Explores the role of symbolic play in the cognitive and psychic development of the normal child and describes the autistic child. Reviews a model treatment program for autism developed at the City College of New York, discussing the therapeutic role of symbolic play in that model. (Author/MJL)

This paper discusses links among the process of creativity, symbolization, and learning. The importance of symbolization in thinking, in school learning, in child development, and in the behavior of creative learners is stressed. (DB)

Advocates the use, in the classroom, of a photograph of the planet Earth taken from space. Sees it as a powerful symbol for a unified world and its presence in the classroom as providing an expanded awareness of the unitary nature of the students' global home: one planet, populated by one human family. (KS)

Qualitative stories garnered from six students with mental retardation and published autobiographical and biographical stories by people with disabilities or their parents are used as a "research synthesis" to describe an intimate, caring relationship which is of central importance when constructing a non-traditional approach to literacy that…

The "symbol systems approach" to the study of computers in education that is outlined avoids the pitfalls of past media research--particularly research on the effects of television on children's learning and knowledge--and asserts that media can be usefully distinguished in terms of the symbol systems they present and the kinds of…