is to improve outcomes for all young children and in particular close the gap between the most disadvantaged and others. It is the intention that outcomes for children will be improved by increasing high quality integrated childcare and early learning. Although the need to obtain children's views on services is recognised in government policy and guidance for Children's Centres, research and practice suggests that this has not taken place for day care. Absent in the research has been an investigation of changes and improvements in day care based on listening to the children. This small scale qualitative research investigated how young children were experiencing and enjoying their day care in Children's Centres and how this could be improved through listening to them. The questions that were addressed were; How are children experiencing day care in Children's Centres? What is it about their day care experiences that children enjoy? How can we 'make it better' for children in day care? Six young children receiving full-time day care in two nurseries based in Children's Centres were selected. Tools, including a full day observation, interview, tours, use of cameras and role play were developed to listen to each child. An ethnographic approach to data gathering was employed to gain insights from the children's perspectives and to enable them to take a lead in showing how they were experiencing and enjoying their day care. Findings were obtained through an instrumental case study design employing multiple methods, triangulation and an inductive methodological and analytical approach. The critical realist epistemological approach underpinning the research permitted consideration of how important aspects of day care could be improved and constructed based on a unified voice of the children. Main findings and the contribution of this research were as follows; • Relationships with carers and other children had high importance to these children in day care. • A significant finding was the children's enjoyment and choice of a wide range of play and early learning activities in the nurseries. • There were shortcomings in the day care of older children relating to the availability of key adults and their interactions with adults. • There may be assumptions underlying day care practices that are based on the needs of nurseries not children. • Children may have needs related to attachment with key adults and children in day care settings. Implications of findings for the development of day care practices, research and the contribution of educational psychology are discussed in context of the literature. The contribution of the research to the development of tools, methodologies and inductive approaches to listen to young children is highlighted. The psychological need for children's attachments with adults and children within day care settings is uniquely raised. Implications for extension of attachment theory and the development of relationships in day care contexts are explored.

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The goal of this study is to investigate the association between different types of play area design and level of physical activity of 3-5 year old children. Rationale 1. The majority of USA children are in some type of childcare provision. 2. The childcare centre is the highest predictor of preschool physical activity. 3. Being outdoors is the strongest correlate of physical activity. Three childcare centres in North Carolina, USA, were selected to carry out the study (n=90). A variety of methods were used to establish sample comparability: Early Childhood Attention Deficit Disorder Scale EC-ADDES, body mass index (BMI), the Test of Gross Motor Development TGMD-2 and children demographic information. Accelerometry was used to measure children’s activity. To link the amount of physical activity to play settings and environmental features two methods were used: 1. Behaviour mapping (processed with GIS), and 2. Video tracking of selected children (analysed using The Observer, Noldus). Setting diversity was measured using a 1-4 point scale developed by the researcher. Findings The study strongly suggests that: • The amount of physical activity afforded by preschool play areas can be intentionally improved by design. • Diverse play areas containing pathways and natural elements, and combining a range of setting sizes are expected to be the most active. • The most effective setting for motivating physical activity in this study is predicted to be a wide, curvy, wheeled toy pathway. • Compact play areas, where greater numbers of children play together, are likely to support more physical activity. • Educational programs that foster outdoor learning are likely to secure greater amounts of sustained physical activity. As a research contribution to the emerging field of design for active living, a key purpose of the study is to influence childcare policy and accreditation. Appropriate design and childcare licensing policies are viable vehicles to produce environmental and behaviour change in early childhood institutions.

