Children’s engagement in risk-taking has been on the agenda for early childhood education for the past 10–15 years. At a time when some say the minority world has become overly risk averse, early childhood education aims to support confident, competent and resilient children through the inclusion of beneficial risk in early childhood education. The concept of risk is a complex phenomenon. Beneficial risk is engaging in experiences that take a person outside of their comfort zone and include outcomes that may be beneficial to learning, development and life satisfaction. To date, research on beneficial risk in early childhood has focused on children’s risk-taking in outdoor play. This focus has led to a predominant conceptualisation of beneficial risk in early childhood as an outdoor physical play activity for children. In this article, the authors problematise this conceptualisation. Drawing on both broad and early childhood education specific literature, the authors explore the current discourse on risk in both childhood and early childhood education. The authors identify the development of the current conceptualisation of risk as an experience for children within play, outdoors and as a physical activity, and highlight the limitations of this conceptualisation. The authors argue that for risk-taking to be in line with the predominantly holistic approach of early childhood education, a broad view of risk is needed. To achieve this broad view, the authors argue for a re-conceptualisation of risk that encompasses a wide range of risk experiences for both children and educators. The authors suggest further research is needed to expand our understanding of beneficial risk in early childhood education. They propose further research will offer a significant contribution to the early childhood sector.

Theory strengthens the methodological and interpretive stance of a research study and is most fruitful when theoretical understandings are shared within collaborative research teams. This paper describes an approach to engaging productively with a theory, specifically the theory of practice architectures. Such engagement enabled the use of the theory for data gathering and analysis within an Australian mixed-methods research study – Exemplary Early Childhood Educators at Work. Within the study, the theory offered a substantive lens for exploring exemplary educator practices and the organisational arrangements within early childhood education (ECE) sites that made those practices possible. The ‘unpacking’ of the theory of practice architectures led to the development of a suite of resource materials. This paper acts as an invitation to interact with and think on a practice theory and provides insight into the positive transformation of educational practices for the benefit of individuals and society.

There is little research to show how early childhood educators perceive risk-taking and whether, in the pursuit of high quality early childhood education, educators might take risks in their professional practice. We conducted a qualitative case study to explore early childhood educators’ views on, and engagement with, risk-taking in professional practice. Through thematic analysis of interviews with 55 educators in three high quality early childhood education services, we show that, for the educators in the study, risk-taking was a valuable aspect of professional practice driven by three main motivations: professional growth and development; developing children as competent and empowered individuals; and advocacy and activism. We also show that educators’ risk-taking was enacted under five broad themes: providing opportunities for children to take risks; trusting children; doing things that are new; expressing ideas and beliefs; and including curriculum content that may be considered controversial, complex and inappropriate for children. We conclude that for educators in the study, risk-taking was enacted as courageous, ethically and morally driven praxis in pursuit of high quality ECE for the benefit of both individuals and society.

Children’s risk-taking is increasingly acknowledged as an important part of early childhood education. Previous research has predominantly focussed on children’s engagement with, and educators’ perspectives on, children’s risk-taking in outdoor physical play. However, little attention has been paid to how educators conceptualise children’s risk-taking more broadly. Our study addresses this research gap. A three-site case study, the research gathered data from educators in high quality early childhood services through observations and interviews. Findings show that educators predominantly framed children’s risk-taking as taking place in physical and outdoor play. However, with minimal provocation, educators extended their conceptualisations of risk to encompass a broader range of children’s experiences. Data suggests that participation in the research provoked many participants to think more broadly about children’s risk-taking.

Relational pedagogy has shifted educational focus from knowledge transmission to cultivating relational conditions for learning, foregrounding responsiveness, recognition, and democratic participation. In early childhood education and care (ECEC), however, “the relational” remains predominately anchored in the educator–child dyad, narrowing what becomes visible as pedagogy and obscuring the relational complexity of everyday life in ECEC settings. This conceptual article reconceptualises relational pedagogy in ECEC as an ecology of relations and brings four often-marginalised domains into view: children’s self-relations, child–parent relations, peer relations, and more-than-human relations. Together with child–educator relations, these five relational domains are framed as interdependent and mutually shaping, such that shifts or ruptures in one domain reverberate across the others. Drawing together relational pedagogy scholarship, curriculum framings, and critiques of neoliberal market-accountability governance, this article shows how dyadic and metric-driven logics can position these wider relations as pedagogically secondary or render them invisible. An ecology-of-relations framing offers conceptual language for recognising, researching, and defending relational flourishing in ECEC, and for redirecting attention toward how ecological relations are made possible, sustained, and reshaped in ECEC contexts.