This article explores the usefulness of detective role-play as a research method to facilitate young children's critical thinking. The study examines four specifically designed detective play experiences, adopting an ethical rights-based approach to research with children. This qualitative multiple-case study is grounded in play-based pedagogy…

Questions regarding the construction of mathematical authority have implications for learning, specifically for students' views of themselves as mathematics learners and doers with valuable contributions. We consider the ideas proposed by eight first-grade students who had the most airtime during 12 lessons of a classroom teaching experiment. We…

There is a paucity of research that has effectively listened to children's voices on matters important to them and has asked them how they would like to be listened to. This study used a playful approach to listen to children's voices about play spaces in their primary school. The research questions were: How can a playful approach be used to…

This qualitative study examined kindergarten children's responses to their favorite books and their perspectives on reading at home and school. Data included observations, interviews with teachers, parents, and children, and "My Favorite Book" response sheets completed by children. Children's favorite books reflected various genres,…

This article offers a framework for more equitable classroom reading assessment known as a Critical Assessment Practices (CAPS) approach. CAPS includes a set of four principles that teachers can use to partner with, and to empower, students to support more equitable and informative classroom-based reading assessment. Teachers can apply the CAPS…

The Anthropocene is a geo-stratigraphic unit of the upper Earth's layers, impacted by human disturbances, but also humankind's historical record, and children's place to live on. It is an unfinished narrative. This study explores how garden and soil-related activities with kindergarten children, guided by well-informed teachers, may have the…

Engineering has led the way in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including developing masks that reduce transmission, digital tools that allow contact tracing, and vaccines that show promise to put an end to the pandemic and allow a more normal way of life. Society is not only "following the science," but is also applying principles…

Providing students the autonomy and choice to learn when productive struggle becomes unproductive is a core teaching belief in the author's classroom. The author teaches in a multiage classroom where he has 16 first- and second-grade students, ages 6, 7, and 8. Like other educators, he believes in the importance of productive struggle. The author…

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of culturally responsible music teaching (CRMT) from the perspective of U.S. music teachers working in various formal settings. "Cultural responsibility" is an emergent concept regarding teaching and learning that (a) connects with students' cultural frames and lived experiences, (b)…

The purpose of this study was to characterize variations in how teachers enacted an approach to ambitious mathematics teaching: "rough draft math." We also examined teachers' motivations for their enactments. Thirty-two teachers from five states in the U.S.A. were recruited to participate in interviews based on recommendations from…

A 7-month mathematics proficiency program was conducted in a primary Australian Indigenous community school. This paper focuses on outlining the specific methodologies employed to explore how students' mathematical proficiency changed throughout the implementation of the program in Years 2 to 4 (~ 7 to 9 years old). A mixed methods research design…

This article details a classroom-based study designed to provide agency and voice to first and second grade emergent bilinguals as they processed the COVID-19 pandemic. Two California teachers created a narrative writing unit not only to teach specific writing skills, but also to challenge pervasive deficit assumptions that young children…

Tiered response models encourage a proactive approach to identification of social-emotional needs and intervention. However, schools experience barriers to adopting and implementing such models that use data to allocate interventions. The current study examines the utility of a universal social-emotional learning (SEL) screening system embedded in…

This qualitative research study investigates dialogic discourse (i.e., give-and-take communication where students actively construct meaning) aimed at supporting mathematical meaning making in linguistically diverse elementary classrooms. For this study, linguistically diverse classrooms refer to classrooms where Spanish is the home language of…

The purpose of this study was to examine how an early childhood education (ECE) curriculum responds to children's voices in reference to transition from kindergarten to first grade. Drawing from the findings of a previous study which examined the empowering and limiting aspects of transition as voiced by first graders, I consider the points where…