We are also struck by the continuity in what practitioners choose to examine, which falls into three themes:
› Relationship and rapport: Teachers write about the daily, often subtle work of building trust with children and families. They explore how empathy, listening, and shared joy sustain learning. They show how a critical inquiry stance allows them to do a better job as they work with children and families with many different backgrounds, assets, and beliefs.
› Inquiry itself: Educators document their practice and use reflection to deepen their understanding of children’ s thinking, primarily as it unfolds in the curriculum and learning environments.
› Collaboration: Authors describe the power of shared reflection in study groups, staff meetings, and mentoring circles that support teacher researchers. Within this thread, directors and program leaders also write about creating time, space, and structures that make teacher collaboration through inquiry possible.
While these central topics have remained remarkably steady, the genres and formats have evolved. Many of the earliest Voices articles followed a more traditional research report structure( literature review, methods section) to situate the work within established research conventions. Yet we always encouraged authors to draw readers into the lived texture of their settings and let the stories guide analysis.
The model for this narrative approach was seeded back in 2004 in an article we wrote with Gail Perry in the March issue of Young Children( Henderson et al. 2004). We introduced the concept of teacher research and featured excerpts from Isauro Escamilla’ s classroom inquiry to illustrate how a teacher’ s close observation and reflection could become a source of professional knowledge. In this work, Escamilla documented children’ s discovery of snails outdoors and their fascination with the creatures’ movements and the shadows they cast in the sunlight. The inquiry expanded to consider the children as they drew their own portraits, showing how close observation could uncover children’ s questions, theories, and ways of representing their discoveries. The imagery of snails and shadows invited readers into the classroom in ways that felt analytical yet deeply human.
Other early pieces extended that story-forward approach, including“‘ Do You Want to See Something Goofy?’ Peer Culture in the Preschool Yard” by Aaron Neimark( 2012) and“ Exploring the Forest: Wild Places in Childhood” by Anna Golden( 2012) as well as Goeson’ s and Sullivan’ s pieces highlighted earlier. Indeed, their work foreshadowed the narratives that have since appeared in Voices. In 2020 we began to formally invite and shepherd shorter, narrative-focused articles anchored in a real-life anecdote and connected to a yearly theme. We call these pedagogical narratives( Henderson et al. 2024; Henderson 2025). Through this process, we have now featured the voices of more than 30 new contributors.
This evolution highlights Voices of Practitioners’ past and future— supporting and amplifying educators who explore relationships, curiosities, collaboration, and changes in practice by linking everyday moments to broader questions of equitable, joyful teaching and learning. Our vision is to preserve the history of teacher research, to ensure that teachers’ voices remain visible and influential, and to advocate for continuing to improve and refine our understanding of and responses to how all children think, create, connect, grow, and learn.
Voices of Practitioners: Teacher Research in Early Childhood Education is devoted to teacher research. Visit NAEYC. org / resources / pubs / vop to
› Peruse an archive of Voices articles › Read the Winter 2025 Voices compilation
98 Young Children
Spring 2026