Play is essential to the healthy growth and development of children. As children play, they explore new roles, try out new ideas, and bond with each other. Play increases language, cognitive, and social skills. How can the power of play be harnessed and shaped for educational purposes? How can teachers infuse play into the classroom to improve…

The purpose of this article was to re-examine the empirical research focused on the creation and recreation of pre-school teachers' identity and their practices with multilingual children and language development. The analysis was based on empirical sequences from previously published qualitative analyses with the assistance of an interactionist…

The author looks at the psychology of sexuality and its origins in the brain's cortex. She discusses how the cues for desire sometimes overshadow mere physiological cues and how they may be healthy or unhealthy. She argues that understanding the intricate neurochemical and neurostructural workings of the mind and the central and autonomic nervous…

Critiquing and expanding Huizinga's theory of play in "Homo Ludens," the author argues for play as a means to access what is real and introduces a new model of play he calls the containment play expression (CPE) to challenge traditional notions about the opposition between play and work. This model, he contends, bridges this gap between…

The development of gendered identities during early childhood and youth occurs in a context of "body culture" and the hyper-visibility of "perfect" bodies, which align with traditional gender ideals. Embodied methods can assist to make complexity more visible, and to allow participants to see fluidity, shifts, and becoming.…

For centuries, the titans of educational reform--Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, Piaget, Erikson, Csikszentmihalyi and others--have championed the educational benefits of play. Yet many professors and administrators are boggled by the idea of playing academic games in college. They instantly dismiss faculty initiatives like "Reacting to the…

In a previous work the author created the Education and Entertainment Grid by combining various taxonomies from the fields of play and learning. In this paper, a section of this grid known as the Entertainment Grid will be extended by including previously unused elements of Richard Bartle's online player types and Robert Caillois' play complexity.…

This article explores the role of play in an art museum. Reflecting upon a kindergarten field trip to the Warhol Museum in which children's play was the centerpiece of the museum experience, the author examines what early childhood theorists have written about the value of play in young children's lives. She shows how the Warhol's program for…

Millions of children and adults devote much of their leisure time to playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Most observers commonly categorize computer games as a play activity, but this article asks whether MMORPGs contain activities that might not be play. The author examines the phenomenon of online gaming and…

Using a discourse analytic approach from the work of Hoey (1991) and a dual processing model from Wray (2000), this paper compares the language produced by the same classes of children when they are engaged in role-play and when they are playing rule-based games. We find that role-play tends to be richer in "frozen" pair parts, where the responses…

The Finnish educational system and curricula lay emphasis on play, collaboration and equality. Modern educational practices allow the learning environment to be enlarged from indoor classrooms to outdoor playful learning environments (PLEs). PLEs have been constructed in schoolyards in Finland with the goal of increasing learning through play in…

A posttest only control group design was used to investigate the effects of two programs to teach firearm injury prevention skills to second and third grade children. Children were taught the safety skills "Stop. Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult." should they ever find a firearm. The effectiveness of the National Rifle Association's…

This study explores a teacher's understandings of the role of play and her use of play in literacy learning serving children from diverse language backgrounds. The participants in this study were a public pre-kindergarten teacher and her class. Data were collected from interviews, informal conversations, observations, and self-reflexive notes. The…

Many online courses fail to promote the active construction of student knowledge or camaraderie among student peers. Accordingly, online course designers and instructors are challenged to promote purposeful peer student dialogue and establish a sense of belonging where all learners perceive themselves as stakeholders in the course community.…

"Dialogic Reading" is an interactive shared picture book reading practice designed to enhance young children's language and literacy skills. During the shared reading practice, the adult and the child switch roles so that the child learns to become the storyteller with the assistance of the adult who functions as an active listener and…