In this article, I have sought to develop an understanding of the contribution of imaginative and nature appreciation in early childhood environmental education dealing with old, cultural nature myths and beliefs. The argument rests on the belief that the basis of a child-environmental education is in imagination which resonates with play,…

In an article adapted from his latest work, "Play: A Basic Pathway to the Self,"published by The Strong in 2020, the author offers a wide-ranging review of play studies--and the thinkers, philosophers, and scholars who led to the creation of the discipline. He also reviews and seeks to explain for both specialists and more general…

There is more to know about children's play and learning in public spaces, including the long-term benefits of exposure to established play spaces such as children's museums. Nested within an 18-month mixed-method longitudinal study, this qualitative descriptive study sought to understand how children aged three to five years develop and learn…

This study investigated whether two educational strategies, providing material and active adult support during play, promote pretend play quality in a group of preschoolers. The sample consisted of 101 preschoolers (50% females; mean age at t1= 43.02 months, SD= 5.94) from 14 Swiss educational play groups. These were randomly allocated to the…

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…

Grounded in the sociocultural perspective, this paper analyses current Croatian theory and practice on the transition to school and addresses the importance of fostering a play-based pedagogy and symbolic play in particular. Despite the contemporary theoretical background on early childhood and children's transition to school, the mainstream…

In this study, the play preferences of 80 five-year-old children, 40 girls and 40 boys, from four schools in Turkey and the characteristics that shape their preferred plays were examined. The research was designed by descriptive method, which is one of the qualitative research patterns, and the data were collected using draw-and-tell technique.…

Virtual reality (VR) therapies have been used in health and mental health care settings. The applicability of VR expressive tools has not yet been examined adequately in the creative arts therapies. This pilot qualitative study reports on 17 participants' experiences with VR art-making tools to determine its relevance to art therapy practice and…

Previous research has indicated that young children's executive functions (EFs) can be bolstered through role-play [e.g. the 'Batman™ effect'; White et al.]. However, what is not clear is whether it is the role-playing of another's perspective, or something about the role played, which is responsible for the Batman™ effect. The current experiment…

The international quality-improvement agenda for Early Childhood Education (ECE) directs attention to maximising children's learning experiences. Yet routines, and particularly those relating to sleep-rest provision, are not well conceptualised as learning opportunities. Often children who no longer sleep in the daytime are required to lie down…

Early childhood settings value play as the way young children learn and educators encourage children's re-enactment of cultural practices in the imaginative play spaces provided. From a cultural-historical perspective, children expect these imaginative play spaces to contain objects from their social contexts, but what happens when technologies…

Pretend play is a quintessential activity of early childhood, and adults supply children with many toys to encourage it. Do young children actually prefer to pretend, or do they do it because they are unable to engage in some activities for real? Here we examined, for nine different activities, American middle-class preschoolers' preferences for…

Mind-mindedness (MM) refers to caregivers' proclivity to treat a child as having an active and autonomous mental life. It has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to mitigate the impact of risk conditions. However, longitudinal studies on MM reporting changes over time and individual differences among mothers…

Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder associated with social cognitive challenges, and pretend play has been demonstrated as a tool to achieve developmental goals. Following previous report on feasibility and acceptability of a remote, play-based parent-training program (Zyga, Russ, & Dimitropoulos, 2018), we now…

The opposition between learning as a process of self-cultivation ("Bildung") and learning as a form of vocational training for the workplace ("Ausbildung") is becoming ever more deeply entrenched in the twenty-first-century university. In language education in particular, the distinction between these two competing aims…