Play and playfulness have been central to progressive pedagogies since the birth of the kindergarten. Yet their position in many contemporary education discourses is often ambivalent and at times fragile. In the Global North, many critics warn of a 'play crisis' and 'play deficit'. This essay attempts to trace a cultural and intellectual history…

Purpose: This paper offers a reflection of a research process aimed at listening to young children's voices in their everyday school life through a play-based context in a Scottish school. Throughout the research process, the complexity of conducting this research was kept in mind as listening to children's voices presents methodological and…

Background: Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning technologies offer significant advantages, such as facilitating the delivery of reflective feedback in collaborative learning environments while minimising technical constraints for educators related to time and location. Recently, scholars' interest in reflective feedback has…

The aim of this study is to analyse the process of gestation, development and scope of student participation as a movement for change and transformation in two participatory action research projects. Based on a common thematic axis, educational transitions, the construction process and the methodological development of participation are explored…

Sparse information exists on how elementary teachers might use reflective journaling as a tool for professional development (PD) to enhance their teaching methods. The problem is that even though elementary teachers have access to a variety of PD opportunities, these opportunities are often insufficient for meeting individual teachers' needs to…

This study is focused on exploring ways to disrupt imbalanced power dynamics in educational settings, specifically elementary schools. It includes reflections of the researcher's journey and experiences as a teacher in District of Columbia public and charter schools and how those experiences shaped who she became when she entered school…

Educators manage student readiness for learning by applying models of instruction. The most common model used, however, is imprecise about cognitive operations. One way educators address this issue is with reflection, but reflection means many different things. An approach for narrowing reflection is to focus on metacognition. Literature has shown…

This teacher-action research project explores using critical contemplative pedagogy in an upper elementary classroom setting to determine how youth media practices can be informed with combined critical media literacy instruction and contemplative exercises. Analysis of students' media production and deconstructions reveal promising outcomes for…

The purpose of the following case study was to examine the daybooks of 3 fourth-grade writers who autonomously determined the content they included across the pages of their composition books. Three themes emerged from an analysis of their daybooks: (1) Students used their daybooks to engage their "writing process"; (2) students used…

School leaders increasingly view inquiry-based professional learning as a means to address diverse aspirations concerning teacher development, school improvement, and regulatory requirements. This qualitative, case study uses interview data to investigate the experiences of school leaders during a one-year cycle of "Practitioner Inquiry:…

This research, which aims to determine the regulatory role of mindfulness in the relationship between creative thinking and reflective thinking, is a mixed method research in which quantitative and qualitative research methods are used together. The research was designed in a mixed-method convergent parallel design. The quantitative part was…

Adolescents today need mental health support (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024), and schools are a place where a universal approach to positive well-being can be promoted (Weissberg, 2019). While programs exist for social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a call for teachers to find a way for daily SEL integration into the…

This paper contributes to accumulating the knowledge base about prospective elementary school teachers' (PTs') understanding of socio-critical modeling by exploring how PTs make connections to features of mathematical modeling and social justice while posing mathematical problems and reflecting on their problem-posing. We present a conceptual…

This investigation studied the effects of the Multiple Literacies in Project-Based Learning science intervention on third graders' academic, social, and emotional learning. This intervention includes four science units and materials, professional learning, and post-unit assessments; features of project-based learning; three-dimensional learning…

This reflective essay describes one fourth-grade class's efforts to engage in place-based inquiry regarding food access in response to COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts. Through this reporting, the author presents the following set of orientations that recognize the inescapable role that place has in teaching and learning and that positions…