Young children learn through play. This has long been acknowledged in the writings of educational theorists dating back as far as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel and is strongly supported by current early childhood research. Play is at the heart of contemporary early childhood pedagogy, and this has led to a strong belief in the importance of an…

Experts acquire domain-specific skills as a result of the activities in which they participate throughout their development. We examine the domain-specific activities in which two groups of elite youth soccer players participated between six and 12 years of age. Our goal was to examine early participation differences between those who progressed…

Many people fear that play-fighting or rough and tumble play is the same as real fighting. There is also a fear that this rough play will become real fighting if allowed to continue. Most of all, parents and teachers fear that during the course of rough and tumble play a child may be hurt. To provide for and allow children to play rough without…

This article is based on an ethnographic study of children's everyday life in Swedish preschools. The ethnography is used to explore children's strategies for influencing, defending and constructing the social order of a preschool institution. The focus of our concern is on how the children, in their interactions with each other and with the…

Several membership companies of the International Playground Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA) are helping differently-abled children to have access to play equipment and opportunities. These IPEMA membership companies, and others, are driven by the principles of Universal Design (UD), a new concept in playground design that helps ensure…

Two aspects of children's early gender development--the spontaneous production of gender labels and gender-typed play--were examined longitudinally in a sample of 82 children. Survival analysis, a statistical technique well suited to questions involving developmental transitions, was used to investigate the timing of the onset of children's gender…

According to a national telephone survey by the Pew Internet Project, 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls ages 12-17 play computer, Web, portable, or console games; and 50 percent play such games daily. The survey report, Teens, Video Games, and Civics, examines the extent and nature of teens' game playing and sheds some light on the…

The purpose of this article is to qualitatively explore the affordances for risky play in two different preschool outdoor environments, an ordinary preschool playground and a nature playground, based on Gibson ("The ecological approach to visual perception," 1979) theory of affordances and Heft's and Kyttea's (Heft in "Children's…

Traditionally, we think of play as children's work, and this work is often considered trivial and meaningless. However, when the definition of play is explored, its multiple meanings encourage us to understand play as an important vehicle for the propulsion of society. Play has become a hot topic in households and classrooms and for political…

Public schools are currently operating in a pressure-cooker of accountability systems in which they must teach students to high standards and meet ever increasing targets for student proficiency, or face increasingly severe sanctions. Into this mix is thrown educational technology and the funding for that technology. The literature espouses the…

(Purpose) After an extensive search, which included the Internet, four state Departments of Education, and national and state agencies for the gifted, were told by a national agency for gifted children that no standards, specifically for gifted preschool children, existed. The purpose of this paper is to create standards for a preschool gifted…

Despite the speed at which Second Life has been adopted by universities and schools to teach courses, little educational research and theory addresses this multiplayer online "world." This case study explored undergraduate university instructors' teaching methods and tools within a virtual environment. It also considered whether instructors are…

Long before babies understand words, they understand touch. The first experience of compassion infants receive is gentle, caring touch, which gives a strong message, especially when accompanied by eye contact and a soft tone of voice. The kind of relationship a compassionate caregiver strives to develop with an infant creates attachment, an…

To meet the needs of a diverse student population while addressing the knowledge and skills outcomes of the curriculum, faculty should develop a repertoire of instructional models. Research-based instructional models from the fields of education and health care have been developed to support various learner outcomes. Emphasis on evidence-based…

Children with autism often lack complex socially expressive skills that would allow them to engage others more successfully. In the present study, video modeling was used to promote appropriate verbal comments, intonation, gestures, and facial expressions during social interactions of three children with autism. In baseline, the children rarely…