Despite numerous research findings that support play's positive impact on children's learning, pressure to pass high-stakes tests later in the elementary years has prompted a decrease in the amount of time for kindergarten play. While play proponents work to prioritize play in kindergarten, there is a dilemma. How can educators respond to the…

Although art classrooms are rich with demonstrations, discussions, and artmaking, the COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to art educators wanting to engage students in studio-rich practices. As one solution, Bitmoji classrooms emerged in response to emergency remote teaching (ERT). Bitmoji classrooms--containing an instructor's…

Background/Context: Over the past five decades, policymakers have introduced Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs in education as a reform in the presence of "government failure," aiming to increase the freedom of school choice, educational productive efficiency, and social equity. While the evidence regarding charters in US is…

This study consists of a 17-year (2006-2021) systematic literature review on the effective instructional strategies for developing Computational Thinking (CT) in primary school students (K-5). The aim of this paper is to identify instructional strategies that have been implemented and evaluated by means of a pre- and post-test, with the aim of…

Coding learning involves cognitive control ability that enables children to coordinate behaviors according to internally maintained goals. However, such ability is still developing during early childhood and cannot reach maturity at least until late adolescence. This study aimed to test whether integrating cognitive control strategies into online…

This article builds on a qualitative study of interactions and negotiations with respect to existential questions in an ECEC department with children from 3 to 6 years of age, as part of a larger empirical study on the same topic. In the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research's 2017 curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC),…

Although teachers are expected to teach mathematics ambitiously, it is challenging for them to do so. Given that the first year represents a critical juncture between teacher preparation and inservice teaching, it may be particularly challenging to teach ambitiously. Understanding the nuanced characteristics in lessons taught by first-year…

Because reading is not a natural process like language, young learners must be taught to read. Knowledge about how the reading brain develops has critical implications for understanding which teaching methods to use and helps reconceptualize previous debates. In this excerpt from "Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World",…

We examined the effects of three different training conditions, all of which involve the motor system, on kindergarteners' mental transformation skill. We focused on three main questions. First, we asked whether training that involves making a motor movement that is relevant to the mental transformation--either concretely through action (action…

Cognitive activation is one of the central quality characteristics of teaching. Studies which analyzed cognitive activation in science instruction and its influence on the achievement and the interest of students, took most of the times place in higher grades. Since scientific thinking can be taught at a very early stage and, in particular,…

Authentic, "messy data" contain variability that comes from many sources, such as natural variation in nature, chance occurrences during research, and human error. It is this messiness that both deters potential users of authentic data and gives data the power to create unique learning opportunities that reveal the nature of science…

Although the importance of nature of science (NOS) instruction for learners as young as kindergartners is emphasised in a great number of documents and studies, very little research has been conducted in early childhood contexts. Thus, researchers are still not able to see a comprehensive picture of young children's understandings of NOS. The…

Digital technologies collapse distance and accelerate the speed at which information travels. This has made it easier for children to encounter violent clashes from across the globe. Thus, the digital era has raised new questions for educators about how to teach current events in an increasingly globalized world. When children have easy access to…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether systematic instruction of informational texts can enhance kindergarteners' cognitive involvement in text discussion and comprehension skills. The sample consisted of 15 children aged 5-6 years old in a kindergarten classroom located in a rural area in Rethymno, Crete. A four-phase…

Cultivating students' design abilities can be highly beneficial for the learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts, and development of higher-order thinking capabilities (National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council in STEM integration in k-12 education: status, prospects, and an agenda for…