Contemporary Research in Early Childhood: Roots and Perspectives

This chapter examines common historical and theoretical roots of new areas and directions of contemporary research and unique innovative practices in early childhood education, which exist in Eastern European and post-Soviet countries. In many ways, they follow the academic tradition established in 1960s and developed in 1970s and 1980s in Soviet Union, which remains foundational for international contemporary studies and educational practices. Unique combination of traditional classical pedagogical research and strong “non-classical” developmental cultural-historical theoretical framework could be considered as a distinguishing feature, which predetermined both the foundations and directions of the history of early childhood studies in contemporary Russia, former Soviet republics and Eastern-European countries.