It's time to prepare teachers to take the plunge to teach in virtual worlds. Students are already there and their teachers need to follow. Unfortunately, teachers are often resistant to change their teaching practice, especially regarding the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as virtual worlds. The authors report on the…

Four-hundred-and-eighty children in the age groups of four and six years, 240 each from Brazil and Norway, were asked how their feelings of anger, sadness and fear were reduced in a recollected episode, to propose emotion regulation strategies for protagonists and to envisage the result of regulation strategies. A majority of even the youngest…

The learning experiences of young children cannot be conveniently separated into the areas of cognitive, social/emotional and physical development. They are integrated and interdependent. This balance can be achieved through creative, interactive play that supports and scaffolds all developmental and content areas of the curriculum. Despite the…

This paper reports on a systematic review of 210 pieces of educational research, policy and professional literature relating to creative environments for learning in schools, commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS). Despite the volume of academic literature in this field, the team of six reviewers found comparatively few empirical…

Providing child-centred play opportunities and re-creating early attachment experiences facilitates a child's social and emotional development, as well as giving time and space for self-expression and relaxation. Play therapists provide these conditions after lengthy and intensive training. Para-professionals are now being trained and supported in…

Nineteenth-century literature offers insights into the history and sociology of play in American life. Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women" contains especially rich period depictions of childhood games and amusements and provides some of the earliest scenes of American girls at play. The author discusses the various depictions of…

Creativity is highly valued when teaching children to play, and it is through acts of play children begin to learn about the world. However, along the road to adulthood, creative minds often become stifled. Creativity may be viewed as impractical or unnecessary when learning hard and true facts, and yet, as experienced in childhood, creativity…

Students benefit from positive sport experiences in physical education. If designed well, sport provides a social avenue for physical activity and strengthens student achievement in psychomotor (e.g., motor skill), cognitive (e.g., decision-making), and affective (e.g., personal and social responsibility) learning domains. Unfortunately, not all…

Expressive arts group supervision is the use of music, stories, movement, poetry or prose, role-play or psychodrama, art, guided imagery, or play to help trainees develop reflective skills (Wilkins, 1995), express thoughts and feelings (Knill, Levine & Levine, 2005; Lahad, 2000), develop new perspectives (Gladding, 2005), increase communication…

Highly practical, instructive, and authoritative, this book vividly describes how to conduct child-centered play therapy. The authors are master clinicians who explain core therapeutic principles and techniques, using rich case material to illustrate treatment of a wide range of difficulties. The focus is on nondirective interventions that allow…

Infant-parent play with toys is an early form of social communication, and the toy features (i.e., affordances), as well as the child's language competence, contribute to the developmental level of the play and the types of play actions that occur. This research, conducted in cooperation with a toy manufacturer, investigated how the affordances of…

Many educational theorists who study child development concur that the importance of play related materials in schools, homes and libraries is vital to the concept of play and learning. As academic librarians responsible for information literacy, and as the education liaison for the management and collection development of the instructional…

The objective of this study is to present and to evaluate the E-Junior application: a serious virtual world (SVW) for teaching children natural science and ecology. E-Junior was designed according to pedagogical theories and curricular objectives to help children learn about the Mediterranean Sea and its environmental issues while playing. In this…

The research question addressed in this paper is: What specific elements in the outdoor environment draw children's attention? The new approach to Welsh early years education--the "Foundation Phase: Framework for children aged 3-7 years in Wales" (DCELLS 2008)--requires the inclusion of both teacher-led and child-initiated activities and…

The purpose of this article was to describe a taxonomy of pretend play for children with disabilities based on a systematic review of the literature to characterize pretend play. Thirty-seven studies were identified as measuring pretend play in children with disabilities. Several inconsistencies were found in the measurement of pretend play across…