Investigating children's outdoor play unites scholarship on neighborhoods, parental perceptions of safety, and children's health. Utilizing the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (N = 3,448), we examine mothers' fear of their 5-year-old children playing outdoors, testing associations with neighborhood social characteristics, city-level…

In this article, the authors focus on issues of instruction in classrooms. Initially, a brief definitional and historic section is presented. This is followed by a discussion of four assumptions about the current state of affairs: (a) evidence-based practices should be identified and used, (b) children's phase of performance should dictate…

Data from two qualitative research projects indicated a relationship between the type of early childhood setting and children's independent collaborative play. The first research project involved 22 three and four-year-old children in a daylong setting and 47 children four-year-old children in a sessional kindergarten. The second project involved…

Sand play commonly occupies children at preschools, child-development centers, and school and park playgrounds. The authors review the research on sand play and present a small study on outdoor sand play conducted at a university-based, child-development center using a method they call "facilitated-action research." This study had four…

Rough-and-tumble play, or play fighting, is common in the young of many mammals. Research on play fighting among rats shows that there are many levels of neural control over this behavior: subcortical mechanisms mediate the motivation and behavior of such play, and the cortex provides mechanisms by which the play changes with age and context. The…

Jaak Panksepp, known best for his work on animal emotions and coining the term "affective neuroscience," investigates the primary processes of brain and mind that enable and drive emotion. As an undergraduate, he briefly considered a career in electrical engineering but turned instead to psychology, which led to a 1969 University of…

This publication covers the planning and design of school grounds for outdoor learning in new and existing K-12 facilities. Curriculum development as well as athletic field planning and maintenance are not covered although some references on these topics are provided. It discusses the different types of outdoor learning environments that can be…

Through play, children develop cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically. Preschoolers go on a journey of self-discovery during play activities, learning self-regulation and how to accurately represent themselves in the environment. This study explored the play behaviours of eight different children in two different schools. Four children…

In many countries there are very few men in professional care for young children. In this paper we will focus on the different perspectives of male and female workers to outdoor play and discuss the role of outdoor activities in recruiting more men to pre-schools. The article is based on research in Norway and Austria. The results draw the…

Although Japanese schools are generally considered to be one of the most gender-equitable social institutions in Japan, they play an important role in helping to reproduce and naturalize the notion of sex-based separate spheres, through endorsing the maintenance of such separate spheres in extracurricular sports clubs, such as baseball, where…

This study interrogates the idea of using videogames and game-like virtual worlds as a means to advance studio education pedagogy. Looking at a series of case studies of urban planning courses taught using "Second Life," the results describe the potentials, and limits, of this emerging digital media. Key findings are that the virtual worlds…

The authors examined factors related to preschool children's reasoning about including a hypothetical peer with a physical disability in different play activities. They hypothesized that children's inclusion decisions would be influenced by features of the physical environment, attention to issues of fairness and equity, and individual child…

A multiple probe design was used to examine the relation between teachers' use of the system of least prompts, contingent imitation, and praise, and the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of pretend play by 4 children with disabilities. The teachers' use of the intervention package was functionally related to increases in the children's…

This article looks at how children between three and six years of age use recorded music in their everyday lives. In Norway, where the project is situated, most children in this age group probably have access to CDs and/or Mp3 files, both in their family homes and pedagogical day-care facilities. Thus recorded music and the way it is used by…

Virtually all conscientious teachers in the field of physical education aim to enhance the quality of their classes by introducing both content and approach innovations into their gymnasiums and classrooms, because the "same old stuff" just won't help achieve the goal of creating and maintaining an interest in the topic. Thus, one way to…