Pretend play provides enriched environments for multiple cognitive and social purposes. The quality of children's pretend play depends on the process, including children's back and forth proposals and responses about the play frames. Proposing and responding to play ideas with metacommunication use, leadership-followership interactions are…

Our theoretical framework is based on Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development focusing on adults' involvement in children's play and we argue that teachers' involvement is crucial in supporting children's play skills. Particularly, this study examines early childhood teachers' (ECTs) sociodramatic and imaginative play skills and their development…

Studies have found a relationship between pretend play and self-regulation both during and outside pretend play; however, very few have investigated these three variables simultaneously. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between the frequency of role-play (a type of pretend play), self-regulatory behaviour during role-play, and…

Numerous studies argue that inhibitory control could be successfully enhanced in play activities during preschool age. Previous studies showed that fantasy significantly associated with inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. It was also shown that inhibitory control is related to symbolic play (imagination of absent objects, attributing…

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between the main components of role play, according to Vygotsky (object substitution, idea of play, play interaction), and executive functions (working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, planning) in preschool age. The study involved 56 children, 5 to 6 years old (29 boys and 27…

This study investigated whether two educational strategies, providing material and active adult support during play, promote pretend play quality in a group of preschoolers. The sample consisted of 101 preschoolers (50% females; mean age at t1= 43.02 months, SD= 5.94) from 14 Swiss educational play groups. These were randomly allocated to the…

Previous research has indicated that young children's executive functions (EFs) can be bolstered through role-play [e.g. the 'Batman™ effect'; White et al.]. However, what is not clear is whether it is the role-playing of another's perspective, or something about the role played, which is responsible for the Batman™ effect. The current experiment…

Different approaches to implementing 'learning through play' exist in many countries due to different understandings of the concept of play. In Indonesia, teachers implement play in a structured way following certain play developmental stages, where the focus is on children's academic outcomes, rather than the development of concepts as part of…

Pretend play leads to real-life learning. By imitating a firefighter using a horse, a doctor checking a patient's ear, or a construction worker building a skyscraper, children learn about community roles and services and feel proud and satisfied. When they pretend, children create pictures in their minds of past experiences and use their…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the critical literacies of high school students engaged in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project focused on a roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, in a queer-led afterschool space. The paper illustrates how youth critique and resist unjust societal norms while simultaneously envisioning queer…

The voices of both early childhood education teachers and children tend to be weak in the choir of agents that constitute the aims and practices of early childhood education. In this article, a video that a teacher made of four children playing dragons, followed by open-ended interviews exploring why she found this particular activity of interest…

Imagining what it was like to live in the past may help secondary school students to understand historical developments and situations. In this case study, the opportunities of a drama task are explored by using a mixed-method approach. In small groups, Dutch 14-15-year-old students examined historical sources and produced a short film clip on…

In unprecedented times, the global community is calling for greater knowledge and engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to support the decision making and practices of the general community. COVID-19 has highlighted this pressing need and inviting a 'new normal'. But STEM is not the core business of early childhood.…

One of the main questions regarding Dutch primary education in our secularised and religiously diverse society--both with regards to public and religiously-affiliated schools--is how to get students acquainted with the symbolic language of religious and worldview-affiliated life narratives. Teaching literacy in symbolic language has become less…

The article discusses two versions of a complex role-playing exercise in undergraduate courses on Buddhism. The pedagogical exercise demonstrated how imagination cultivated through creative writing could be used to enhance learning about history, culture, and religion. Students were also challenged to generate an understanding of religious…