Karen Thorpe

The University of Queensland | UQ · Institute for Social Science Research

Families of children with Down syndrome experience complex lives and needs, yet the few existing studies on these families are written in conventional academic prose that is not optimal for knowledge translation beyond academia, particularly for busy healthcare professionals. In this paper, we Depart Radically in Academic Writing (DRAW) (Mackinlay,...

Background: In developed economies, most children attend Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services before school entry, many from early life and across long days. For this reason, ECEC services present significant potential to provide food environments that positively influence eating behaviours and food preferences with attendant effect...

In response to a workforce crisis, Australia’s early childhood education and care workforce strategy for the next decade, Shaping our Future, was released in September 2021. This strategy was developed through a three-stage, ‘top-down’ process in which open consultation on pre-defined strategies was the final stage. Analysing data from the voices o...

Retention rates for men in early childhood education and care (ECEC) are low. Exit is associated with experience of feeling 'other' perpetuated by judgements of men's sexuality, motives, and ability. In this paper, we take the unique circumstance of many men working together in ECEC to ask whether more men on staff improves experiences of inclusion...

School closures across Australia in response to COVID‐19 have persisted since 2020, with rising mental health problems in children and adolescents, alongside rising negative family health and socioeconomic outcomes. Further, some children and young people who were already experiencing disadvantage pre‐pandemic may be at heightened risk of poorer ed...

Background Across developed economies, most children attend early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs attending up to 10,000 h prior to school. These programs present significant opportunity for public health nutrition interventions through provision of healthy food. We sought to identify whether this opportunity is being taken through ana...

Observational studies comparing child outcomes in early care and education classrooms of differing quality are often confounded by between‐child differences. A within‐child design, tracking children across contexts, can identify the effects of quality with less confounding. An analysis of Australian children (N = 1128, mean age 5 years, 48% female,...

Qualitative researchers can discard data that are unsaturated or unrelated to research questions, but what do we do when these data affect us, or ‘haunt’ us, ‘long after collecting “it”’ (Taylor 2013, 691)? In this paper, we draw upon Sara Ahmed to guide our engagement with ‘discarded data’: young children’s gendered accounts of violence that unexp...

Internationally, standard observational measures of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) are used to assess the quality of provision. They are applied as research tools but, significantly, also guide policy decisions, distribution of resources and public opinion. Considerable faith is placed in such measures, yet their validity, reliability an...

Preschool children consume a large proportion of their daily food intake in their childcare settings. These settings, therefore, provide important opportunities for children to experience food socialisation, and related positive nutrition. Yet, the extent to which these opportunities are taken, particularly in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas...

Night-waking is typical across infancy and early childhood, inevitably disrupting family sleep. For some children, sleep problems develop and endure throughout childhood. This systematic review focused on fathers, and synthesised the evidence pertaining to the effects of children’s sleep (from birth to 12 years) on fathers’ health and wellbeing. A...

Introduction Night-waking is typical across infancy and early childhood. Although mothers are traditionally primary carers for children overnight, child sleep may impact others in the household, such as co-dwelling fathers. Despite expectations of more ‘hands on’ fathering, the relationship between children’s sleep and fathers’ health and wellbeing...

Background Daytime nap cessation, in which sleep transitions from biphasic to monophasic sleep, is a common feature of early childhood sleep patterns. Yet, to date, understanding of the meaning of this transition for children’s development is not well understood. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the age of nap cessat...

This article identifies and examines a range of policy reform opportunities in Australia arising from COVID‐19. The authors demonstrate how COVID‐19 presents unique opportunities for rethinking and redesigning long‐standing rules and regulations covering how people live and work in Australia, with some opportunities arising coincidentally and other...

Perinatal depression can have enduring adverse effects on women and their children and families, incurring substantial ongoing economic and personal costs. A significant proportion of the cost of perinatal depression relates to adverse impacts on the child, most likely mediated through impairment to the mother-infant relationship. In recognition of...

Environmental light increases acute alertness and is the main regulator of the circadian clock in humans. In turn, circadian processes are strongly associated with inattention and hyperactivity symptoms in both children and adults. Evidence from animal studies suggest that light exposure may affect inattention and hyperactivity related behaviors du...

This chapter is concerned with how a large international, interdisciplinary team of researchers collaborated to collect and interpret data on men’s career trajectories in and out of ECEC - an issue that is shaped by cultural and economic conditions particular to each participating country. It focuses on descriptions and analyses of our methodologic...

In early childhood education and care policy, there are two dominant discourses: ‘investment and outcomes’ and ‘children’s rights’. There is little research on how these discourses play out in educators’ accounts. In this article, the authors examine the case of discourse pertaining to children’s relaxation in early childhood education and care. Th...

An educator’s ability to engage in critical reflection is core to provision of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC), and is a priority for quality improvement in Australia. This study explored the nature of critical reflection using the example of sleep-rest practices. These practices have been identified as a ‘barometer of ECEC q...

The international agenda for quality improvement in early childhood education and care (ECEC) has driven policies targeting workforce professionalisation. Increased training and accountability have been required, but without commensurate renumeration. Attendant staff turnover and educator stress threaten to undermine the achievement of intended pol...

