This research explores young Indigenous children's multimodal meaning-making to carry out social intentions in dramatic and construction/materials play settings. The participants are two teachers and 21 children from two Northern Canadian Indigenous communities. Underpinned by social semiotic theory, the research involves inductive analyses of six…

This article contextualizes the dark sides of play from a cultural-historical perspective using Fraser's theory of social justice based on the concepts of recognition and redistribution. Through a micro-ethnographic analysis of a kindergarten's daily life and play situations between 2 five-year-old girls, the article describes the dark play from a…

Background: We describe the development of sustainability via active garden education (SAGE), an early care and education (ECE) garden-based curriculum developed from a 5-year community partnership to link national health policy guidelines with ECE accreditation standards. Methods: National health guidelines and ECE accreditation standards were…

?The past decade has seen an increase in research documenting the benefi?ts of children learning through play. However, the amount of play in American kindergarten classes remains on a steady decline. ?This article compares the ?findings from a netnographic study of seventy-eight kindergarten teachers' message board discussions about play in…

Digital technologies are increasingly accepted as a viable aspect of early childhood curriculum. However, teacher uptake of digital technologies in early childhood education and their use with young children in play-based approaches to learning have not been strong. Traditional approaches to the problem of teacher uptake of digital technologies in…

This paper draws on research exploring young children's playful and humorous communication. It explores how playful activity mediates and connects children in complex activity systems where imagination, cognition, and consciousness become distributed across individuals. Children's playfulness is mediated and distributed via artefacts (tools, signs…

This paper sets out to look critically at the influences on pedagogy in early years education, at the ways in which it is enacted in practice and the pedagogical perspectives held by practitioners. The aim of the paper is to explore the current state of understanding and suggest areas to be included in an agenda for future research. The factors…

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how pre-school professionals understand the notion of gender-equity work in a Swedish context, in particular play and learning in the pre-school playground. The study draws on socio-cultural and gender theories. Of the four participating pre-schools, three of them have programs that focus especially on…

The article focuses on the Vygotskian approach to high quality early childhood education in light of the challenges facing early childhood educators in Russia and in the West. One of these challenges is the constant pressure to start teaching academic skills at a progressively younger age at the expense of traditional early childhood activities.…

Educational buildings and grounds can provide a supportive and stimulating environment for the learning process as well as contribute to greater community needs. These issues were addressed at an international conference entitled "Making Space: Architecture and Design for Young Children". Described here are the importance of outdoor…