Young American children in today's public schools live in a world in which tensions around about identity (i.e., ethnicity and race, gender continuums, language backgrounds and proficiencies, cultural values and beliefs, economic resources, schooled experiences, literacy, and im/migration history) are part of everyday conversation. However, many…

This case study explores child, parent, teacher, and school-leader perspectives of a play-based learning (Pb-L) approach in one new-entrant classroom. Data were gathered through focus groups, interviews and an online survey. Findings indicate that children valued the opportunity for self-initiated, handson, interest-based exploration and social…

Improving students' achievement scores has been a critical issue for both educators and legislators. Eliminating or reducing recess to increase instructional time has become a common practice. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of recess on the academic achievement in reading and mathematics among third and fourth grade students.…

The conceptual role of the physical education specialist has expanded from that of the creator and disseminator of physical education curricula, to that of a comprehensive physical activity coordinator for the school. The coordinator's responsibilities usually include providing increased opportunities for students to be physically active during…

Vygotsky's seminal text on play was originally given as a lecture at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad in 1933, and is consequently a relatively late work. It is thanks to a stenographic record of the lecture that this text, a key influence on psychological research on play, has survived. This was Vygotsky's major work on play and…

Background: We examined the effects of short bouts of structured physical activity (SBS-PA) implemented within the classroom setting as part of designated gross-motor playtime on preschoolers PA. Methods: Preschools were randomized to SBS-PA (centers, N = 5; participants, N = 141) or unstructured free playtime (UPA) (centers, N = 5; participants,…

Surprisingly few empirical studies address how computational thinking works "in the wild" or how games and simulations can support developing computational thinking skills. In this article, the authors report results from a study of computational thinking (CT) as evinced through player discussions around the collaborative board game…

In this study, children's self-regulation was observed, along with other social and academic activities in kindergarten classrooms during whole group, small group, transition and play contexts. We examined how children's self-regulation and engagement differed among classroom grouping, play and transition contexts. Results showed that students…

The study of infants' interactive style and social stress response to repeated stress exposures is of great interest for developmental and clinical psychologists. Stable maternal and dyadic behavior is critical to sustain infants' development of an adaptive social stress response, but the association between infants' interactive style and social…

Sibling-directed teaching of mathematical topics during naturalistic home interactions was investigated in 39 middle-class sibling dyads at two time points. At time 1 (T1), siblings were 2 and 4 years of age, and at time 2 (T2), siblings were 4 and 6 years of age. Intentional sequences of sibling-directed mathematical teaching were coded for (i)…

With a teacher's busy schedule, it is easy to get stuck in the lesson planning doldrums. However, as this is an era when teachers can easily learn from and share with educators all over the world, and are interacting increasingly with connected and tech-savvy students, their interest in all things digital can be leveraged for learning by teachers…

The purpose of this article is to explore the context of the physical literacy movement and how it can impact play and participation. The article is intended to assist play advocates (i.e., physical education, recreation, sport educators) in implementing quality programs linked to curricular outcomes designed to foster the development of…

Drawing on ethnographic multi-modal data of the gendered and sexual dynamics of pre-school play (age 6) in a rapidly declining fishing and farming community in North Finland, this paper offers a glimpse into our sense-making of a short video-recorded episode in which three boys repeatedly pile up on and demand a kiss from one of their girl…

By observing children aged 4 and 5 within the highly organized space of an early years classroom, we can explore the ways in which young children's desire to express cultural agency drives them to draw upon space and materials in order to make meaning and examine the ways in which space and resources mediate such experiences. These observations,…

Purpose: This study investigated within-language and between-language associations between phonological memory, vocabulary, and grammar in French-English (n = 43) and Spanish-English (n = 25) bilingual children at 30, 36, and 48 months. It was predicted that phonological memory would display both within-language and between-language relations to…