This chapter suggests that individual and cultural/contextual contributions to learning and development can be understood as mutually constituting aspects of a holistic fractal process flowing across generations. To examine specific aspects of the dynamic mutually constituting process, the chapter suggests foregrounding or focusing on one aspect…

US Catholic schools have been known to educate the whole child. However, the Catholic sector has not widely embraced a shared understanding of whole child education or how it is operationalised, nor have researchers interested in this sector effectively measured the impact of approaches in any or all domains. This conceptual paper presents a…

Theoretical foundations are fundamental to research in health and physical education. They reflect historical and cultural ideas and values. In this article, we seek to introduce the philosophy of "Bildung" from the Nordic-German cultural region to an English-speaking audience as one theoretical foundation for student-centered teaching.…

New energy, new evidence, and an emerging consensus on how learning happens have created a remarkable opportunity to galvanize widespread adoption of a whole child approach. However, messages about how learning happens are often obscured by confusion over terminology, weakening the field's overall ability to tell a compelling story about social,…

This article seeks to provide researchers and practitioners in laboratory education, particularly those involved in the curriculum design and implementation of teaching laboratories at university level, with a conceptual framework and a working model for an integrated assessment of learning domains, by attending to a more holistic approach to…

Major developmental theories been a resource to early childhood education researchers and educators. They help to explain how child development unfolds, sources of vulnerability and protection that influences child development, and how the course of development may be altered by prevention and intervention efforts. Understanding factors which may…

The importance of a Piagetian approach is recognized in South African early childhood educational practices and teacher training, but the reality of the implementation of teaching and learning in the domain of early years opposes his philosophy in many ways. Our Early Childhood Education policies strongly advocate a Piagetian approach such as the…

A moon exploration is one example of what Jasmine, and other children in the experimental township of Auroville in India, experience on a regular basis--the Auroville equivalent of a physical education class. It is one of the practices in Awareness Through the Body (ATB), which is described by its creators as "a comprehensive curriculum of…

Among the many models of school reform that have emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, one has endured for more than 50 years: the School Development Program (SDP). Established in 1968 by renowned child psychiatrist James P. Comer and the Yale Child Study Center, the SDP is grounded in the belief that successful…

Connection to nature is a fundamental aspect of human learning dating back to ancient times. Research shows that there is no more effective resource for children to develop physical, social and emotional skills than being exposed to a curriculum in outdoor education. Getting students involved in outdoor activities clearly supports the National…

New advances in neurobiology are revealing that brain development and the learning it enables are directly dependent on social-emotional experience. Growing bodies of research reveal the importance of socially-triggered epigenetic contributions to brain development and brain network configuration, with implications for social-emotional…

In this article I propose that curriculum and instruction are inextricably intertwined, curriculum development should be an important function of educational supervision, and supervision should foster a multidimensional curriculum developed by teachers. The proposed curriculum framework includes cognitive, social-emotional, moral, cultural,…

Studies of learning are too frequently conceptualized only in terms of knowledge development. Yet it is vital to pay close attention to the social and emotional aspects of learning in order to understand why and how it occurs. How Students Come to Be, Know, and Do builds a theoretical argument for and a methodological approach to studying learning…

In this updated version of their chapter from "Children's Play: The Roots of Reading" (published by ZERO TO THREE in 2004), the authors describe the recent attack on play, in both early childhood and elementary education. They provide a historical overview of the contentious relationship between play and cognitive development. The authors stress…

The limited number of organized sport and exercise programs available in urban areas in comparison with more affluent communities, as well as the limited resources, the low pay of service providers who offer the programs (especially in youth work), and the besieged mentality of many professionals require our attention and assistance. Our field…