Presented here are fragments of my book "The cartography of inner childhood" in the translation from Russian. The main hero of this book is our childhood experience. Or, rather, the book is about our remembrances of our childhood experience. Some people would exclaim, "These remembrances are extremely subjective, utterly personal…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the critical literacies of high school students engaged in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project focused on a roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, in a queer-led afterschool space. The paper illustrates how youth critique and resist unjust societal norms while simultaneously envisioning queer…

The main aim of this paper is to use a phenomenological approach (Merleau-Ponty, 1962. "Phenomenology of Perception." Evanston: Northwestern University Press; Merleau-Ponty. 1968. "The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes." Evanston: Northern University Press) to contribute a new theoretical understanding of…

This transversal and transilient thought-experiment explores the application and significance of Japanese animism for environmental education and environmental philosophy. Through the exploration of indigenous knowledge found in Japanese folklore and Japanese Buddhism, the thought-experiment offers a critique of a certain strand of contemporary…

This article approaches the study of children's literature as a threshold of change that allows readers to explore the reality around them, imagine other worlds and understand other perspectives. Based on the notion of the child's cognitive development organized into four stages--pre-reading, fantastic stage, fantastic-realistic stage and…

In some narratives one world is embedded within the main world of the story, which we refer to as the base world, and elements from one world can cross over into the other. This study explored the conditions in which readers perceive character crossover as being likely to occur. Participants read stories that set up the potential for a character…

In this paper, I explore thinking that happens in children's meaningful engagement with the city. To open up my argument, I discuss two events during which children are caught up in "intra-active" play with things and spaces. I argue that this mode of being joyfully engaged with one's surroundings is key to what Jane Bennett (2001) calls…

Introduction: Computers and the applications of today's high technology can simulate reality so realistically that virtuality has become part of both children's and adults' lifestyles (Nagy & Kölcsey, 2017; Szécsi, 2012). However, it did not emerge with the computer applications, but with human thinking and part of that, the virtual conception…

The future of childhood is often described in terms of utopian thinking. Here, the turn is towards dystopia as a fertile source of wild imaginings about the future. The dystopian literary fictions featured here act as a message and are projections of an uneasy future requiring a reader to see the present differently. Such projections make reading…

The aim of this article is to present a wholeness perspective on the relation between creative imagination and children's activity when playing with toys. This is explored through a case retrieved from a 4-month experimental research project, specifically from a social fantasy play session. In order to analyse and examine children's play, the…

In early childhood education and care, Nordic social pedagogy approach is challenged by a learning orientation that often results in unproductive "either/or" thinking. Therefore, based on the two approaches and by analysing several dimensions of Froebel's ideas and prevailing social-historical activity (play) theory, the author deduces…

This research aims to highlight the importance of developing creativity in the school environment by promoting quality education to gifted students, with contributions from Vygotsky and Piaget. For Vygotsky creativity is inherent in the human condition, and it is the most important activity because it is the expression of consciousness, thought…

Based on a cultural-historical perspective, where play is conceptualized as the creation of an imaginary situation, the study reported in this paper examines how parent-child playful interactions create shared imaginary situations for mediating scientific learning. The main focus of this paper is to reveal sign-mediated learning process through…

The author employs neurobiology to help explore deception in nature and self-deception in human beings. She examines activities that may appear playful but that lack such hallmark qualities of play as equality, mutual pleasure, and voluntarism and that can, therefore, prove psychologically destructive. She warns that the kind of playful…

Communications between adults and young children can expose different ideas and opinions. Adults and children have different capacities to speak, these discursive spaces can become filled with assumptions, stereotyping and conventional thinking about power and agency. If communication shifts away from the purely discursive, what might be exposed…