In this issue, I draw together two sets of papers, with apparently different agendas. Most of the original papers in this issue use various learning perspectives and research approaches to explore the challenges and affordances of digital games for learning science. Associated forum papers challenge the authors and us to critically examine our own…

This article features an after-school FIRST Lego League (FLL) program at Chaminade Middle School in Chatsworth, California, USA. The after-school FLL program feeds into the high school FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) program wherein aspiring young engineers come to the high school team with several years of FLL experience. Through the FLL…

Research from the United Kingdom suggests that early childhood centres that operate from a multi or integrated service model, offering opportunities for parents to attend to a range of their needs and aspirations, increase the ability and the inclination of families to engage with their child's learning at the early childhood centre. Integrated…

There are an increasing number of international sociocultural studies exploring how variances of practice and environment impact upon childhoods. This article is intended to inform the process of selecting settings for comparative study by reflecting on two separate studies of groups which initially appear to be examples of similar services…

Starting with the research question "What is the role of play as a means of genuine inclusion of home language and cultural traditions in an intercultural early learning programme?", the article focuses on the role of cultural artefacts in a programme in which the majority of the children were refugees from Africa. The sociocultural…

Disabilities are commonly conceptualized in dualistic ways--specifically as mental or physical in nature and as located in the self rather than in the "other" or "out there." In this essay I reflect on the consequences of a more holistic understanding of both handicaps and special education. This new approach, I suggest, would…

This article explores the role of play in an art museum. Reflecting upon a kindergarten field trip to the Warhol Museum in which children's play was the centerpiece of the museum experience, the author examines what early childhood theorists have written about the value of play in young children's lives. She shows how the Warhol's program for…

The purpose of this article is to explore the application of filial therapy as a means of strengthening relationships between foster parents and adolescent foster children. Adolescents in foster care experience a number of placement disruptions and while a number of therapeutic interventions are implemented to assist adolescents in foster care,…

To better understand peer exclusion in young children, 42 four- to six-year-olds were observed in an outdoor setting, and their verbalizations were recorded using wireless microphones. The frequency of peer exclusion and social aggression, the various techniques children used to exclude their peers (unmitigated, mitigated, ignoring, and planning…

Although developmental researchers endorse a multifaceted view of early communication, where language, non-verbal behaviour and socio-affective exchange contribute concurrently to the social construction of shared meanings, past studies of social development usually focused on component parts of interpersonal communication. This research…

Objective: This study examines the cognitive and language outcomes of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) over a 5-year period after receiving targeted early interventions that focused on joint attention and play skills. Method: Forty children from the original study (n = 58) had complete data at the 5-year follow-up. Results: In all,…

The compulsion to include games and game related mechanism in education is great among educators who want to engage and motivate today's students and the latest buzzword in this domain is gamification. However, without a thorough understanding of what a gamified curriculum looks like, how it can best be applied and why it might engross students,…

Communication spontaneously initiated by infants at heightened risk (HR; n = 15) for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is compared with that in low-risk (LR; n = 15) infants at 13 and 18 months of age. Infants were observed longitudinally during naturalistic in-home interaction and semistructured play with caregivers. At both ages, HR infants…

Background: Sedentary behavior refers to activities involving sitting down and reclining (eg, watching TV, using the computer) and has been associated with different health outcomes. In preschool, children are sedentary for 50% to 80% of the time, in the classroom as well as during recess. Because of the absence of qualitative studies examining…

Thirty infants at 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while playing for 18 minutes. Experimental stimuli were presented in three communicative intent contexts--proto-declarative, proto-imperative, and ambiguous--to elicit infant communicative bids that did and did not contain gestures. Mothers' responses were analyzed, and their verbal responses…