Social gaming--online gameplay involving digital interactions with others--is a common form of social media use among adolescents. Research on this topic has neglected the social aspect of gaming and the potential role of social gaming in adolescent development. In this article, we define social gaming, drawing on interdisciplinary theories to…

We propose a novel model for learning environments to target the characteristics of digital natives and to improve informal learning practices, i.e. the exploration, discovery and self-monitoring of learning content and the reflection on learning activities. The Mobile Playful Learning Environment (MPLE) model is defined as consisting of seven…

The Early Learning STEM Australia (ELSA) pilot was a year-long investigation involving 300 educators and 4 500 four-year old children in one hundred learning centres across Australia. This paper reports on a pedagogical and design framework that was constructed to promote children's STEM engagement across digital and non-digital learning…

This article provides an overview of several studies in which the authors draw on social media, storytelling, and mobile apps to help children playfully develop their own approaches to science. The authors detail their efforts to strike a balance between the structure needed to promote science learning and the flexibility needed to nurture…