The authors explore the use of three basic tenets from Self-Determination Theory--competence, relatedness, and autonomy--for a definition of play that resists the current popular call for play to be freely chosen. They explore whether free play truly exists and whether complete choice constitutes an absolute requirement for children to consider…

Scholars in the field of early childhood education are still debating the inclusion of digital technologies in play-based pedagogy and our understanding of digital play in early childhood education is still developing. This research paper examines early childhood education teachers' views, aptitudes and attitudes towards digital technologies in…

Reason Racer is an online, rate-based, multiplayer game designed to engage middle school students in the knowledge and skills related to scientific argumentation. Several game features are included as design considerations unrelated to science content or argumentation. One specific feature, a competitive racing component that occurs in between…

Because children spend so much of their time in schools, their playgrounds offer a good setting for promoting active play in young lives. Teachers, instead of considering active play a taxing demand on their busy day, have begun to develop an informal curriculum for it. The authors review the research on children's active play and explores its…

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in children. We conducted a prospective study, which examined injury characteristics and outcomes of school-age children of 5.0-15.0 years (N = 10) who were admitted to hospital for a TBI. This study evaluated the role of age, gender, the Glasgow Coma Scale, mechanisms and…

This study proposes the application of trilingual learning model that employs Sundanese traditional playing as the learning strategy. This article is a part of a bigger ongoing research project investigating the establishment of trilingual learning model in kindergarten. It focuses on the development of lesson plans for the application of the…

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse how teachers perceive the internal learning environment at Swedish leisure-time centres and set it in relation to steering documents. The empirical data is based on a comprehensive web-survey of 4,043 leisure-time teachers in Sweden. The methodological approach is a qualitative directed content…

What is the nature of art/science collaborations in museums? How do art objects and activities contribute to the successes of science centers? Based on the premise that art exhibitions and art-based activities engage museum visitors in different ways than do strictly factual, information-based displays, I address these questions in a case study…

The author investigates what he believes one of the more important aspects of play--the experience it generates in its participants. He considers the quality of this experience in relation to five ways of viewing play--as action, interaction, activity, disposition, and within a context. He treats broadly the different forms of affect, including…

Drawing from the theories of feminist new materialism, this article looks closely at the ways children and things, particularly fabric remnants, work together to coconstruct stories. The data presented are part of a yearlong ethnographic study in the multimodal literacy play work of three early childhood aged children from working poor families.…

The development of babies whose families are homeless can easily be affected by their uncertain living arrangements. The PACT Therapeutic Nursery's attachment-based, trauma-informed, mindfully focused family interventions help these children and families move beyond the trauma of shelter living. In the past year, Nursery clinicians have infused…

Digital technologies are increasingly acknowledged as an important aspect of early childhood education. A significant problem for early childhood education has been how to understand the pedagogical use of technologies in a sector that values play-based learning. This paper presents a new framework to understand how children learn to use…

The authors argue that childhood played a special role in the cultural-historical theory of human culture and biosocial development made famous by Soviet psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky and his circle. Th?ey discuss how this school of thought has, in turn, influenced contemporary play studies. Vygotsky used early childhood to test and refi?ne his…

Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophical orientation concerning dialogism offers a challenge to contemporary play theory. This study demonstrates the benefits of a Bakhtinian analysis of double voicing in early childhood programs. Bakhtin's notion of dialogism, specifically Bakhtin's ideas on genre and utterance, has received less attention in the analysis…

The systematic use of reinforcers is an essential component of behavioral intervention for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Today, the use of rigorous formal preference assessments, including paired-preference assessments, are widely conducted to help determine which items to use as reinforcers during intervention. Although…