Emotion is closely associated with language, but we know very little about how children express emotion in their own writing. We used a large-scale, cross-sectional, and data-driven approach to investigate emotional expression via writing in children of different ages, and whether it varies for boys and girls. We first used a lexicon-based…

This article examines the effects of Montessori music-movement activities on the development of the rhythmic abilities of 59 children from Montessori preschools, aged between 3 and 6 years. Children were deployed into two experimental groups (EG 1 (n = 20) & EG 2 (n = 22)) and a control group (CG) (n = 17). Our intervention consisted of…

In France, many social representations refer to gifted children who describe them as hypersensitive, curious, and creative. Although sometimes inaccurate, these representations can be conveyed in media intended for children and contribute to an erroneous transmission of characteristics of children with particularities. The objective of this study…

Evolution is the integrative framework of the life sciences. Even though the topic is often not formally introduced before high school, young children already have various ideas about evolutionary principles (variation, inheritance, and selection) and their underlying key concepts (e.g., differential fitness, reproduction, and speciation).…

Background and context: Researchers have been investigating ways to demystify machine learning for students from kindergarten to twelfth grade (K-12) levels. As little evidence can be found in the literature, there is a need for additional research to understand and facilitate the learning experience of children while also considering the African…

Scholars of early childhood education have urged qualitative researchers to adapt their methods for use with young children. However, unjust social imaginations of childhood (e.g., who is considered a "child") play out in qualitative research, particularly for young children who are made most vulnerable by intersecting oppressions (e.g.,…

One way to support young children's factual learning is through shared book reading (reading books with a knowledgeable other). Many books that teach factual content are narrative in structure, in which factual content is embedded within a fictional storyline. However, there are gaps in our understanding of factors influencing children's factual…

115, 6-9-year-olds (M age = 7.47 years) participated in a scripted event during which the child's mother or a stranger broke a forbidden puppet and requested secrecy. Then, children were either (1) primed for the goal of honesty (prime), (2) asked to promise to tell the truth (oath), or (3) given no instructions (control) before responding to…

Religion remains an aspect of culture often missing from picturebooks, based on the misunderstanding that religion has no place in U.S. public schools. This absence is particularly critical for books reflecting the lives of Muslim children, given the rising Islamophobia in the United States. A critical content analysis to examine representations…

Elementary school principals play a key role in leading school personnel to provide prekindergartners and kindergartners with the support needed to ensure their short- and long-term school success. Yet, few studies examine how principals conceptualize what it means for children to be ready for school and how principals support students as they…

The child perspective, i.e. an adult understanding and viewing of a child, is frequently being discussed. However, it is open to individual interpretation as the concept is only vaguely defined. This paper focuses on factors characterising the child perspective held by adults in an organisation which treats and supports adults and children who…

Do children think of genetic inheritance as deterministic or probabilistic? In two novel tasks, children viewed the eye colors of animal parents and judged and selected possible phenotypes of offspring. Across three studies (N = 353, 162 girls, 172 boys, 2 non-binary; 17 did not report gender) with predominantly White U.S. participants collected…

Purpose: It is essential to develop and improve instruments that measure and assess children's attitudes towards the elderly. Despite the degree of questions related to this topic, no tools validated for the Portuguese population on the subject were found in the literature. Consequently, this study aimed to translate and validate a scale designed…

Supporting children's understanding of the everyday, cultural use of written numerals is highly significant, as it is this understanding that gives meaning to classroom conversations on the purposes of written numbers. This paper presents findings from a phenomenographic study of the qualitatively different ways in which 3-5-year-old children…

The author draws on Lev S. Vygotsky's conception of play and Gunilla Lindqvist's methodology concerning the aesthetics of play to discuss play practice in early childhood classrooms. Based on the study of an educational experiment at a primary school, she discusses how children in a school setting simultaneously engage in developed forms of…