In this article, we present a framework for exploring participation in and social stratification of movement culture based on Pierre Bourdieu's concept logic of practice. The background to our approach is Lars-Magnus Engström's struggle to understand the impact of social stratification on participation in movement culture in a now nearly…

Kindergarten teachers face the challenge of balancing traditional developmental programming and contemporary academic standards. In classrooms following a play-based learning framework, academic content such as literacy is to be taught within children's play. However, educators have reported conceptual and practical challenges with integrating…

The present study examined maternal responses to infants' spontaneous communicative behaviors in a sample of 20 extremely-low-gestational-age (ELGA) infants and 20 full-term (FT) infants during 30 minutes of play interaction when infants were 12 months of age. Relations between maternal responses and infants' communication skills at 12 and 24…

In response to the authors, I demonstrate how threshold concepts offer a means to both contextualise teaching and learning of quantum physics and help transform students into the culture of physics, and as a way to identify particularly troublesome concepts within quantum physics. By drawing parallels from my own doctoral research in another area…

Offering an in-depth exploration of the distinctive features of the play development and learning of toddlers, this book provides useful materials, strategies and tools that can be used by practitioners supporting toddlers at this significant age. The book explores the context and concepts of wellbeing and is ideal for early years practitioners,…

This comprehensive text gives pre-service early childhood educators a balanced, accessible introduction to early childhood education that also covers the content areas. It shows readers how to teach and care for children by identifying and focusing on five essential elements: understanding child development, play, guidance, working with families,…

The Theory of Optimal Stimulation (Zentall & Zentall, "Psychological Bulletin," 94, 1983, 446) posits that the relation between activity level (AL) and cognitive performance follows an inverted U shape where midrange AL predicts better cognitive performance than AL at the extremes. We explored this by fitting linear and quadratic…

The purpose of this study was to explain children's indoor and outdoor play in preschool programs in terms of teacher interaction, peer interaction and task orientation. Children's indoor and outdoor play behaviors were compared using the Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS). Findings included significant differences on…

Given the evidence of the value of recess for children and teachers, what can educators, schools, and districts do to promote this critical aspect of the education of the whole child? Daily decisions about who gets recess and when and where it will happen are often made by teachers; thus, teachers are a crucial link for recess. Policies that…

Parents often find themselves ill-prepared for the moment at which questions of a sexual nature arise, or when children display signs of playful behaviour that can be interpreted as sexual. How these behaviours and questions are dealt with establishes the foundations on which children begin to interpret relationships, their bodies, those of others…

This article examines the ascendance of team sports as tools of "character building" in British Victorian public schools in the second half of the nineteenth century. The focus of this enquiry is the commonly overlooked pedagogical innovation underlying this process--the utilisation of "organised games" as educational tools.…

In contrast to studies focusing on digital games as learning tools, this study shows how young children use digital games as a means of facilitating spontaneous play in their everyday lives. This article highlights how 4 three-year-old children's play with digital games revealed their ability to create new forms of play by mixing their digital…

Humans are motivated to connect with others and are sensitive to social exclusion--intentionally leaving out others. This ability to detect social exclusion is suggested to be evolutionarily adaptive, biologically hardwired, and an important feature of social-cognitive development. Yet it is unclear when children start to independently detect…

This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy representations of plants and animals. To examine the potential role of culture and expertise in diorama play, children from 3 samples participated: rural Native American, urban Native American, and urban non-Native American. Children's playtime was divided…

In preschool settings, children challenge the adult-initiated rules in many ways during their play activities with peers. This ethnographic study with children aged 3-5 years was built on Corsaro's sociology of childhood construct that views children as agents and active participants in preschool society. The study is conducted in two preschools…