Play and playfulness have been central to progressive pedagogies since the birth of the kindergarten. Yet their position in many contemporary education discourses is often ambivalent and at times fragile. In the Global North, many critics warn of a 'play crisis' and 'play deficit'. This essay attempts to trace a cultural and intellectual history…

This study investigated the development of computational thinking (CT) in young children within the specific context of Hong Kong. The researchers utilized an unplugged digital arts activity to explore the CT knowledge exhibited by children and document their developmental trajectories. A sample of 23 children aged 3 to 6 years participated in an…

This study adopted a qualitative approach and analysed interviews from seven parents with children enrolled in nursery and kindergarten in Ghana. The interviews examined parents' descriptions of play and learning and how they perceive the value of play in children's learning. The findings revealed that the parents generally have doubts about the…

Early experiences in STEM education can contribute to positive cognitive development in young children. When students have the opportunities to play, inquire, follow their interests/curiosities, develop STEM identities, be creative, and operate within concrete/contextualized STEM explorations, they will experience expansive cognitive growth.…

Forest School in England is the practice of young children playing outside, rooted in the outdoor kindergartens of Scandinavia and more especially Denmark. Using observation and semi-structured interviews with children and adults in two settings, this case study approach allowed an in-depth look at where, how and what children played in a Forest…

This article attempts to address the challenge that preschool teachers face, when integrating a specific content area, science, with play. The study builds on the theoretical framework of Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC), in which teaching, and play are understood as a mutual activity. In this mutual activity, teachers…

"Research Findings:" Although the importance of block play to children's spatial ability has been recognized globally, little is known about children's use of spatial frames of reference during spatial processing. This study investigated the intervention with guided block play to promote children's use of their intrinsic frame of…

In the literature in recent years, a number of developmental studies have demonstrated the importance of children entering the school environment with a solid foundation of mathematical content knowledge and argued that problem solving, as an important mathematical process, should be acknowledged in early childhood mathematical education. However,…

The author draws on Lev S. Vygotsky's conception of play and Gunilla Lindqvist's methodology concerning the aesthetics of play to discuss play practice in early childhood classrooms. Based on the study of an educational experiment at a primary school, she discusses how children in a school setting simultaneously engage in developed forms of…

This study examined the interrelationships among playfulness, prosocial skills, and school readiness of Hong Kong kindergarten children across time. Participants were 106 local children (55.6% boys, mean age = 60.0 months) and their parents and teachers. At time 1, parents reported their child's age, gender, and playfulness. Six months later at…

Many scholars have argued that mathematics classrooms often offer narrow conceptions of mathematical excellence, recognizing only some kinds of thinking and some kinds of people as valuable, and conflating mathematical aptitude with overall intelligence. Play offers the potential to disrupt such classroom mathematical practices, by offering new…

During a five-week research study, a kindergarten class of 14 five- and six-year-old children learned to sing and play soprano ukuleles. The study had a dual purpose: to teach the children foundational music skills, and to teach them to read lyrics at the emergent reader level. Csikszentmihalyi (2009) cites one of the pitfalls of traditional music…

A body of research that investigates the social, cognitive and emotional effects of digital technologies on the development of children reports that digital technologies are limiting activities that connect children with people. On the other hand, there is a great amount of research on the positive role of digital play. However, digital games per…

The early childhood stage is a time of basic foundation in which children are engaged in pretend play and creative activities. The objective of this study was to explore the role of pretend play on the creativity development of preschool children. Data were collected from four purposefully selected preschool children (two male and two female)…

The overall interest in the present paper is equal early childhood education (ECE) in terms of educating multilingually. Instead of monoglossic bilingual education directed to some children, or monoglossic monolingual education directed to children despite language background, education for recognising and creating multilingual practices for all…