COVID-19 posed little danger to children. Nevertheless, the South African government imposed lockdown measures that impeded children's education, play and food. Schools were closed, feeding schemes were halted and organised sports were banned. In this study of South African children's experience during the 2020-22 pandemic, we use the capabilities…

This article explores the role of the reportative BIN in Yucatec Maya language acquisition and socialization among children aged 4 years and above, focusing on their interactions during pretend play. Building upon prior research on caregivers' strategic use of BIN, the study aims to elucidate the nuanced meanings and functions of the reportative…

Sound symbolism, the iconic link between speech sounds and meanings, helps children's verb learning. In sound symbolically rich languages such as Turkish, hearing sound symbolic words might facilitate early verb learning and later language-specific expressions of motion events, by providing an easier way to map verbs onto events. These links could…

The author uses a dialogical autoethnographic approach informed by symbolic interactionist theory to examine the role of toys, play, and parenting decisions on his childhood development and adult opportunities and interests. He examines how self, others, social contexts, and objects, particularly toys and adult analogues for those toys, came…

Across geographically diverse samples, engagement in stimulating activities with young children is considered an important element of parenting that promotes cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional development. Indicators of stimulation activities are often summed, based on the assumption that more stimulation is better and that different…

Following the social turn in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in the 1990s (Block, 2003), researchers have increasingly focused on the emic perspective of learners. As a result, identity, subjectivity, and agency have come to the forefront in SLA research. In an effort to afford learners the means to negotiate meaning more freely and to position…

Within Orthodox Jewish early childhood programs, gender roles of the Shabbat Party promote heteronormative gender expectations that contend with values about children, teaching, and Judaism. Interviews with 15 educators suggested tensions between gender flexible attitudes and beliefs that gender unfolds naturally. Pretend play was considered a…

Home environments have the potential for rich literacy activities. Indeed, what parents do in and outside the home to support their child's learning has a powerful impact on their child's development, not only in terms of educational outcomes but also for wider ones, such as children's wellbeing. The impact of the home learning environment (HLE)…

Researchers can study complex developmental phenomena with all the inherent noise and complexity or simplify behaviors to hone in on the essential aspects of a phenomenon. We used the development of walking as a model system to compare the costs and benefits of simplifying a complex, noisy behavior. Traditionally, researchers simplify infant…

Caroline Pratt, the founder of the City and Country School, is one of the few educators who tried to work out a program that would engage and develop students' imaginations. Along with other progressive educators, however, she has been criticized for her child-centeredness, that is, valuing children's spontaneity at the expense of planning and…

Adult playfulness contributes to well-functioning romantic relationships, claim the authors, who study the association between playfulness of several kinds (other directed, lighthearted, intellectual, whimsical) and six specific attitudes towards love they call love styles--"eros," "ludus," "storge,"…

This paper presents a case for integrating students as partners (SaP) within the curriculum of higher education (HE), particularly through the lens of "third space" learning. Drawing on our experiences as a collaborative of educators in Canada and the United Kingdom, we explore the liberatory potential of play, partnership, and…

Mental State Language (MSL) is language that refers to individuals' inner states, including terms relating to "emotion," "desire-&-preference," "perception" and "cognition." This study explores the nature of eight Chinese educators' MSL in their interactions with infants during structured and free play.…

The revision of Te Whariki, the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, in 2017 offered a unique opportunity to gain understanding of the ways teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand think about and enact curriculum in their daily practice. As researchers we were intrigued as to the ways teachers conceptualised the role of curriculum in…

The purpose of this article was to re-examine the empirical research focused on the creation and recreation of pre-school teachers' identity and their practices with multilingual children and language development. The analysis was based on empirical sequences from previously published qualitative analyses with the assistance of an interactionist…