Teacher Professional Development and Teaching Practices in Early Childhood Education

This Reprint, titled "Teacher Professional Development and Teaching Practices in Early Childhood Education: An International Landscape", presents a collection of international research originally published in a Special Issue of Education Sciences. The Issue brings together research from diverse international contexts, investigating Teacher Professional Development (TPD) approaches, pedagogical innovations, and structural challenges in Early Childhood Education (ECE).

The featured articles offer a direct response to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) call for establishing a new social contract for education and reimaging our future together, which demands a fundamental and systemic shift in TPD. The new social contact requires moving beyond traditional approaches defined by rigid academic standards and compliance, toward systems prioritizing equity, sustainability, holistic well-being, and collective professional agency.

In this publication, we identify five dimensions where this reimagining can occur: (1) reorienting TPD for sustainability and teacher agency; (2) pedagogical innovation (e.g., integrating arts, play, and digital tools); (3) building teachers' competencies for the future (such as relational competence); (4) ensuring equity and inclusion (e.g., linguistic responsiveness); and (5) exploring and defining core teaching practices.