Grounded in Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory, this paper examines how often teachers are involved in children's imaginative play and discusses their beliefs about their role in supporting children's imaginative play. To investigate this problem, video (65 hours of digital observations) and interview data (two hours and 30 minutes) of 60…

The author offers what he calls an intervention in the Marxist analysis of the relationship between work and play. As an alternative to some Hegelian and sociological readings of Marx that seek to merge work with play as a means to overcome alienation, he provides an interpretation that emphasizes the importance of maintaining the difference…

Two preliminary pilot phases of a peer-mediated social skills program--Stay, Play, and Talk--within inclusive early years settings in Ontario, Canada, investigated changes in observed social interactions and perceived social skills. In Phase 1, a single-subject AB design demonstrated increases in total social interaction units for two of three…

A number of converging issues provided the impetus for 12 schools in the Western Bay of Plenty to form a support network to explore and develop play-based learning for the first years of school. This article discusses what has influenced our play-based learning approach and gains we have observed as a result. We acknowledge the challenges that…

Research has demonstrated that caregivers' use of intervention strategies can support their children's social engagement and communication. However, it is not clear to what degree caregivers must master the strategies to effectively support gains in social communication, specifically, core challenges such as joint attention language (comments).…

The purpose of this study was to explore children's play during recess and in physical education (PE) classes from the perspective of Huizinga's theory of play. Specifically, this study investigated how primary school PE teachers used the concept of play, how it was understood by student participants, and how the participants engaged in the…

This paper reports on a study of day care children, ages 2 years 6 months to almost 5 years old, who visited a naturalized area near their day care once a week, over several months. The focus of this paper is on the embodied learning and expression of children's learning, along with their use of oral language. The children engaged in some…

The present chapter examines early modern schooling in Sweden and more precisely how spatial conceptualizations of the outdoors (with regard to the use of it for recess, physical activity, recreational play, and other educational activities) were accumulated in formal curricula. The chapter draws attention to the introduction and origins of ideas…

Children spend at least seven and a half hours or 46.9% of their waking hours in the school setting, which brings a unique responsibility to schools (Beighle, Erwin, Morgan, & Alderman, 2012). School systems are expected to educate children according to adopted state standards and encourage a healthy, active lifestyle. The concept then is to…

This article explores how multicultural policy approaches, which mandate the inclusion of culturally and ethnically "diverse" play materials in early childhood classrooms influence the pedagogical practice of educators and, in turn, children's play and social interactions. Using data collected through participant observation of…

In this study, the authors look at the ways that global children's literature, drawing, and dramatic play were used as a means to generate children's understanding of issues such as poverty, fairness, and equity and to invite them to recontextualize conceptions of global issues into more localized and situated understanding through aesthetic…

The paper first outlines a differentiation of play/game-motivations that include "negative" attitudes against the play/game itself like cheating or spoilsporting. This problem is of particular importance in concern of learning games because they are not "played" for themselves--at least in the first place--but due to an…

Story writing is a complex semantic and creative task, and the difficulty of managing it is made greater by attempting to write in collaboration with others. This complication can deter students from experimenting with collaboration before mastering their own practice in relative privacy. Such reticence is in spite of the fact that there are many…

There is widespread international interest in parental education as a means of promoting educational equality through improving educational outcomes for young children. The research in this area suggests an association between the home learning environment and children's educational outcomes and highlights the importance of parental education for…

This article reports on a knowledge-exchange network project that had the core aim of informing the development of a video game for hospitalized children. In order to do this, it brought together hospital play specialists, academics and representatives from the digital games industry to co-produce knowledge that could be used in the future…