Relationships of trust are increasingly considered central to the provision of welfare services. This thesis undertakes an empirical exploration of trust within a key welfare field - early years education and care. While trust is often identified as a key dimension when parents use preschool provision, a rigorous investigation of trust - its meaning, its production and its complexity – is lacking. The thesis has in addition a subsidiary focus. Empirical research into trust in welfare services has not adequately addressed organisational form or behaviour as a location of trust production. Within the study there is, therefore, a particular enquiry into trust at the organisational level. Empirical investigation was undertaken through in-depth interviews with parents and managers across diverse preschool organisations. The thesis identifies how parents gave prominence to their own critical determination of the trustworthiness of provision, derived from information collected from multiple sources. Parents did not, as some theorists propose, undertake a calculation of the extrinsic constraints and incentives upon providers’ behaviours. Instead they constructed an inductive portrait of workers’ competence and benevolence through both conscious deliberation and less conscious intuitive reasoning. Such trust construction was framed by parents’ interpretations of care, quality and risk, and mediated by barriers to information which they might face. At the organisational level, a priori features such as organisational form or sector had little effect on trust; of significance instead were trust-producing behaviours, such as transparency, and trust-reducing behaviours, such as staff turnover. The thesis makes an original theoretical contribution by developing explanations of parents’ trust in preschool provision, by linking such explanations to literature on care and on intuitive reasoning, and by adding to the general stock of theory around trust. It also carries implications for policy and practice. There is little support for concerns that contemporary welfare service reform may undermine trust: regulatory systems provided a useful underpinning for trust; market-based provision – as long as any monetary exchange was sensitively handled - was not antithetical to parents’ construction of trust. The thesis nonetheless identifies benefit in provision through an integrated centre, where parents developed trust over time prior to use of preschool provision. Such a process was especially helpful to parents who faced disadvantage.

This study is about the features of educational experience in early childhood linked to animals, with a particular emphasis on the role and perspectives of early education practitioners (EEPs) in England. It includes a consideration of the influences of the earlier scholars and philosophers and a shift in pedagogy and methods for young children’s education; about animals, with animals and ‘as nature’. The study ‘maps’ the status of animal-related education in early childhood and it notes a decline in animal-assisted learning which has occurred as an outcome of particular political activities, legislation, and other factors. The research is both exploratory and confirmatory and utilised a mixed methods bricolage as a methodology, method and philosophy. There are three phases of research; an evaluation of the status of animal-assisted and animal-related learning in early childhood education, an inquiry into the attitudes and perspectives of early education practitioners and the development and piloting of a framework to support early education practitioners for animal-related education. The action-oriented final phase includes the piloting of an ‘Animal Aware School’ scheme and a number of dissemination activities and these are evaluated. An outcome of the research is the identification of the association between animal-related education and the global agenda for a Sustainable Future (SF) and the emergence of the notion of ‘noticing animals’. The findings of this thesis make an original contribution to knowledge in the field in three ways; 1) There has been a collection of new data – predominantly the perspectives of early education practitioners about animal-related education in early childhood – and a first systematic review of relevant texts and discourse, 2) This is a first inquiry at the intersection of the anthrozoology, early childhood education and psychology fields of study about animal-related education in early childhood, and 3) There has been the creation of a new term ‘Early Childhood Educational Anthrozoology’ which has not been in usage before and will help with future discourse.

This thesis explores the political and ethical entanglements of Early Years Teachers with human and non-human worlds. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy, research and professional practice frame expected ways of working with children. This highly-feminised workforce has historically been presented as deficient. I argue this notion sees them as dehumanised subjects (Snaza, 2015), in need of constant upskilling. Posthumanist theorising was employed to reveal Early Years Teachers in relations with other humans (children, teachers) and non-humans (classroom, outdoor environments, objects, policy) forming more-than-human subjectivities. A post-qualitative methodology was developed to attend to more-than-human entanglements, with material-ethno-carto-graphy proposed as a methodological undertaking pertinent to this inquiry. The reconfigured methods-as-affinity-groups built on ethnography to explore connections within/between four Early Years Teacher case studies. The resultant data generated was mapped and read both literally and diffractively where glow data (MacLure, 2010, 2013) was selected for diffractive analysis. I theorised the positions of becoming-professional and being-teacher to reveal how subjectivities take either a more material connected or a more normative subject position and employ the metaphor of the earthworm to debate these shifting forms. Data revealed becoming-professional and being-teacher saw wider relational entanglements within indoor and outdoor spaces drove new modes of professionalism. Furthermore, the influence of an online tool, Tapestry, on subjectivities was explored. Additionally, vital agentic materiality (Bennett, 2010) and cyborg figurations (Haraway, 1991) were encountered in ECEC classrooms. Finally, the influence of nature has been explored where Indigenous ontologies trouble traditional vistas. Generative ways to view the production of Early Years Teacher subjectivities show that human and non-human worlds are always in flux. The more-than-human moments reveal the interplay between becoming-professional and being-teacher as a re-humanising enactment with subjectivities distributed across human and material bodies. These relations are a counter movement to the reified professional in policy, research and professional practice.

