THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL FROEBEL SOCIETY CONFERENCE IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER! We look forward to welcoming familiar faces and making many new friends at this, the 8th biennial IFS conference and our first in Japan. The conference is being organized by The Japanese Society for the Study of Pestalozzi and Froebel and co-organized by Hiroshima Bunka Gakuen University. Haven't yet registered for the conference? It's not too late! Visit the conference website here for details. Experts agree that high-quality early childhood education promotes the healthy cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of young children. Decades' worth of evidence shows that the highest quality early education is child-centred and play-based. And yet, in many places, early childhood education today is dominated by skills-based, academically-oriented, test-focused teaching.

We seek to change that.

As an organisation of educators, university-based researchers, and early years providers, the IFS provides an international forum for the development of the principles of child-centred and play-based educational theory and practice, especially but not exclusively those associated with the inventor of the Kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852).