From a young age, children in Western, industrialized societies overimitate others' actions. However, the underlying motivation and cultural specificity of this behavior have remained unclear. Here, 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 125) from two rural Namibian populations (Haillom and Ovambo) and one urban German population were tested in two…

Ownership is a cornerstone of many human societies and can be understood as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals refrain from taking each other's property. Owners can thus trust others to respect their property even in their absence. We investigated this principle in 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 152) from 4 diverse societies. Children…

Background: This article is based on a study that aimed at finding out how pre-primary teachers integrate directed play into literacy teaching and learning. Play is a platform through which young children acquire language. Aim: This study uses an action research approach to understand how guided play benefits incidental reading and expands…

Globalization and shifting demographics have led to a call for an immediate change in education-based counseling. Future school counselors must be equipped with 21st century skills that are applicable across cultural boundaries and applied in a global context. "Addressing Multicultural Needs in School Guidance and Counseling" is a…

The Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) has been working to improve conditions for San communities since 1996. San communities in Namibia have an extremely high dropout rate compared to all other populations in the country, and one of WIMSA's most important areas of focus is education. Early Childhood Development…

In adults, visual search for a colour target is facilitated if the target and distractors fall in different colour categories (e.g. Daoutis, Pilling, & Davies, in press). The present study explored category effects in children's colour search. The relationship between linguistic colour categories and perceptual categories was addressed by…

This article discusses the complexities of aid-giving using the example of early childhood policies in Namibia. It supports a critical view of aid processes and of World Bank endeavours in particular. Using an analysis of the World Bank funded education sector-wide improvement plan (ETSIP) in Namibia and three Namibian local case studies, it shows…

This article reports on a recent study of HIV/AIDS which investigated the role of gender in the experiences of young children in one region of Namibia. The findings reveal that while gender is reported to shape school-age girls and boys' experiences of being infected or affected by HIV/AIDS in many African nations, gender was not an influential…