This thesis examined key persons‟ views about the effect of symbolic gesturing to positively influence the emotional relationships between themselves and the infants they care for in day nursery. Having reviewed the literature, this thesis builds on both the professional and emotional key persons‟ role with the infants in their care in nursery and how symbolic gesturing as an approach during interactions might enhance those attachments. Its originality is situated in the way it explores symbolic gesturing in the context of a day nursery from an emotional perspective rather than a communicative aid to develop infants‟ literacy skills. Using a case study approach, which employed biographical accounts of three key persons‟, observations and documentation their journey was documented as they used symbolic gesturing during a three month period. It considered what impact symbolic gesturing had on their practice and whether their emotional relationships with the infants they cared for were enhanced as a result of its implementation. The thematic analysis of the biographical journeys revealed symbolic gesturing was a valuable approach in enhancing emotional relationships with infants as long as it was implemented in a flexible way and its use was navigated by the key persons. The influence of symbolic gesturing was apparent in the key persons‟ changes of perceptions and reflections within the pre and post interviews and to a lesser extent from observational data. Documentation was used to contextualise the role of the key persons in a day nursery and more widely within local and national policy and legislation. The thesis concludes by making a number of recommendations about the use of symbolic gesturing for practice in day nurseries.

Children engage with diverse policies and practices in early years institutions. The aim of this study is to show how this relationship plays a part in children‘s construction of gender and national identities. Identity construction is a complex and ongoing process that involves both the individual themselves and others. In this process what identities schools offer and how children interpret these identities in their making meaning of themselves is the main concern of this research. Therefore it is important to understand which discourses are available for children and how they reproduce or challenge them to perform their identities. In order to understand these complex relations, this research was conducted in two preschool classrooms in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey,during a six-month period of fieldwork with intervals. The data were gathered from classroom observations, interviews with forty-seven children aged 4-5, two preschool teachers, two head teachers and two assistants of head teachers, as well as an analysis of curriculum and some policy documents. The analyses reveal that most of the time children follow and reproduce dominant discourses that are available to them. While children try to do their gender right by performing hegemonic masculinity and emphasising femininity forms, the dominant national discourse, Atatürk nationalism, is used by children to do their national identity right. However it was also found that children are aware that doing their identities right brings them advantages and by knowing this some children take risks to perform other ways of being. Conducting the fieldwork in two classrooms showed how the approaches and ideas of teachers and schools influence children‘s staying within or crossing boundaries in their identity construction. It is safe to say that the children tended to follow the dominant discourses of the teachers‘ approaches and ideas in terms of certain ways of being. At this point the Turkish education system aims to make the Other into the Same (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005) rather than offering and welcoming other ways of being.

In this dissertation I argue the case for placing children's reading of non-fiction in the context of the whole language and learning programme. The emphasis is on supporting reflective reading rather than only on the acquisition of study skills. An action inquiry, involving a whole class of 9 year olds using non-fiction in the context of project work, is described and evaluated by the writer as teacher-researcher. The study is in three parts. Part 1 begins with a short analysis of the present state of affairs, then proceeds to an examination of different theoretical approaches to learning and particularly the role of language in learning. Out of this analysis four principles are suggested as a framework for learning and this general model underpins the planning of the practical example in Part 3. The study moves into Part 2 by offering a taxonomy of children's non-fiction texts. It is argued that while many children's books are 'transitional' and cannot easily be assigned to a particular kind of adult non-fiction, it is possible and helpful to recognise some broad categories. Part 3 examines evidence from surveys and classroom studies illuminating the major question - what is reading comprehension? Some problems involved in reading nonfiction are considered. The main study describes and evaluates a classroom example, the planning and carrying out of which aims to embody some of the pointers to good practice indicated in the whole work. While it is not possible to generalize from one example it is argued, following Bassey (1981), that the description and evaluation are 'relatable', that other practitioners will be able to relate to the challenges and partial solutions achieved. Finally, drawing on all parts of the study, a framework for reflective reading of non-fiction is set out in seven principles.