Play, and especially free play, offers a unique opportunity for children to act with agency. Yet the regulated and routinized structure of early childhood education and care settings, impedes children's agentic action which is limited by adult-imposed rules. The present cross-cultural study aims to explore the extent to which Early Childhood…

This article is based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from teachers and pupils in Danish schools in June 2020, as schools reopened following closures in the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It investigates the transformations in school life that took place in this period in response to strict official guidelines to prevent the…

During the past decade, the field of family language policy has broadened its scope and turned its attention to diverse family configurations in versatile sociolinguistic contexts. The current study contributes to this endeavor by focusing on two single-parent families who live in Finland and who strive to support Russian as a family language.…

Playing is crucial for children's growth and learning, and it is essential to understand and improve the role of educators in facilitating learning through play. This study aimed to investigate the beliefs of early childhood educators in Colombia's aeioTU program about play, which is based on the Reggio Emilia philosophy and focuses on art,…

The present study aimed to train Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in a parenting program called Learning through Play (LTP) to improve their Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices regarding child development after completion of training, for them to be better able to support parents during their routine practice. Quasi experimental design was used.…

The authors discuss the relationship of death and play as illuminated by computer games. Although these games, they argue, do illustrate the value of being--and staying--alive, they are not so much about life per se as they are about providing gamers with a playground at the edge of mortality. Using a range of visual, auditory, and rule-based…

This article highlights the potential of experimental and avant-garde cinema in film educational contexts. In the first part, Stefanie Schlüter evaluates her practical experience in working with 10- to 11-year-old schoolchildren. Based on reflections by Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage and others, she emphasizes the act of engaging with film material…

Unstructured activity periods are central components of early childhood education programs. Deficits in social communication and social interaction presented by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) become apparent in these settings during unstructured activities, such as outdoor recess. Thirty-two preschool-age children with and without…

Autonomy -- acting volitionally with a sense of choice -- is a crucial right for children. Given parents' pivotal position in their child's autonomy development, we examined how parental autonomy support and children's need for autonomy were negotiated and manifested in the context of children's independent mobility -- children's ability to play,…

The ability of parents to read children's cues and respond sensitively underpins the effectiveness of early interventions. Allied health practitioners, however, typically spend little time focussing on parent-child interactions in early childhood intervention. A 1-day training event: 'PlayConnections' was developed to support practitioners to…

This study explored the beliefs of early childhood educators about a child's current behavior and potential adult adjustment based on a description of the child's gender and play interests. There were 451 early childhood educators from a US sample who, after reading a brief vignette describing a child's play and behavior, responded to questions…

This study examined Turkish early childhood teachers' playfulness and their support of playfulness in classrooms. An explanatory mixed method design was utilised with a convenience sample of 485 teachers in the quantitative portion and 20 teachers in the qualitative portion. The quantitative data was collected through the Adult Playfulness Trait…

Backgrounds and aims: Early symbolic play abilities are closely related to long-term language development for both autistic and non-autistic children, but few studies have explored these relations for different dimensions of pretence and of language. The current study explores carer-reported measures of solitary symbolic play, object substitution…

Historically, Finnish early childhood education has been largely based on Friedrich Froebel's pedagogy. However, Froebelian pedagogy is no longer as well known in Finland as it once was. We at the Kindergarten Museum in Helsinki wanted to increase awareness of the Froebelian tradition. Together with artist Alexander Reichstein, we came up with the…

Teachers of inclusive early childhood education (ECE) are responsible for monitoring children's social skills achievement, and promoting social play between children with and without special educational needs (SEN). The Teacher Impression Scale (TIS) is an observational assessment developed for this purpose. This study aims to explore the social…