Young children learn by interacting with their physical and social environments. The physical environment must be planned to invoke their curiosity and the social is to promote trust. The interaction often occurs as children explore their environment with their peers and/or with adults through social interactions. This paper presents and discusses a part of an action research on exploring young children's learning through the project approach at a private preschool. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the children's social and cognitive development as observed and as measured by the Assessment, Evaluation and Programming System (AEPS®). Six children aged five in one private preschool in Selangor were observed in this study and their interactions with peers and adults (teachers) were recorded. The findings illustrate that the children's cognitive ability or thinking emerged through the social interactions that took place while they were involved in the project work. This implies that the learning environment should be shaped or designed to allow abundant of social interactions to take place that will stimulate, encourage and eventually emerge deeper thinking skills among young children. It is therefore recommended that preschools should focus on developing young children's social skills to enhance their cognitive skills.

Resilience is a key factor that reflects a teacher’s ability to utilize their emotional resources and working skills to provide high-quality teaching to children. Resilience-building interventions aim to promote positive psychological functioning and well-being. However, there is lack of evidence on whether these interventions improve the well-being or mental health of teachers in early childhood education (ECE) settings. This review examined the overall effectiveness of resilience-building interventions conducted on teachers working in the ECE field. A systematic approach is used to identify relevant studies that focus on resilience-building in countering work stress among early childhood educators. Findings from this review observed a preference of group approaches and varying durations of interventions. This review highlights the challenges of the group approach which can lead to lengthy interventions and attrition amongst participants. In addition to the concerns regarding response bias from self-report questionnaires, there is also a lack of physiological measures used to evaluate effects on mental health. The large efforts by 11 studies to integrate multiple centres into their intervention and the centre-based assessment performed by four studies highlight the need for a centre-focused approach to build resilience among teachers from various ECE centres. A pilot study is conducted to evaluate the feasibility of an integrated electroencephalography–virtual reality (EEG-VR) approach in building resilience in teachers, where the frontal brain activity can be monitored during a virtual classroom task. Overall, the findings of this review propose the integration of physiological measures to monitor changes in mental health throughout the resilience-building intervention and the use of VR as a tool to design a unique virtual environment.

The main purpose of this study is to produce a Toys Suitability Index Instrument (Toy Index) based on the assessment of the suitability level of children’s toys aged three to five years old. This study employs the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) and Analytical Hierarchical Processing (AHP) which are the 'Expert Polling' methods based on the integration analysis of the expert panels. The experts are from various backgrounds in terms of skills, experiences, and roles in the society. As a result, the findings have produced an instrument for the suitability of children’s toys that consists of four (4) main indicators and 22 sub-indicators. Based on the findings, the ‘Safety of Toys’ indicator is the most important aspect that influenced the assessment of the Children’s Toys Suitability with the value of LW=4.32/10 or 0.432/1. This is followed by the ‘Values of Education’ indicator with a reasonable value of LW=3.74/10 (0.374/1) and the ‘Suitability of Playing’ indicator with a value of LW=1.14/10(0.114/1). Meanwhile, the least important aspect is the Suitability of Information with the lowest value compared to the other aspects of children’s toy suitability level with a value of LW= 0.75/10 (0.075/1). The Toy Index acts as a benchmark tool for designers or children’s toy industries in producing quality and suitable products in Malaysia. This instrument may help Early Childhood educators in identifying appropriate toys for children’s development.

This quantitative study investigates the impact of integrating the Nursery Teacher Certificate into teacher education in Chinese vocational and technical colleges, specifically focusing on the perspectives of student teachers majoring in Early Childhood Care Education. The study aims to assess the influence of integrating the Nursery Teacher Certificate into nursery teacher education on the teaching competences of student teachers. A sample of 95 respondents, enrolled in the Early Childhood Care Education program across five vocational and technical colleges in Shaanxi, China, participated in the study. The findings reveal that integrating the Nursery Teacher Certificate has a positive impact on student teachers' knowledge, skills, and attitudes, enhancing their practical teaching competence. However, the certificate program neglects the cultivation of classroom management skills in the teacher education, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive approach to address this gap. These findings have implications for the revision of certificate curricula to incorporate explicit training in classroom management and emphasize the importance of nurturing well-rounded teaching competences. By addressing this discrepancy, teacher education programs can better prepare future nursery teacher educators for the challenges they may face in their teaching careers.

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