The advancing social-communication and play (ASAP) intervention was designed as a classroom-based intervention, in which the educational teams serving preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorder are trained to implement the intervention in order to improve these children's social-communication and play skills. In this 4-year, multi-site…

Recent medical advancements have resulted in improved survival rates for "preterm" children, born before 37 weeks gestation. However, this population remains vulnerable to adverse physiological, neurological and emotional outcomes. Research suggests that the professionals involved with them as they enter and progress through school, such…

"StoryMaking" is a first-to-market book celebrating the multimodal literacies and learning that are demonstrated by young children as they imagine, play, make, and share their stories. It encourages inquiry-based play to develop literacy, and combines: (1) Story-retelling and story creation; (2) the Maker Movement--a creative and…

Cognitive development and sociocultural theories support the role of play and peer cooperative problem solving (CPS) in children's learning and development; nevertheless, we still lack cross-cultural studies that investigate children's CPS during play in natural classroom contexts in early childhood. A nine-month field work including ethnographic…

The scholarly chapters in this edited collection come from authors undertaking social justice research within the teacher education discipline. Authors examine, explore and critique those educational practices and structures that disadvantage minority groups. With a focus on social justice and inclusion, the book concentrates on themes of equity,…

Based on the authors' studies of material-discursively approached lives of children, this paper addresses the educational relevance of playing, through re-entangling and complicating divided, purpose-directed and individualistic conceptualisations of play. The unhelpful binary of conceiving playing as an end ("free play") as distinct…

The aim of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of a brief robot-mediated intervention based on Lego® therapy on improving collaborative behaviors (i.e., interaction initiations, responses, and play together) between children with ASD and their siblings during play sessions, in a therapeutic setting. A concurrent multiple baseline design…

Children's violently themed play has long been contentious within educational policy, parenting literature, and the academe, with conflicting views as to its immediate and long-term consequences. Yet, little attention has been given to the way in which the meanings and values attributed to childhood influence these debates. Drawing on an…

The vast majority of research in educational technology focuses, justifiably, on what might be described as "short-term" (or perhaps "medium-term") questions: how to improve an existing software system, how to assess a particular classroom innovation, how to teach some current subject matter in a more effective fashion. From…

The aim of this study is to provide more knowledge on how outdoor time in Norwegian kindergartens is used as a resource for educational activities regarding science education and physical education. Through a questionnaire and a focus group interview, the study investigated early childhood teachers' perceptions of their work with these subjects…

Ethiopia has made significant investments in early education programs since 2010. A national goal set by the government of Ethiopia aimed to enroll 80% children below the age of 6 years in kindergarten-level "O-classes." However, effective partnerships with communities and families are required to achieve this goal. This study explores…

This paper presents findings from an on-going international study of Early Childhood (EC) teachers' and children's use of Internet of Toys (IoToys) to understand possibilities for developing children's cognitive capacities (e.g., creativity, inquiry, engineering design thinking). The study employed a Design Based Research (DBR) method, where…

This project explored the effects of purposeful play after shared storybook readings on kindergarten children's reading comprehension, creativity, and language abilities. The participants were 42 (26 boys, 16 girls) culturally diverse kindergarten students attending an urban, public school in the northeastern United States. Some children (13) were…

This study explored teachers' perspectives of the use of social support for students with ASD through a qualitative case study. The four main themes to emerge from the interview data reflecting the teachers' recommended strategies for social support included (a) Teachers' views of students with ASD and social support, (b) Recommendations for best…

How can we transform places where people gather or wait into hubs for interaction and playful learning? Bus stops offer one setting in which to test this idea. Urban Thinkscape reimagines an everyday bus stop in an under-resourced area as an interaction zone instead of merely a place to wait for a ride. Results suggest that embedding playful…