Entry of children to primary schools in India marks a sudden shift in the pedagogical approach as play-based pedagogy gives way to formal instruction. This paper argues that children's play motives do not subside when they enter school, rather play takes a more mature form and represents a strong linkage between their thought and reality. The…

The teaching of fundamental movement skills (FMS) such as catching, throwing, running, jumping and rolling is widely accepted as the cornerstone of physical education in the primary school. However, there is limited debate about the use of different pedagogical approaches when teaching FMS. In this article, advice is offered for teachers vis-à-vis…

Children with special needs may have less access to play due to the nature of their developmental delay or disability or their lack of experience with typically developing peers. Many preschools and kindergartens have reduced play in their daily schedules and elementary schools have reduced or eliminated recess (Jarrett et al., 2015; Zigler &…

Although abundant evidence demonstrates that play is the source of development for preschool-aged children in various cultures, few studies have investigated the role of adult-children collective play in supporting the development of children in institutional care settings. This study examined whether and how a play-based programme created…

Early childhood is an important time for building children's affinity with nature and the environment. Early childhood professionals play a crucial role in developing young children's understanding of the natural world. Over the past 50 years, there has been a movement in early childhood education and care contexts to provide young children with…

The purpose of this essay is to propose a manifesto of young children's rights in the early childhood classroom based on Vivian Paley's many formal classroom investigations into children's thinking, learning, and social emotional development. Analysis establishes, first, Paley's license to speak for young children by positioning her in the only…

The purposes of this study were to identify the qualities criteria of constructive play and the teacher's role to enhance the qualities of constructive play. The participants for this study were ninety-seven 5-year-old children (53 boys and 44 girls) attending one kindergarten located in S city, K province in South Korea. Ten research assistants…

Against a backdrop of 'play' as the established notion of best practice in early childhood education, this paper sets out to trouble the discourse by exposing for critique the place of teaching within a play-based curriculum. The paper reports on lessons gleaned from a longitudinal play-based intervention in over 100 primary schools in Northern…

This research aimed to explore the play situations and episodes that are developed in early childhood settings focusing on the interactions between children and their adult teachers. A questionnaire survey including 50 participants was first carried out to explore teachers' perspectives and practices regarding musical play; this was followed by 19…

In the Caribbean, as with many other contexts, though learning through play serves as the impetus behind recommended early years classroom practices, very little is known about children's play, what it looks like and the factors that shape it. To explore this issue, traditional qualitative methodology including interviews, documentation of field…

Based on a government document review, 25 stakeholder interviews, and 7 site visits, we examined how and why outdoor play became a focus of Scottish policy for early learning and care programs; we also documented opportunities and barriers to policy implementation. The outdoor play emphasis began as a bottom-up initiative, with a few early…

This study explored voices of early learning teachers engaged in discussions in an online outdoor play and nature pedagogy course. Three core questions were investigated that focused on early learning teachers' perceptions and practices of children's access to quality outdoor play and nature experiences. The results support previous research that…

The aim of this paper is to study teachers' roles in preschool children's mathematical reasoning using analysis of epistemological moves. Three moves were identified: instructional moves, confirming move and a new move, concluding move. There were no generative moves encouraging the children to produce different arguments for choice of strategy or…

This paper builds upon an ethnographical doctoral study that explored how adults exercise power over children. Anchored in the worlds of children's lived experiences, it explores whether play can be deeper, richer and more meaningful when children are beyond the watchful eye of adults. It focuses on children's play within the spaces they occupied…

Over the past 7 years I have dramatically changed my pedagogy in a quest to engage junior primary students in deep, authentic learning. This article concentrates on how I have come to support junior primary students to learn to write. It explains how I developed play-based learning through the books I read, the social media I became active in, and…