Preschools and kindergartens will become the happiest environment for children when they adopt innovative thinking about the value of active playful learning, have only developmentally appropriate expectations, manage behavior solely with kindness, and, in general, foster healthy social-emotional development and create a joyful, positive…

This paper draws on a three-year ethnographic study during which we investigated young children's cultural development in a Brazilian early childhood centre. A cultural-historical approach was used to understand the concept of autonomy. We focus on Danilo, a very young child who overcame his fear of using a play slide (a cultural artefact). We…

This study aimed to uncover kindergarten teachers' experiences and viewpoints concerning the challenge of integrating sufficient play into their classrooms amidst academic demands. This approach explored kindergarten teachers' experiences and perspectives to understand the complex dynamics between play and academics in early childhood education.…

This study examines five preschool teachers' narratives about using the outdoor environment as a pedagogical resource for children's play, learning and experiences in Swedish preschools. Participants were asked to reflect on both opportunities and challenges in outdoor play and learning. The present study responds to the need for further research…

Open Education Resources (OER) may support students in the Global South, who experience high cost of educational materials. This research aims to understand how students from the Global South adopt OER using the lens of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the concept of playfulness. In addition, we also explored the effect of cultural…

Background: Maternal input plays an important role in influencing linguistic development during the first years of life, and it is evident that mothers adapt their language according to their child's characteristics. Recently, it was demonstrated that maternal input addressed to children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs) at 8 months of age is…

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching effects on school-going children. With the indefinite closure of schools in many parts of the world, many children found themselves with limited avenues for play and interaction. The current qualitative study, anchored on social capital theory, aimed at investigating the informal learning that took place as…

Following the increasing impacts on the value of Western play-based pedagogy, early childhood (EC) teachers in China face developmental challenges related to understanding and implementing play-based mathematical education. The purpose of this paper is to explore Chinese EC teachers' perspectives on play-based mathematics teaching. In this…

The Playful Hybrid Higher Education project [https://playhybrid.education/], based in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary (Canada) and funded by the Imagination Lab Foundation, explores how play and creativity can be integrated into hybrid classrooms, particularly in response to the shift to blended…

The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the…

Recent proliferation of participatory performance forms has prompted debate on the agency of participants. Consideration of agential potential must go beyond the enactment of the work, however, to assess how participatory experiences can be self-documented and how such records may inform artistic pedagogy. Through discussion of a creative learning…

The exploration and/or manipulation of objects and materials, referred to as object-oriented play (OOP), is one of the most prominent activities children engage in during early childhood. Especially within early childhood education, it is important to be able to assess and understand OOP, its developmental trajectory, and developmental value. This…

Although neurotypical children often spend the majority of their time engaged in play activities, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can present with substantial delays in the development of play skills, requiring intensive intervention. Although targets for language and basic learning skills are often selected based on the development…

Children first establish the foundations of subsequent social interactions by learning basic toy manipulations skills (Weiss and Harris, 2001). Once the child has established these skills in isolation, they can then be expanded into the symbolic and dramatic levels of play. For children who do not display these foundational toy play skills, the…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain understanding of how Midwestern kindergarten teachers use developmentally appropriate play-based practices to support the standards in their classrooms. Five participants were selected based on meeting the criteria of being a kindergarten teacher in a Midwestern school district who incorporates…