Dear Colleagues, 

There is a growing consensus contends that physical environments play an essential role in children’s development and learning. Children learn best in environments that provide them with meaningful contexts for learning and a diversity of choices and possibilities for following their interests. Factors concerning the educational environment, such as early childhood education and care institutions’ (ECECs) physical features, are important for children’s play, wellbeing, participation, health, development, and learning outcomes. Research clearly indicates that the environment’s physical factors greatly influence children’s perception and utilization of both indoor and outdoor physical environments.

The aim of this Special Issue is to gather and disseminate contemporary and high-quality research on how physical environments, spaces, and materials in early childhood education influence child outcomes such as their development, learning, play, wellbeing, and social relations. The understanding of learning spaces and the physical environment in this Special Issue covers a broad sense of the concept, such as various landscapes and places, buildings, outdoor and indoor environments, interior design, furnishing, equipment, installations, and play material.

We welcome manuscripts with a focus on, but not limited to:

• The interconnection between physical environments and children’s everyday lives and play in ECEC physical environments;
• The relation between physical environments in ECEC and children’s wellbeing, development, and learning;
• The ECEC institutions’ pedagogical work for utilizing and developing learning spaces;
• Children’s perceptions, experiences, actions (play), and learning in relation with their physical environment in ECEC;
• Teachers and practitioners’ perceptions, experiences, actions, and pedagogical practice in the ECEC’s physical environment;
• Teachers and practitioners’ competence and professional development regarding the creation of inspiring and supportive ECEC physical environments;
• Architects, public authorities and ECEC owners’ work on planning and developing learning spaces in ECEC.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Moser
Prof. Dr. Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter
Dr. Ole Johan Sando
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• physical environment
• furniture
• toys and artefacts
• landscape
• learning space