The host of the internationally popular early childhood podcast "That Early Childhood Nerd" provides a framework for understanding the importance of free play. Free play is disappearing from the lives of too many young children, leaving them vulnerable to negative effects on their physical and mental health, social and emotional growth,…

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…

Risky play helps children build resilience, develop prosocial skills, and support lifelong physical, mental, and emotional well-being. However, societal overemphasis on safety often limits schools' willingness to embrace risky play. Educators' beliefs about risk, lack of training, and restrictive school policies further reduce opportunities for…

Background/purpose. It has been established that students with special educational needs should have equal opportunities for learning with the rest of the formal developmental students in a common school, regardless of their characteristics or difficulties. In an environment that promotes normal physical and emotional well-being, mental…

Although the role of the home in supporting early childhood development, early learning and school outcomes is well established, the perspectives of caregivers on child development and schooling outcomes are comparatively underexplored. This qualitative study was conducted with caregivers of children aged 6-10 years in Mahikeng, South Africa and…

To create a socially just teaching method in higher education (HE), we used Fraser's social justice framework to create a new pedagogical method called student voice for social justice (SVSJ). SVSJ emphasizes student voice and empowerment by developing a co-constructed learning space where students can influence the procedure and content of the…

The recent development of AI Chatbot -- specifically ChatGPT -- has gained dramatic attention from users as evident by ongoing discussion among the education fraternity. We argue that prior to making any conclusion, it is important to understand how ChatGPT is being used in higher education across the globe. This paper makes a significant…

Foreign language learning is highly interactive and requires opportunities for academic speaking. The focus of this paper is how foreign language undergraduate students experienced this process in an online learning context. Through semi-structured interviews with seven undergraduate French, German and Spanish students, participants highlighted…

Parenting is widely considered to be among the most important influences on early childhood (EC) development. But to what extent and under what circumstances can EC parenting programs improve child learning outcomes? While substantial progress has been made toward addressing these questions in recent years, there have been few attempts to…

The literature on play and learning attests many developmental benefits for children. The Australian curriculum endorses play-based learning (PBL) as an age-appropriate teaching pedagogy. However, what enables or prevents PBL in the classroom is not well documented. The present study examined the responses of 334 teachers currently employed in…

Purpose: This study analyzes the significance of various attributes of developmental psychology developed by male and female students within higher education institutions (HEIs) in Cambodia. It also focuses on the mismatch between planned enrollments and the final selection of a course, and the knowledge and skills accessed during the study.…

This article serves as an introduction to the Special Issue on "Decolonizing and Diversifying Research in Cognitive Development." The Special Issue comprises six articles: two articles are empirical articles that focus on executive function development in under-represented environments, two articles address barriers pathways toward…

This book, now in its second edition, explores how physical education (PE) and learning through movement can be best enacted in schools in order to optimise children's wellbeing and subsequent academic learning. Drawing together extensive data from school communities around the globe, the author examines multiple dimensions of child health in…

As the academic and social-emotional needs of students in schools continue to increase, so too does the presence of dogs in educational spaces. This article aims to present an overview of past and present animal-assisted intervention practices in school settings. This comprehensive literature review examines the current state of research within…

Vygotsky (1978) describes play as having three main components, one being the ability for a child to create an imaginary situation, the second taking on and acting out roles, and the third, following a set of rules that were determined by the roles children took on during play during social or group settings. Hence, supporting much needed social…