Background: Researchers interested in more playful literacy practices often abandon school-related contexts to instead follow young people to after-school settings, community spaces, social spaces, home environments, and online hangouts. However, play also makes itself visible, even (and sometimes especially) in more formalized learning spaces.…

In early childhood education, playing with friends has long been considered developmentally appropriate and an indicator of a child's growing social competency. 'We are all friends' is a familiar mantra heard in classrooms and playgrounds. For children with a diagnosed disability and their families, inclusive settings offer the promise of play…

This article is based on video observations of three-year-old children's empathic expressions in the context of playful interactions in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions in Norway. The data were analysed within a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, searching for a system of the children's self-initiated empathic expressions…

The present study examined features of sibling and friend dyads' connectedness (e.g., length and emotional tone of connected sequences) and the quality of the dyads' interactions during play from early to middle childhood. Forty-four families with a 4-year-old focal child were observed at Time 1 (T1) and again at Time 2 (T2) at age 7 in two…

Personal and social development is an important area which influences children's learning journey in all levels of education. Examining the impact of the arts on children's development, there are several studies that adopt this focus. However, the majority of them focus on either primary or secondary education or on specific personal and social…

Symbolic play skills are important in language acquisition and child development. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties demonstrating such play behaviors. Imaginary objects symbolic play refers to play behavior in which children perform play actions without actual objects. Three boys with ASD (3-7 years) participated…

Success in an increasingly globalized world sets requirements for versatile communication skills and understanding about other cultures. One of the keys to success is versatile language skills, on which the European Commission spoke out as early as in 1995, recommending that every European citizen should learn two foreign languages in addition to…

This article focuses on the development of a theoretical framework for jazz dance in which researchers hypothesized how motif notation concepts from Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) and Language of Dance® (LOD) could be used to help learners understand how the roots and branches of jazz dance styles are related. We began by investigating the…

This study examined the connection between young children's social play, creativity, storytelling, and language abilities. Participants were 56 primarily European American preschool children. First, to assess creativity we asked children to draw several pictures. Children created stories about their pictures during the creative process. Second,…

Background: This article reports on the evaluation of a professional development programme for underqualified Grade R practitioners, many of whom work under challenging conditions. Aim: The study aimed to evaluate the practitioners' confidence, knowledge and practice of play. Setting: The programme involved a 5-week training programme for 1000…

Children's drawings have been analysed in research for several decades, frequently using a narrative style. This article introduces an innovative methodological tool to analyse young children's drawings. Taking a social semiotics perspective, the aim of this tool is not to replace narrative analysis but to complement it. The study was conducted…

Connecting to nature and spending time outdoors as children have been indicated as predictors of environmentally responsible behavior. This study examined whether a residential outdoor environmental education (ROEE) program contributed to the development of children's connection to nature and their attitudes and involvement in spending time…

U.S. mathematics teachers face considerable pressures to keep up with pacing guides and to prepare students for standardized tests. At the same time, they are called upon to engage students in innovative exploratory activities and to incorporate new technologies into their lessons. These competing priorities pose considerable challenges. Against…

This chapter comparatively analyzes the most recent national curriculum guidelines for early childhood education (ECE) in Norway, Finland, China, and Hong Kong. By exploring the aims and dominant concepts in the guidelines, we aspire to better understand how governments of different cultures utilize the dominant concepts, that is, play and…

The study's objective was to explore media consumption among children and its association with play as well as motor, social, and emotion recognition skills. The participants were 200 children between the ages of four and eight (M = 5.53), their mothers, and their teachers. Media consumption and play tendencies (frequency and playmates) were…