A Review of Trends in Scandinavian Early Childhood Education and Care Research from 2006 to 2021

Reviewer’s comments

Authors’ Response

This was a well-researched paper. The authors are to be commended on their presentation of the data and clear research questions which were thoroughly addressed.

Thank you so much for this recognition and your thorough review of our manuscript.

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Figure 4 was very unclear and dates were difficult to read. Figure 5-What does multiple coding mean?

We have revised figure 4 and added an explanation for single vs multiple coding in line 123-125.

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Explanation needed to define categories of pedagogical practices and teaching and learning, particularly as it becomes a main point of discussion with a significant increase in publications falling under these categories.

Explanation for coding categories added in line 199-201.

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There should also be some acknowledgement of the cost and labor involved in conducting randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and longitudinal research designs. It is not common for this research in early childhood and while it may be needed, the grants that fund these studies are usually successful in medical sciences rather than early childhood.

Thanks, for your suggestion. Added in line 400- 402.

Reviewer’s comments

Authors’ responses

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to read this interesting paper. The review offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of research in the Nordic/Scandinavian countries.

Thank you for your recognition of our paper.

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During the reviewing process, I searched the NB-ECEC database to verify the trends and findings mentioned in this paper. I appreciate how you have identified the trends and limitations in the research, particularly the limitations related to the increase in English language publications in recent years. It appears that the NB-ECEC database was not adequately updated on Nordic international research in the first year.

Thank you for a thorough review of the manuscript and the NB-ECEC database. The NB-ECEC database has only published studies assessed to be of medium and high quality. The annual reports contain all identified studies. Therefore, the number of included studies in the reports will not match the number of studies published in the NB-ECEC database. Additionally, the coding in the reports differs somewhat from the coding in the NB-ECEC database. For example, codes such as mathematics, art, music, etc., are not included in the reports. This may also explain your comment in the point below. We agree that there should be more codes reflecting various subject areas. Please, see our comment below.

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I also appreciate that you added impact and key messages, my only reservation to your paper is that my eyes discovered more unexplored themes than the ones you identified. In my (not so systematic) search, I noticed that while many studies addressed the themes of physical activities, mathematics (67) Matematikk (39), fewer studies addressed art (7), kunst(8)  in early childhood education. This might have been noticed in the key messages.

We agree that this in an interesting point to note. However, this paper is an analysis of the annual NB-ECEC reports and the findings reported in these. The specific subjects/themes mentioned in your comment are not reported in these reports as the reports focus and on and report “higher level” categories of research topics, those reported in Figure 5, while the database also includes several more sub-level topics. Therefore, we find that it would be a bit confusing to address these in the key messages. However, we added in line 491 – 493 the need for more studies exploring the variation in different themes.