The extensive empirical research inspired by Piaget and Vygotsky's theories of make-believe play has been criticised for restricting data to Western, urban, middle-class children. We seek to redress this bias by researching the traditional black South African Pedi children's game Masekitlana. Our data relies on embodied memories enacted by Mapelo…

A growing body of research indicates that when parents are engaged in their children's learning and development, their children do better in school. This brief reports on what was learned through recent interviews with Latina immigrant mothers about the techniques they used to support their children's education at the most malleable stage of…

For children age birth to five, physical, cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional growth and development occur at a rapid pace. While all children in this age range may not reach developmental milestones (e.g., smiling, saying first words, taking first steps) at the same time, development that does not happen within an expected timeframe can…

One of the fastest growing student groups today is the biracial student population. This study is part of a larger exploratory descriptive study on biracial college students with a focus on the extent to which parents socialized their biracial children in the cultures of both parents while growing up and how these students chose to self-identify.…

Brian Swimme's insights about the Story of the Universe look to the unifying impact of a "cosmic story" that speaks to all cultures and nations. Swimme suggests that humans are now able, through science and narrative, to present a story which will make us all a "cohesive tribe" while answering the universal questions of…

Clinical practice frameworks are a valuable component of clinical education, promoting informed clinical decision making based on the best available evidence and/or clinical experience. They encourage standardized intervention approaches and evaluation of practice. Based on an international project to support the development of an enhanced service…

Recent scientific evidence demonstrates both the incredible potential of the brain to grow and change and the powerful impact of growth mindset messages upon students' attainment. Schooling practices, however, particularly in England, are based upon notions of fixed ability thinking which limits students' attainment and increases inequality. This…

Educating American Africans boys has been a mixture of political rhetoric, educational pedagogy, and historical neglect. Although American African educators have produced several models for effectively educating Black boys, most of them are dismissed as too "radical" by White researchers who have little understanding or experience in…

This chapter looks at John Dewey's consideration of childhood as a platform which to view the significance of childhood in moral life. It argues that the concept of childhood is integral to our thinking in the teaching and learning relationship. When we consider childhood from Dewey's platform, we see that childhood is relevant to…

The authors consider the analysis of the literature on play research by Lillard and others in the January 2013 "Psychological Bulletin," an analysis that questioned the prevailing assumption of a causal relationship between play and child development, especially in the areas of creativity, reasoning, executive function, and regulation of…

The authors discuss the association between make-believe play and the development of executive-function (EF) skills in young children. Some forty years ago, Lev S. Vygotsky first proposed that make-believe fosters the development of symbolic thought and self-regulation. Since then, a small body of research has produced evidence of an association…

Bandura's Social Learning Theory purports that early exposure to this social information may have an impact on children's schema development (e.g., Bandura, 2001), which may influence how children and later adults think about what it means to age and get older (e.g., what it means to be an aging woman in society). By extension, if the…

Although early studies of executive functioning in children supported Miyake et al.'s (2000) three-factor model, more recent findings supported a variety of undifferentiated or two-factor structures. Using a cohort-sequential design, this study examined whether there were age-related differences in the structure of executive functioning among…

This study investigated fast mapping in late-talking (LT) toddlers and toddlers with normal language (NL) development matched on age, nonverbal cognition, and maternal education. The fast-mapping task included novel object labels and familiar words. The LT group scored significantly lower than the NL group on novel word comprehension and…

Previous studies have shown that the "strength" of connectivity between regions can vary depending upon the cognitive demands of a task. In this study, the "location" of task-dependent connectivity from the primary visual cortex (V1) was examined in 43 children (ages 9-15) performing visual tasks; connectivity maxima were identified for a visual…