Playwork is a recognised profession in the United Kingdom (UK) and is currently a growing area of interest internationally. However, debates about the nature and purpose of playwork have raged in the playwork field since the profession was invented in the early adventure playgrounds. This study is the first to capture data about what the now…

The theorisation of digital technologies for play-based settings has received a great deal of attention. However, less is known about how zoom modalities, which are increasingly becoming commonplace at work and in the home, have impacted on the play of children in Family Day Care. Whilst theoretical attention has been given to conceptualising…

Calls to bring more equity into science education research (McWayne and Melzi, 2023) are most notable for early childhood. We know very little about the teaching of science to infants and toddlers, yet this is where science education begins. To address the dearth in research, we undertook an in-depth intervention study in an Australian early…

The nature play movement has gained global attention, as early childhood spaces have been transforming from manufactured playgrounds to incorporating nature-based play spaces with a focus on natural elements and features. Despite the growing evidence base indicating that nature play is beneficial for children's health and development, there…

Play is a place of diverse meaning-making for young children and often central to family life. This paper reports on a family study in which the authors analyse Author One's family photos of young children's play across four generations. The photo analysis shows continuity and transformations in the types of play activities the young children…

Young children in many parts of the world are spending more time in formal education and care settings. As children have the right to be heard on matters that affect them, their views about the early childhood environments they inhabit, need to be included in the process of placemaking. Early childhood environments have the potential to shape a…

This paper brings together two studies, conducted independently in two different countries, Turkey and Australia, both focusing on supporting early years teachers to research and strengthen their own practice in relation to play-based pedagogies. It reports on the professional learning programmes that were implemented to improve understanding…

There are some studies indicating that parents make a significant contribution to children's conceptual learning through play, whereas very few studies have been done to identify parents' pedagogical positioning in children's imaginative play for supporting their learning and development. This paper is seeking how Indian-Australian immigrant…

The teaching and learning of design technology that occurs in nature-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) contexts such as nature kindergartens remains under-theorised. There is a growing body of scholarship that describes how teaching and learning occurs in these contexts as well as highlighting the benefits for young children learning…

The authors use the location-based, augmented-reality game "Wayfinder Live," which one of them designed, as a case study to analyze urban play. Acknowledging the difficulty of defining urban play, they expand existing approaches to the topic by drawing on current theories about interfaces, assemblages, and coding in such fields as media…

Children's risk-taking is increasingly acknowledged as an important part of early childhood education. Previous research has predominantly focussed on children's engagement with, and educators' perspectives on, children's risk-taking in outdoor physical play. However, little attention has been paid to how educators conceptualise children's…

The emotional aspects of children's social relations have generally been marginalised in social science discourse. Children, who participated in the Australian segment of the Children's Understandings of Well-being (CUWB) project used various media to 'voice' the importance for their well-being of emotional relatedness with family, friends,…

Children's physical activity has long been the primary focus of outdoor playspace design. Other influences are adult views on risk and economic considerations. However, a growing body of research shows young children's perspectives on their outdoor playspaces need to be accounted for. Positioned within a mixed-method comparative case study, this…

This article discusses one specific form of makerspace for children -- hereafter, referred to as (un)makerspace -- whose activities consist mainly in dismantling discarded toys and electronics, characterised as a global makerspace. The article presents the activities of children participating in a number of makerspaces in Melbourne, Australia. The…

The chapter is a reflective discussion of an educator who has made efforts to incorporate heritage language practice in child play in the real-world everyday setting of early childhood education. This combination between heritage language and child play has hardly been explored before in the relevant discourse. As children in Australia possess…