The author discusses American philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey and the Laboratory School he founded at the end of the nineteenth century at the University of Chicago, where he conducted important studies of child development. The author notes the influence of Dewey's theory of (and pedagogical guidelines for) children's play,…

In an age when play is often seen as frivolous or unproductive, this book explains the importance of play in early childhood education. Each chapter focuses on a specific type of play, includes suggestions for putting theory into practice, and offers recommendations for language and information educators can use to help parents understand that…

There is currently a debate as to whether academic content at kindergarten crowds out time spent in creative arts, free play, and physical activity. Analyzing kindergarten teachers' reports of their instruction from the ECLS-K:2011, this study examined whether core academic content or advanced academic content in math or English language arts…

This study investigates the way a kindergarten teacher implemented a three-stage project to support children's map understanding. The project, the Map and Play, was designed to help children understand the relationship between reality and its abstract representation. The guided play was adopted as the pedagogical approach because it empowers…

Despite the growing literature on education issues of Somali people inhabiting the northeastern provinces bordering Somalia, the smaller Somali clans settled in the Wardei community have rarely been reviewed. This study analyses the capabilities and functioning of Wardei school girls in Kenya's Tana River region, using the Stop Violence Against…

Using data from a year-long case study in a Midwestern public school in the United States, the author invites readers into the play world of four multilingual and multiracial boys, affectionately named the "LEGO Boys" by their third-grade teacher. As documented in the findings, the boys maintained a cohesive narrative about how their…

In our conversations about sexuality, Kathleen Quinlivan and I mused over how a subject as potentially vibrant and life-enhancing as sexuality education could so often be taught in uninspiring and disembodied ways. Students' existing critique of much sexuality education is that it is typically disease and danger focused, marginalises the sensuous…

This article presents retrospections on selected methodological explications of a slow research process with child citizens living in the urban, Sør-Trondelag region of Norway. The process was akin to what Gallacher and Gallagher have termed "muddling through" and was about primarily about 'arriving at, asking and then attempting to…

This longitudinal study examined the degree to which standardized measures of language and natural language samples predicted later language usage in a heterogeneous sample of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and how this relationship is impacted by ASD severity and interventions. Participants with a diagnosis of ASD (N = 54, 41…

We propose the results of a research that combines the educational and psychological media approach, to verify the pedagogical potential of coding and robotics in the learning processes of 4-year-old children at the cognitive and socio-relational level. The study investigated the impact of unplugged and plugged coding on the skills of spatiality,…

Despite the widespread recognition of the significance of outdoor play in early childhood development, centers for early childhood education (ECE) face the challenge of striking a balance between active play activities and safety concerns. Thus, the visual attention of teachers is critical. Studies that compare the visual attention of novice and…

When playwork settings re-opened in July 2020 after the first lockdown in March 2020, playwork as a profession demonstrated its adaptable and flexible nature for children to access the provision. This included open access provision becoming closed access and bookable, a reduction in the number of children, resources, and space to play, and…

In this article, the author introduces a series of socially engaged practices conducted between April 2019 and August 2020. In this project, titled "Project Superhero," children made meaning and projected their wishes through pretend play as superheroes. Their superhero gadgets were semiotic resources helping to reveal the children's…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of block play on the creativity of children. The present study adopted a quasi-experimental research design, with pre- and post-test control groups. The study group consisted of a total of 52 children, enrolled at preschool education institutions in Ankara province in Turkey. The children…

Adults, including early childhood teachers and caregivers (i.e., parents, carers, kinship members), have an important role in supporting young children's learning through play in early childhood. However, little consideration has been given to the relationship between these significant adults' perspectives of play and the play experiences of young…