This paper focuses on the "Junkyard" ("chatzar grutaot")--a unique educational environment and practice developed in kindergartens on the Israeli kibbutz in the 1940s and 1950s, and still in wide use today in kibbutz kindergartens. The Junkyard, consisting of artefacts of the adult world that are no longer in use, is an…

Little research has been conducted on the play of children of very low English proficiency within English-speaking preschool classrooms. In the present investigation, we recorded and described the naturalistic free play of four dual language learners (DLLs) and compared their interactions to those of four English-speaking children. Units of…

Purpose: Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys' socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little…

The most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the third-grade level through visualization, play, and…

This position paper proposes that a relationship between young children's embodied mathematical concepts and their awareness of mathematical pattern and structure (AMPS) (Mulligan & Mitchelmore, 2009) develops through play. Theoretical perspectives on the development of schematic patterns, the embodiment of mathematical understandings, and the…

Serious games are used in the field of cultural heritage as a means to transmit cultural knowledge and enable an experiential contact with cultural content. The authors' aim is to investigate whether a game design exploiting the less used combination of complex storytelling, endogenous cooperation, and competition has the potential to sufficiently…

Many researchers have investigated the cooperative problem solving (CPS) of children during play; however, there is a lack of studies focused on teachers' beliefs about how to support the development of children's CPS in classrooms. This study aims to investigate the pedagogical beliefs of Chinese (n = 3) and US (n = 3) teachers about the CPS of…

The importance of a Piagetian approach is recognized in South African early childhood educational practices and teacher training, but the reality of the implementation of teaching and learning in the domain of early years opposes his philosophy in many ways. Our Early Childhood Education policies strongly advocate a Piagetian approach such as the…

As societies become more aware of the importance of early socio-emotional skills for children's later success, teachers report that they are ill-equipped to support and enhance these skills within their 'traditional' teacher role. This paper turns to the contributions that Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his adherents have made to our…

The amount of intentional, instructional, purposeful play has decreased in primary grades, and didactic, test-driven instruction has increased. Emerging neuroscientific evidence is beginning to highlight the significant effects the toxic stress from poverty has on developing brains. Almost half of American children can be considered to come from…

This article critically interrogates the model of language that underpins early years policy and pedagogy. Our arguments emerge from an ethnographic study involving 2-year-olds attending a day care centre that had begun to hold a substantial proportion of its sessions outdoors. The resultant shift in pedagogy coincided with changes in the…

Background: Scholars in the fields of early childhood education (ECE) and multicultural education have argued that preschools are key sites in which children learn about race and racism. However, there is little research on how teachers negotiate conflicting tensions and enact antiracist approaches within Head Start (HS) classrooms that use…

This study identified patterns of classroom and family experiences and developmental outcomes for young children in segregated early education. This study is based on data from a high-quality early education program serving young children from low-income households in 19 schools across the U.S. The sample included 1,521 children during the…

The study investigated the perception of early childhood educators on the use of play as a teaching technique in the Afadjato South District. The study was a cross-sectional descriptive design using concurrent triangulation mixed method approach. A sample of 120 participants was used comprising100 kindergarten teachers, 10 basic school heads and…

Focusing on children's play, the present article explores how 3- to 6-year-old children (re)produce, (re)negotiate and challenge heteronormativity in a Swedish Early Childhood Education setting. The article is based on ethnographic data, focusing on (re)production of heteronormativity in a particular kind of idealized, often feminine-coded and…