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…

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…

Play has long been understood as an important pedagogical practice, particularly in early childhood education and care settings. Playing with food, however, has typically been overlooked, and very little is known about food play during mealtimes. The apparent dichotomy between rule-following and playfulness at mealtimes has led to a paucity of…

Past research shows that autistic children can and do create imaginary companions (ICs), and that these ICs resemble those that neurotypical children create. Neurotypical children creating ICs have been found to have significantly more developed theory of mind (ToM) and social understanding among other enhanced social cognitive skills. The study…

Jean Piaget, whose work continues to be very influential in early childhood education, associated young children's animism with their 'primitive thought' claiming children remain animists until they reach a more advanced and rational stage of development. This article proposes a rethinking of the Piagetian view of animism, suggesting instead that…

Based on how singing teachers and opera singers (teaching singing) apply imagination techniques in singing training, this study examines the use of these techniques in singing training. The data for the study using qualitative research method was collected through semi-structured interviews. A descriptive analysis was performed on the data…

This paper addresses a surprising phenomenon in the evangelical theological classroom. Evangelical theological students often approach theology as an exclusively analytic subject, failing to use imaginative criteria in "doing theology." Specifically, they fail to use their literary imaginations or what some call narrative imagination.…

When given the opportunity to play with mathematical materials and ideas, children demonstrate their mathematical understanding in innovative ways. The open-ended nature of the "Pattern Blocks" activity provides agency for children to decide how to approach the tasks, ways to differentiate beyond more common pattern-block puzzle choices,…

This research explores the role of arts education in schools in relation to the regional disparities in adolescent dream capital. A total of 142 adolescents, who received either intensive arts education or general education, were surveyed in South Korea. Based on previous studies, the authors focused on four dimensions of dream capital…

In 2016, "Last Stop on Market Street," an American picturebook by Matt de la Pena, won the Newberry Medal, a Caldecott Honor, and a Coretta Scott King illustrator honor. In March 2021, Dr Seuss Enterprises, after working "with a panel of experts, including educators," decided to cease publishing "And to Think I Saw in on…

This article follows the movements of educational imagination articulated by the late scholar of religious education Maria Harris to offer musings on academic leadership that attempts a decolonial turn for enduring change in theological education. With stylistic and thought experimentations, the essay identifies challenges besieging administrative…

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…

School principals are integral to the success of school operations, particularly in the face of diverse challenges. Resilience emerges as a critical attribute for these educational leaders. This research investigated the sequential mediation effects of imagination and perceived hope on the relationship between savoring and resilience. A survey was…

Imagination-to-learn is a specific learning strategy that has been studied in many academic fields. The present study investigated whether imagination is beneficial overall for learning compared to conventional study strategies, while also identifying moderator factors affecting the global effect. A meta-analysis was conducted by scientifically…

This paper seeks to initiate a theory of "imaginative dialogues" by articulating four dialogical principles that enable such a dialogue to occur. It is part of a larger project that takes the Socratic dialogue, a widely utilized conversation technique in philosophy education, as a starting point and aims to reinterpret it by shifting…