This ground-breaking handbook provides a much-needed, contemporary and authoritative reference text on young childrens thinking. The different perspectives represented in the thirty-nine chapters contribute to a vibrant picture of young children, their ways of thinking and their efforts at understanding, constructing and navigating the world.

The Routledge International Handbook of Young Childrens Thinking and Understanding brings together commissioned pieces by a range of hand-picked influential, international authors from a variety of disciplines who share a high public profile for their specific developments in the theories of childrens thinking, learning and understanding.

The handbook is organised into four complementary parts:

How can we think about young childrens thinking?: Concepts and contexts

Knowing about the brain and knowing about the mind

Making sense of the world

Documenting and developing childrens thinking

Supported throughout with relevant research and case studies, this handbook is an international insight into the many ways there are to understand children and childhood paired with the knowledge that young children have a strong, vital, and creative ability to think and to understand, and to create and contend with the world around them.