The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of musical play on the social skill development of third-grade students and to investigate the opinions of classroom teachers on the effect of musical play on the social skill development of their students. The study sample consists of 60 students: 30 in the experimental group, and 30 in the…

Background: Play is an essential component of children's development. Children with intellectual disability tend to have poor socioemotional abilities and impaired play. This study examined the effects of a medical/therapeutic clowning play intervention on the playfulness of children with intellectual disability. Method: Two medical clowns…

The author follows a new materialist approach to consider the informal and collaborative creative gathering called jamming as creative play, and she makes a case for the jam as a transformative event of genuine intrasubjective dialogue. She uses Karen Barad's theory of agential realism and Hans-Georg Gadamer's ethics of play to argue for the jam…

Today, digital media technologies are ubiquitous and mundane, making the relationship between digital and analog messy and porous. This postdigital condition prompts new analyses of how young children's local encounters with digital media technologies unfold, and how their relationships with digital media technologies carry on after they leave…

This article presents three cases of school districts/consortia in a southeastern state, where standardized measures focused on teacher/child interactions rather than student outcomes were implemented to guide decision-making. These three districts/consortia were funded annually for three years to implement innovative professional development…

The present article aims to systematically summarize the effects of free-play (FP) on preschool-aged children's physical activity (PA) level, and motor (MC), cognitive (CC), and socioemotional competence evaluated through randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. A systematic review of relevant articles was carried out using two electronic…

The author investigates the imaginative play of children online as they seek a common, shared space with others, in which to play. She looks at components of children's online play experiences, including mediated actions, discourses, literacies, sense of belonging, and online restrictions as they moved between digital and nondigital realities. She…

This study seeks to understand how children express themselves socially and emotionally in play negotiations in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. It addresses the following research questions: What strategies do children employ in play negotiations? How do these strategies manifest themselves socially and emotionally? The study…

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on school-going children. With the indefinite closure of schools in many parts of the world, many children found themselves with limited avenues for play and interaction. The current qualitative study, anchored on social capital theory, aimed at investigating the informal learning that took place as…

Repetition is a salient strategy used by human and non-human cohorts for learning and controlling behavior. It this research project, a case study was conducted to explore deliberate voluntary repetition in younger cohorts during their spontaneous solitary play with single or multiple objects. Two main types of repetition -- blocked and random --…

The development of social and emotional learning in children can directly impact overall learning, emotional skills, and socialization of young children (The Urban Child Institute, 2024). Equal emphasis on social and emotional learning should mirror the importance and impact of academic learning. A philosophy of integrated social and emotional…

This article focuses on elements of successful sociocultural inclusion and linguistic participation in a bilingual dual-language preschool for Latinx children. It presents a subset of findings from a three-year qualitative research project in which Latinx critical race theory and a translanguaging framework were used to illuminate critical…

Currently, despite the rapid growth of the population of Chinese immigrant families and children in the United States, preschool-aged Chinese-heritage children are an underrepresented group in research. The overarching purpose of this project was to provide a deeper understanding of Head Start Chinese immigrant parents' beliefs about children's…

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted educational systems throughout the world. School closures, virtual schooling, and strict safety protocols for in-person learning changed instructional approaches to teaching. These changes were particularly disruptive in early childhood education which relies on play-based learning to support…

We extended research on social skills training to determine if the activities first-grade students were engaged in while Tootling would influence their performance of two recently trained social skills: complimenting and encouraging peers. After receiving social skills training, students engaged in two experimental small-group activities, a…