It is the third week that Ms. Sotto's preschool classroom has been turned into an airport. The literacy center is a ticket counter, with a travel agency complete with child-made passports, tickets, and travel brochures. What is happening in Ms. Sotto's classroom is an example of what most early childhood educators mean when they talk about…

A growing body of national research confirms that significant levels of learning and growth occur during early childhood, and that it is important, from a public policy perspective, to increase access to quality programs and services that support the development of skills and attitudes children need to succeed. Clearly, no one-size-fits-all…

Across cultures and eras, children have engaged in play as part of the process of growing and maturing into adulthood. Play has been recognized as an effective form of pedagogy to promote learning in the early years. However, beliefs about what play is and how it should be practiced vary across Hong Kong and in other countries. Because Chinese…

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have received considerable attention in news headlines describing gamers who have died while engaging in excessive play. However, more common physical and psychosocial effects attributed to online video gaming are social isolation, increased aggression, and negative academic and occupational consequences.…

Offering Gaelic medium preschool provision poses particular challenges as most children only encounter Gaelic in the playroom and live in a context heavily dominated by English. Nevertheless, expanding provision for early years education in Gaelic is an important part of ambitious plans to revitalise the language. In this paper we explore the…

This article provides a comprehensive overview of creative interventions used with adolescents in the secondary school setting. School counselors who incorporate creative interventions along with traditional counseling methods will increase their effectiveness with high school students. Creative interventions that can be delivered through…

A new dialogue-based curriculum combines nutrition, active play and parenting practices to help parents and caregivers gain skills that promote healthy habits for themselves and their families and to create healthy environments where children live, learn, and play. Graduates report significant improvements in behaviors that promote healthy weights…

The daily trips outside can be challenging, and living in Manhattan makes them even more complex. It seems there is no such thing as a simple stroll, or a quick trip outside; and the winter weather makes such excursions that much more complex. Yet, it is always worth it. In the author's nine years of teaching, she has discovered that a "quick…

Welcome to Port Discovery's "Tiny's Diner" where children can be seen doing the chicken dance or putting pickles on their heads. What do these activities have to do with promoting nutrition through early literacy activities? Educators know that young children learn through play, which can include using drama, games, movement,…

Research Findings: The present study involved using a questionnaire to investigate the mathematics teaching practices of 74 U.S. and 67 Chinese early childhood teachers. Quantitative and qualitative analyses yielded several key findings. First, U.S. teachers are less intentional in mathematics teaching than their Chinese counterparts.…

This study explored media usage among adolescents and its relations to academic performance and aggressive behavior from a qualitative research perspective. This study represents the first of its kind by utilizing a phenomenological methodology to gain insights about lived experiences of adolescents' media use relative to their academic…

Outdoor environmental education and provision of unstructured exploration of nature are often forgotten aspects of the early childhood experience. The aim of this study was to understand how adults' early experiences in nature relate to their attitudes and practices in providing such experiences for young children. This study surveyed 33 parents…

Recognising and responding to behaviours and patterns of resistance is critical to the successful implementation of technology-enhanced learning strategies at higher education institutions. At institutional, academic and student levels, resistance manifests itself in a variety of forms, at best supporting a critical culture and at worst creating…

Scratch, a visual programming language, was used in many studies in computer science education. Most of them reported positive results by integrating Scratch into K-12 computer courses. However, the object-oriented concept, one of the important computational thinking skills, is not represented well in Scratch. Alice, another visual programming…

As in many Western countries, children's learning in the curriculum of Estonian Early Childhood Education is seen as a lifelong process, wherein the teacher is primarily a guide to children's active learning. Thus, a child-centred approach to learning is valued in the national curriculum, but our interest was whether this approach is fixed in the…