Observational assessment has become an integral component of the quality improvement agenda in Early Care and Education (ECE) and has been significant in directing attention to quality of interactions within the ECE setting. Understanding the functioning of observational assessment is increasingly important as the stakes are high. Assessment outcom...

To compare feeding practices within mother–father dyads and explore whether outcomes of an efficacious intervention for mothers generalised to fathers’ feeding practices. The NOURISH RCT evaluated an early feeding intervention that promoted positive feeding practices to support development of healthy eating habits and growth. The intervention was d...

Theoretical perspectives, and a large body of empirical research examining sex-segregated occupations, identify the attitudinal barriers of the majority as pivotal for both workplace well-being and the retention of minorities. Globally, where more than 90% of the early childhood education and care workforce is female, understanding the attitudes of...

The period from birth to 12 years is crucial in a child's development and can significantly impact future educational success, resilience and participation in society. Health and Wellbeing in Childhood provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to a wide range of topics and issues in health and wellbeing education, including child safety, b...

Background Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services have the potential to influence or disrupt sleep patterns given that ECEC attendance coincides with the normative transition towards napping cessation. Objective In light of the evidence that sleep patterns in early childhood are foundational to lifelong health, this study investigated...

The original version of the article was unfortunately published without displaying the blinded contents.

The most recent data from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) present good news; 79% of Australia’s Early Childhood Education and Care services are now meeting the National Quality Standard (NQS). Yet one in five services remain below standard. Understanding the context and characteristics of these services, and...

Fussy eating is a nuanced, mealtime-specific behaviour associated with difficult temperament but has been rarely examined within the context of mealtime structure. The aim of this study was to a) examine associations between child temperament, and mothers' and fathers' structure-related feeding practices and b) explore whether these associations we...

Although a complexity of factors explain early cessation of breastfeeding, the encounter of a problem is often a critical point in this decision. For this reason, breastfeeding self‐efficacy, a mother's evaluations of her ability to successfully overcome challenges, is an effective target in interventions to sustain breastfeeding. This study examin...

Many studies that examine parent–child interactions while reading digital texts focus on the reading of e-books. Rather less is known about parent–child interactions and reading aloud of other screen texts that occur during young children’s everyday use of digital technologies at home. This article presents the findings from a conversation analytic...

Perinatal mental health problems, particularly depression, are prevalent and have been a central focus of prevention initiatives. The greater proportion of ongoing annual perinatal mental health economic cost burdens relate to children. A key linking mechanism is mother-infant relationship quality. Perinatal depression symptoms are typically transi...

Relaxation is constructed as a health issue, often as a counter to stress. Such constructions serve to medicalise relaxation as a physiological or psychological treatment for stressful experiences. Yet, children’s experiences and understandings of relaxation are not well documented and may differ from these prevailing adult conceptualisations. Situ...

The onset of monophasic sleep, in which napping ceases and sleep consolidates into a single night period, is a key developmental milestone of childhood. Yet to date, there is little consensus regarding the timing of cessation of napping in children. The aim of the current study is to examine global evidence regarding napping patterns in childhood,...

In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children attend formal early education at rates lower than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Research on factors influencing attendance and engagement in early childhood education has focused primarily on Indigenous children, families or community. In comparison, there is a dearth of research on...

Maternal mental disorders can significantly impact on children's psychosocial and psychological development, incurring substantial ongoing economic and personal costs. A key mediating mechanism is mother-infant relationship quality (MIRQ). Research studies and perinatal mental health screening initiatives have predominantly focused on depressive sy...

Objective To independently assess compliance with safe sleeping guidelines for infants <12 months in licensed childcare services. Design Full-day, in-situ observations of childcare practices (including sleep and non-sleep periods) conducted in 2016–2017. Setting Australian home-based and centre-based licensed childcare services. All subject to na...

The international quality-improvement agenda for Early Childhood Education (ECE) directs attention to maximising children’s learning experiences. Yet routines, and particularly those relating to sleep-rest provision, are not well conceptualised as learning opportunities. Often children who no longer sleep in the daytime are required to lie down wit...

Maternal mental health problems in the perinatal period incur significant human and economic costs attributable to adverse child outcomes. In response, governments invest in screening for perinatal depressive symptoms. Mother–infant relationship quality (MIRQ) is a key mechanism linking maternal perinatal mental health to child outcomes. Perinatal...

Children learn to like a wide variety of healthy foods through exposure in their early feeding environment. While some children may reject foods during this learning process, parents may perceive persistent refusal as ‘fussy’ or ‘picky’ eating. Low-income parents may provide fussy children with a narrow range of foods that they will like and accept...

Background Telephone helplines providing 24-h specialist-nurse contact present a source of immediate support for women encountering challenges with breastfeeding and may serve to prolong breastfeeding duration by building self-efficacy. To date there is little evidence on interaction effectiveness and still less on the relative effectiveness for wo...

A professional, skilled and engaged early childhood workforce is critical to economic and social productivity and positive life trajectories for children. Yet high staff turnover, skill loss and unmet standards of staff qualification pervade the sector, limiting optimal outcomes. For many early childhood educators, alternatives of better paid and l...

