This study took place in an inner metropolitan Adelaide school and a rural school on Kangaroo Island off the South Australian coast. We compare 33 eight- to 10-year-old children's accounts of what the area is like for them. What are the rules and boundaries and who sets them? Metropolitan children were found to have tighter boundaries and required…

The purpose of the present study was to use video modeling to teach children with autism to engage in reciprocal pretend play with typically developing peers. Scripted play scenarios involving various verbalizations and play actions with adults as models were videotaped. Two children with autism were each paired with a typically developing child,…

High-stakes testing combined with the notion that indoor and outdoor spontaneous play are a "waste of time" have contributed to the condition known as "play deprivation". This paper defines the term play deprivation and explores its negative effects on children and adults. Negative effects resulting from play deprivation…

Drawing from 30 years of teaching and professional development experience, this book offers a roadmap for using children's literature to provide authentic learning. Featuring a "storyteller's voice," each chapter includes a case study about how a particular fiction or nonfiction work can be used in an early childhood classroom; a series of…

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of time spent in outdoor play (i.e., on weekday and weekend days) on daily (i.e., average step count) and aerobic step count (i.e., average moderate to vigorous physical activity [MVPA] during the weekdays and weekend days) in fifth grade Costa Rican children. It was hypothesized that: (a)…

Few studies of adult playfulness exist, but limited research on older adults and playfulness suggests that playfulness in later life improves cognitive, emotional, social, and psychological functioning and healthy aging overall. Older adults represent a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, underscoring the need to understand the aging…

Geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon, 2003) frames this analysis of play, multimodal collaboration, and peer mediation as players navigate barriers to online connectivity in a children's social network and gaming site. A geosemiotic perspective enables examination of children's web play as "discourses in place": fluidly converging and…

Playful structure is a new pedagogic image representing a more balanced and integrated perspective on early years pedagogy, aiming to blend apparent dichotomies and contradictions and to sustain and evolve play-based practice beyond Year 1. Playful structure invites teachers and children to initiate and maintain a degree of playfulness in the…

Early exposure to science may have a lifelong effect on children's attitudes towards science and their motivation to learn science in later life. Out-of-class environments can play a significant role in creating favourable attitudes, while contributing to conceptual learning. Educational science theatre is one form of an out-of-class environment,…

The current study was conducted with groups of first grade children (aged six years) in two primary schools in Reykjavik in an endeavour to ascertain how they recalled and reconstructed their playschool experiences. The children's playschool teachers were co-researchers participating in the data generation; they were, at the same time participants…

The project on which this report is based set out to establish how exploring children's musicality might encourage adults to consider their engagement with the musical play and learning of children under the age of five. Through reflection and evaluation the participants became aware that they were challenging their own teaching style in response…

In this study, a multiple baseline design across three young children with autism was used to assess the impact of individualized behavior support, implemented through family-school collaboration, on the children's appropriate and problem behaviors and adult-child interactions. A positive behavior support process was used to promote family-school…

Teaching children with autism to interact with their typically developing peers can be a challenge. Previous research has documented that there are many effective ways to teach social interaction; however, interventions in this regard are usually implemented by professionals. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of…

Deficits in executive function, and in particular, reduced capacity to inhibit a dominant action, are a risk factor for externalizing problems (EP). Inhibitory control (IC) develops in the later preschool and early childhood periods, such that IC might not regulate EP in toddlers and younger preschoolers. Aggression was observed during peer play…

Research Findings: The present study concerns children's behavioral adjustment in the context of pre-primary schools in Tanzania. Twenty teachers and 320 children from 20 pre-primary schools participated in the study. Teacher-child relationships, children's behavioral adjustment, and teachers' cultural beliefs were reported by teachers; classroom…