Sozo Kurahashi's (1882-1955) theories, formed from his profound respect for children, have influenced Japanese early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners for a long time. They also have influenced the national ECEC curriculum in Japan, which emphasizes the need for a rich environment where children can actively learn and play rather…

Integral to the global nature play movement, nature play programs have flourished over the last decade, both in Australia and internationally. Internationally, there are two prominent schools of thought in this movement, Danish Nature Kindergartens, and British Forest Schools. The underpinning philosophy of Danish Nature Kindergarten programs has…

Previous research has supported selecting development-matched targets rather than age-matched targets to teach play skills to children with autism spectrum disorder. However, few studies have been conducted, and replications and extensions of this research are needed. The current study replicated Pane et al. (2022) by comparing the acquisition of…

Play has been discussed by mathematicians and mathematics educators as essential to mathematical progress and has been widely acknowledged to have a role in learning. Yet, play is rarely acknowledged, leveraged, or studied for mathematics learners beyond early childhood. Moreover, there are theoretical and empirical challenges with designing for…

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined interventions targeting play skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involving typically developing (TD) peers. The objectives of this work are to (a) identify and describe the characteristics and components of interventions aimed at improving play skills in children with ASD and…

In this paper, we analyse a group of 6 and 7 year olds' interactions during a literacy event. We explore the complexities of their meaning-making following a read aloud of Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak 1963). Our focus is on discourses of gender/sex/uality, a term that acknowledges the complex relationship between gender, sex and sexuality,…

Photographs constitute an important visual language in contemporary Swedish preschool, as they are legible to young children themselves. This article aims to examine which notions of the child are represented in preschool photographs, and how these notions correlate to notions of the child expressed in the Swedish preschool curriculum. The…

Play-based learning has been proven to be an effective method of learning in early childhood education, particularly kindergarten; Nevertheless, increasing emphasis on academics and assessments has had a detrimental effect on students' social-emotional learning (SEL) and learning development (LD).The problem addressed in this study was that play…

Play, while complex, is essential for children's learning and development. It is well established in the literature that there is a strong link between children's pretend play abilities and their language skills, particularly in relation to the use of language in social contexts. For many children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), pretend…

The authors discuss loose parts -- pipe cleaners, acorns, fabric, stones, and so forth -- as versatile materials not originally intended for children's play that they can manipulate, modify, and use in their play activities. The authors review the historical foundations of loose parts play, focusing on influential individuals and theories, and…

The self-oriented and other-oriented empathy dimensions may have different relationships with playfulness. However, a scarcity of research exists on the association between empathy and playfulness. The present research contained two studies. Parents of 386 preschoolers (M[subscript age] = 4.89, SD[subscript age] = 0.79) attended Study 1, and…

The author discusses American philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey and the Laboratory School he founded at the end of the nineteenth century at the University of Chicago, where he conducted important studies of child development. The author notes the influence of Dewey's theory of (and pedagogical guidelines for) children's play,…

In an age when play is often seen as frivolous or unproductive, this book explains the importance of play in early childhood education. Each chapter focuses on a specific type of play, includes suggestions for putting theory into practice, and offers recommendations for language and information educators can use to help parents understand that…

There is currently a debate as to whether academic content at kindergarten crowds out time spent in creative arts, free play, and physical activity. Analyzing kindergarten teachers' reports of their instruction from the ECLS-K:2011, this study examined whether core academic content or advanced academic content in math or English language arts…

This study investigates the way a kindergarten teacher implemented a three-stage project to support children's map understanding. The project, the Map and Play, was designed to help children understand the relationship between reality and its abstract representation. The guided play was adopted as the pedagogical approach because it empowers…