Teachers’ interactional practices shape children’s displays of knowledge. Teachers often rely on direct interactional devices, such as questions, to call for knowledge displays from children. However, case examples suggest that interactional strategies that downgrade teachers’ expert status, such as ‘I wonder…’ formulations may enhance child agenti...

Objective: To examine the role of parent concern in explaining nonresponsive feeding practices in response to child fussy eating in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Design: Mediation analysis of cross-sectional survey data. Setting: Socioeconomically disadvantaged urban community in Queensland, Australia. Participants: Cohabiting mo...

Pressure on labour-supply has rekindled concern about the low participation of men in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and public debate about the ‘appropriateness’ and ‘value’ of male educators in these settings. We examined this issue from the perspective of all staff (N = 23), in two Australian ECEC centres employing a male educator. A...

Background: Against a background of changing family structures and socioeconomic demands in contemporary families, fathers are more actively engaged in meal preparation and feeding of their children, yet in research studies targeting improvement in nutrition and feeding practices fathers are under-represented. Among possible explanations for this b...

This chapter examines a young child’s use of digital technologies to search the Web at home and at preschool. Conversation analysis of social interactions that occurred during the Web searching informs our consideration of similarities and differences evident between the child’s digital activities in the two settings. The comparison establishes tha...

The majority of preschool children (aged 3-5 years) no longer habitually nap, yet in childcare settings daily mandated naptimes in which children lie down without alternative activity remains a common practice. Mandated naptimes are associated with observed reductions in emotional climate and increased incidence of distress. While intended to be re...

Sleep and rest provision in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is commonly enacted as a routine – a standard time-period during which children are required to lie down even if they do not sleep. Yet contemporary ECEC policies emphasise responsive pedagogical practice that includes children in decision-making and respects each child’s develop...

Telephone support is a format that presents an opportunity to sustain breastfeeding at a time when mothers identify themselves as at risk of cessation. The interactive mechanisms by which support is provided have not, however, been well investigated. We aimed to identify characteristics of calls that support breastfeeding self-efficacy. Thematic an...

Objective: Few studies on child feeding have focused on family dynamics or disadvantaged families, yet feeding occurs in the complex social, economic, and relational context of the family. We examined how the level (high vs low) and concordance (concordant vs discordant) of nonresponsive feeding practices of mothers and fathers are associated with...

Objective To characterise parent presentations of fussy eating and mealtime interactions at a point of crisis, through analyses of real-time recordings of calls to a parenting helpline. Design Qualitative analysis included an inductive thematic approach to examine clinical parent presentations of fussy eating and derive underlying themes relating...

Objectives To examine the associations between sleep parameters and weight status in a large sample of preschool children. Design Cross-sectional survey data from the Effective Early Educational Experiences for children (E4Kids) study were analyzed. Participants 1111 children aged 3 to 6 years from Queensland and Victoria, Australia. Measurement...

Background: In 2017, the Australian Government funded the update of the National Physical Activity Recommendations for Children 0-5 years, with the intention that they be an integration of movement behaviours across the 24-h period. The benefit for Australia was that it could leverage research in Canada in the development of their 24-h guidelines...

The increased regulation of teachers’ work is a global phenomenon across education sectors. In Australia the governance of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) embeds international priorities for quality improvement in educational programmes. The implementation of a National Quality Framework (NQF) for the assessment of ECEC services has mobil...

Educational practices are built around supporting children’s knowledge construction. Children’s displays of knowledge, as well as their prior experiences and interests, are resources for teachers to draw on to facilitate opportunities for children to build new knowledge across curriculum and social aspects of classroom life. Children bring to the c...

Objective: Determine whether feeding practices across mothers and fathers are interpreted and measured with equivalent accuracy (measurement invariance) using the Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire-28 (FPSQ-28) Design: Cross-sectional hard-copy and online survey design Setting: Socioeconomically disadvantaged community in Queensland, Au...

The Effective Early Educational Experiences (E4Kids) study was conceived almost a decade ago, after the release of Starting Strong II: the OECD Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) provision (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006). Since then, governments across Australia expanded investments in early...

Games and activities, often involving aspects of pretence and fantasy play, are an essential aspect of everyday preschool life for many young children. Young children’s spontaneous play activities can be understood as social life in action. Increasingly, young children’s games and activities involve their engagement in pretence using play props to...

With young children’s increased use of digital technologies, there is growing interest in their multimodal meaning making. Little is known of the ways that interactions between young children and adults produce multimodal meaning making as an aspect of digital literacies. This chapter explores children’s production of multimodal meaning making duri...

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is an observational instrument assessing the nature of everyday interactions in educational settings. The instrument has strong theoretical groundings; however, prior empirical validation of the CLASS has exposed some psychometric weaknesses. Further the instrument has not been the subject of psychome...

Research on how young children use information to orient themselves in daily life and to solve problems (known as everyday life information seeking or ELIS) has not been conducted, in-depth, in information science. This exploratory observation study examines how 15 Australian preschool children (aged three to five) used information technologies in...