In this study, we explored whether access to block play is beneficial to mathematical learning for young children in a low-income country. The research, conducted in Papua New Guinea, explored if access to Duplo Lego blocks, across a 7-month period, in early childhood education settings facilitated mathematical learning for children, aged from 5…

Children's block building has long been a focus of psychological research, in part because block building skills are thought to be useful indicators of other abilities such as representational thinking. Block building skills are assumed to progress through developmental stages and a number of measures have been developed to assess these skills. In…

The authors discuss assortative mating, the tendency--important for increased genetic variation--of individuals to mate with the phenotypically similar at rates greater than chance. Influenced by many factors--physical characteristics like height and weight and demographic elements like behavior and attitudes, economic status and education, church…

T. L.Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and cofounder and Director of Research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to supporting and developing fair and inclusive esports. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades, and her…

Novice design students struggle to engage with early stage design visualization tools such as sketching and prototyping. Instead students have a preference for designing with digital tools such as CAD modelling, motivated by inhibitions around sketching skill, which in turn leads to fixation and sunk cost effects. These behaviors present a barrier…

Collaborations that lead to creative outputs occur within different group contexts and with diverse populations, including young children. Two cases of collaborative drawing are presented in this article to consider how young children engage in creative collaboration by negotiating meaning with others through open-ended group drawing. We…

This article reports on a study of practitioners' use of In-the-Picture -- a reflective, observational approach -- when delivering early intervention programmes to young disabled children. To date, In-the-Picture has been used mainly by researchers to study interactions and learning between young children, practitioners and the children's parents…

This paper introduces the concept 'mutual experiences' to highlight how a researcher's sensory experiences may contribute to producing knowledge concerning children's bodily play in a natural environment. The article also demonstrates how photo-interviews can give a researcher virtual access to places and events where s/he cannot be present. The…

This article describes the concept of "driveway tennis" as a construct for student games making in physical education as an option for teaching sport for understanding. We connect the notion of games making in PE with a game-based teaching approach using the example of the Game Sense approach. We demonstrate how the concept of driveway…

Sedentary past-times such as video gameplay are cited as having a negative effect on children's Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS) acquisition. Conversely, "exergames" utilise 3D sensor control systems (eg, Kinect®) to offer full body interactive user experiences in which FMS outputs are often part of the game "play" experience.…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display deficits in social and conversational skills. One method used to improve social deficits includes video modeling. When targeting conversational skills, few studies have included individuals with ASD as conversational partners. We evaluated the effects of video modeling on commenting…

Children's play has shifted within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with increased time within the family home. This study responds to the following research questions: How did COVID-19 restrictions influence children's play within and outside the home? How did parents describe their role in their children's play during the first…

A growing evidence base has demonstrated the value of Forest School as an outdoor learning approach which supports a range of benefits including improved physical, social and mental wellbeing, increased confidence and self-esteem and the development of problem-solving skills. However, critics of Forest School have argued that a lack of theoretical…

This case study intended to investigate how early childhood preservice teachers' interaction skills were improved throughout teaching practice within the framework of learning-oriented assessment. The data of the study were collected from 17 preservice teachers in early childhood education. Observation notes and reflective journals were used as…

The development of digital pedagogy in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a relevant issue. The role of the ECEC leader in initiating and leading the development of digital pedagogy is important. The aim of this study was to explore the views of ECEC leaders on digital pedagogy and its development, as little research has been done on the…