The authors of this book are sympathetic to the particular demands of teaching three- to eight-year olds and offer practical solutions to the complex issues that are currently faced by educators of the early years. In recognizing the demands on practitioners, they aim to provide new and challenging frameworks for an understanding of the practice of teaching young children, and draw upon international research to offer a sound model of early year's subject-structured teaching which has the quality of children's learning at its centre. Their aim is to support teacher expertise through stimulating teachers' thinking about children's development, motivation, ways of learning and the subjects they teach. These topics are set in the complex institutional settings in which practitioners work. Ways of taking and evaluating action are offered.