Knowing how children become oriented to imaginary play can help educators in centres better support development. But how this begins in the first years of life is not well understood. How toddlers transform through their imagination concrete objects (such as play accessories, figurines, and books) to become props in play (placeholders and pivots)…

Socio-dramatic play is an everyday occurrence in early childhood education as children create narratives together in shared imagined worlds. The teacher's role in this type of play is less clear and this paper draws on a study using Lindqvist's "playworlds" approach to gain insight into how teachers participate in children's play. In…

This paper focuses on Vietnamese PhD students' imaginative geographies of their destination countries. Using the data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 Vietnamese PhD students, the study examines the participants' preparation for their sojourn before their departure, as well as their first multi-sensory experiences of the…

Play acts as the source of children's development in the preschool period. Yet, the global pandemic has changed children's play conditions in ways that are not yet fully understood. With movement restrictions, families have struggled to find ways of bringing children together for play. We studied how family day care (FDC) educators across a remote…

This study examines whether the Internet of Toys (IoToys) (de)limits children's make-believe play and whether the functionality and manipulatives offered by the IoToys serve as motivational pleasure (tactile, virtual and visual) for children to engage in make-believe play. Combining Piagetian and Vygotskian ideas of play as a unity of cognition…

Strong oral language skills are foundational for literacy development and begin before a child enters formal schooling. Oral language development has been related to pretend play abilities in children. Children, particularly those from disadvantaged areas, who enter school with low pretend play levels and oral language abilities, are at risk for…

In this article, a teaching artist shares their understandings about designing a large-scale interactive intermedial arts experience for children aged five to eight years, and articulates findings about the conditions that promote quality experiences of this kind. When designing interactive arts experiences, a tension exists between providing…

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…

Epistemology has been recognized as a useful conceptual tool to explore how knowledge has been produced and/or reproduced in higher education research and its linkages to hidden global geopolitics and historical forces. The topic has attracted considerable attention in the literature, particularly that of scholars in the Global South (Canagarajah,…

Academic underachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is an ongoing problem for Australian schooling. Schools serving these communities face profound challenges in meeting their students' educational needs. "Creative and Embodied" approaches draw on pedagogical practices inherent in Health and Physical Education and the…

The 'knowledge turn' in curriculum studies has proved highly influential in the past two decades. But what is meant by knowledge remains both unclear and subject to contestation, particularly in relation to English as a school subject. Two recent books address the knowledge question in very different ways.

To contribute pedagogies that reimagine relationships in a more-than-human world I adopt a posthuman approach to map the content and expressions of imagination in a series of pedagogical events on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, Kooyoora, Australia. By working with Bennett's concept of vibrant matter and MacLure's generative data fragments I attend to…

Actors create theatre with and for with children in diverse theatrical, educational and therapeutic contexts but little is known about the 'artistry' of their practice. This paper analyses a theatrical encounter between a child and an actor and identifies four key qualities of 'pedagogically tactful' (van Manen 2016) actor practice: listening,…

In some Western contexts, the pedagogical practices of teachers are to intentionally involve in play-based learning through sustained shared conversations to extend children's thinking (Meade, A., Williamson, J., Stuart, M., Smorti, S., Robinson, L., & Carroll-Lind, J. (2013). Adult-child sustained shared thinking: Who, how and when? Early…

This article introduces the notion of "enchanted animism," contending that an enchanted re-animation of the world may be necessary for learning to live on a damaged planet. The paper draws on a project with young children which invited them to share what they thought was 'good' in the outdoor spaces at their early learning centre. These…