Play is an important component of a child's development and learning. Research studies on play therapy have shown the benefits it has on developmental areas such as behavior control, assertiveness, task orientation, and social skills. Primary Project is a school-based play intervention which has consistently shown improved social and emotional…

The brain undergoes profound development across childhood and adolescence, including continuous changes in brain morphology, connectivity, and functioning that are, in part, dependent on one's experiences. These neurobiological changes are accompanied by significant changes in children's and adolescents' cognitive learning. By drawing from studies…

This study aims to compare the effects of "questioning with minimal evaluation" (PE) and "prompt-evaluate-expand-repeat" (PEER) used in dialogic reading (DR) on children's language development. This study included 119 typically developing (TD) and 107 Chinese children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by using a pre- and…

Although professional development is widely used to improve the impacts of early childhood education, little is known about the conditions under which such interventions promote child outcomes. This study applies newly developed methods for quantifying intervention impact heterogeneity to understand whether educators' collective workplace stress…

Early literacy is largely acquired through child-led learning, yet current ways to support and enhance it may present problems of coercion and adult control. The "Following in our Footsteps II" intervention sought to circumvent such problems by teaching parent and educator pairs of 46 preschoolers how to make everyday literacy and…

Children hold many personal theories about education: theories about themselves, knowledge, and the learning process. Personal theories help children predict what their actions will cause, and therefore relate to motivation, self-regulation, and achievement. Researchers typically examine how specific types of personal theories develop…

Computer programming for young children has grown in popularity among both educators and product developers, but still relatively little is known about what skills children are developing when they code. This study investigated N = 57 Kindergarten through second grade children's performance on a programming assessment after engaging in a 6-week…

Research has shown that playful learning helps foster the development of young children. Adult guidance of this play in meaningful ways can unlock the transformative power of education. Lack of knowledge about guided play, however, often leads to children growing up without opportunities to learn through play. Considering this, the authors analyze…

The application of the formal framework of causal Bayesian Networks to children's causal learning provides the motivation to examine the link between judgments about the causal structure of a system, and the ability to make inferences about interventions on components of the system. Three experiments examined whether children are able to make…

The article reviews recent classroom research developed in South America related to child and adolescent development. We review work about three themes: ethnicity, school climate and violence, and the learning process. The few studies found on ethnicity and classroom experiences told a story of invisibility, if not exclusion and discrimination.…

It is possible that many benefits may be found for all concerned in education and child development in understanding how knowledge of the brain and its development can inform early years practice. This article, written by Brenda Peters and Chris Forlin, both from the Hong Kong Institute of Education, reviews literature based on neuroscience to…

The present study compared the gross motor skills of 7- to 12-year-old children with learning disabilities (n = 104) with those of age-matched typically developing children (n = 104) using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2. Additionally, the specific relationships between subsets of gross motor skills and academic performance in reading,…

This brief summarizes the working paper, "The Science of Neglect: The Persistent Absence of Responsive Care Disrupts the Developing Brain," and explains why neglect, or the absence of responsive, supportive care, can affect the formation of the developing brain, impairing later learning, behavior, and health. The brief also includes…

Four decades of early childhood policy and program development indicate that evidence-based interventions can improve life outcomes, and dramatic advances in the biological and behavioral sciences now provide an opportunity to augment those impacts. The challenge of reducing the gap between what we know and what we do to promote the healthy…

This book includes papers presented at Indiana University's International Conference on Young Children, which focused on basic research, early education programming and sociopolitical issues, relating all three to policymaking. Among the presenters were Basil Bernstein, Nicholas Anastasiow, Sara Smilansky, Virginia Shipman, Bettye Caldwell and Ira…