This research investigates how children located in separate homes use the psychological function of imagination to engage in sociodramatic play using networked digital technologies. Specifically, it examines how 7- to 8-year-old children create imaginary play situations in the same "Minecraft: Education Edition" digitally-mediated…

The most important and general aim of the education system is to edify students, epistemically speaking. However, it is a sad reality that the education system is sometimes a corruptive epistemic environment in which a variety of epistemic injustices occur. In this article, I first argue that the special character of educational institutions means…

Background: Children with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) display impaired pretend play abilities, reflective of broader social-cognitive challenges. Pretend play interventions for children with PWS demonstrate preliminary efficacy for improving cognitive and affective processes in play. It is unknown which specific intervention strategies, such as…

Due to its efficacy shown in early research with children, imagined contact has often been proposed as a school prejudice-reduction intervention. Nevertheless, some of the more recent studies have not been able to replicate the expected effects. This review presents the first systematic examination of the effect of imagined contact interventions…

Spontaneous imaginary companion (SIC) creation in childhood is a typical imaginative play behaviour associated with advanced sociocognitive skills; however, the direction of causality has not been established. To investigate this experimentally, researchers must determine whether children can create, on request, qualitatively equivalent imaginary…

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…

The authors discuss loose parts -- pipe cleaners, acorns, fabric, stones, and so forth -- as versatile materials not originally intended for children's play that they can manipulate, modify, and use in their play activities. The authors review the historical foundations of loose parts play, focusing on influential individuals and theories, and…

Parents are children's first educators. Parents influence children's cognitive, physical, social and emotional development from an early age. This qualitative study explored parents' perceptions of children's play through semi-structured interviews. Interviews were audio-recorded and analyzed using open coding. Themes emerged related to the…

Ted Hughes is one of the most important poets in English literature of the last century and his huge volume of work (including his poetry, prose, plays, translations, letters and critical essays) has received a great deal of critical attention. Hughes was, of course, much more than just a writer. Throughout his life he was deeply engaged with…

This paper introduces the Wearable Story, an interactive storytelling jacket designed for young children to facilitate their story listening experience while learning through play. The wearable medium supports embodied learning by providing experiences through which children are encouraged to use their bodies to learn. With the jacket, children…

Cognitive load theory's incorporation of evolutionary perspectives has generated several instructional designs based on movement, including the tracing effect, occurring when learners benefit from explicit instructions to trace out specific elements of lesson materials with the index finger. Historical descriptions of children's tracing behaviours…

The Questionnaire for Autism Spectrum Conditions (Q-ASC; Attwood, Garnett & Rynkiewicz, 2011) is one of the few screening instruments that includes items designed to assess female-specific ASD-Level 1 traits. This study examined the ability of a modified version of the Q-ASC (Q-ASC-M; Ormond et al., 2018) to differentiate children with and…

This article explores the educational philosophy of Asja Lacis' proletarian children's theatre. Taking her post-First World War encounter with Russian street children as a starting point for my inquiry, I argue that Lacis regards the theatre as a rehearsal space for life. Here, children are to be absorbed into the craft of theatre, with the aim of…

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…

Some children form an attachment to a variety of inanimate objects, such as cloths or soft toys, referred to as attachment objects. This study examined the developmental change in children's behaviours toward their attachment objects to understand the role of such objects through an online survey of 700 parents with 0- to 9-year-old children, of…