Doll play provides opportunities for children to practice social skills by creating imaginary worlds, taking others' perspectives, and talking about others' internal states. Previous research using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) found a region over the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) was more active during solo doll play…

Post-secondary South African education policy is pinning its hopes of increased access to education on technological changes, especially in light of increased demand for education while persisting with fiscal austerity. This article examines one policy text--the Open Learning Policy Framework--that exemplifies this techno-solutionist policy logic…

Blockbuster young adult (YA) dystopian novels invite readers to explore questions of identity and agency in fictional societies impacted by familiar concerns, such as increased social and political violence and state surveillance. As young people navigate similar issues in their own lived experiences, these texts can serve as transformative…

This study explores how Black girls express their "Black girl imagination" while participating in a critical, informal science learning program, Empowering Girls Through Art & Science, designed to prioritize the positive visibility of Black girls and promote the critical exploration of scientific histories. The goal of the research…

Although creativity in music is a topic widely considered and studied among global music educators, it has received limited attention in China while quite a number of Chinese pianists have been recognized on the international stage. How do Chinese pianists and professors perceive creativity in piano performance? How would they nurture creativity…

During imaginative play, children may learn foundational skills important for academic success. Indeed, imaginative children, high in fantasy orientation (FO), may have advantages in skills that support positive classroom and social behavior. Yet findings are mixed regarding the classroom behavior of children high in fantasy orientation. The…

Wordless picture book reading is one of the common literacy practices for young children that happen at schools and homes. This dissertation of three studies explores the reader-text transactions between young children and wordless picture books in three ways: a content analysis of wordless books potentially featuring characters of color, a…

Lodging social work education within institutions of higher learning in the early twentieth century led to predictable tensions between academic and professional norms, expectations, and purposes partly because of the conflicts inherent in being an explicitly value-based profession with longstanding aspirations to be scientific. Social work…

The world, and the component parts that people generally take for granted about it are those moments put on pause, or, perhaps more accurately, peeled away, revealing something else entirely underneath. The world at the moment of suspension or peeling gives way to another world, or flashes thereof, however brief. To the author, nothing represents…

Reports on differences between remembering the past and imagining the future have led to the hypothesis that constructing future events is a more cognitively demanding process. However, factors that influence these increased demands, such as whether the event has been previously constructed and the types of details comprising the event, have…

This article aims to provide insights of social justice awareness in young children's pretend play (2-6 years old) involving shopping activities in the nursery and the children's museum. Previous literature acknowledges the importance of grocery exhibits and relevant learning centres in the cognitive and socio-cultural development of children, but…

Background: Creativity is one of the key competencies for the talent of the 21st century to meet future challenges in a complex world. It is also an innovative basis for students to discover and pose questions. Purpose: This study aimed to explore which two interventions of the problem-oriented teaching model, teacher-guided problem finding (TGPF)…

One afternoon during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, as I was retooling my in-person courses for online instruction, I took a break to see how the educators and artists I follow on Instagram were faring. As I scrolled through a variety of posts, I happened upon an image showing a page torn from the 1940 children's book "Lentil"…

The paper describes the results of a study whose main aim was to find the interrelationship between pupils' school grades in Czech language (native), mathematics, and physics and pupils' cognitive predispositions to problem-solving in science and mathematics diagnosed by the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning and the Culture of Problem…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by socio-emotional deficits, and difficulties with pretend play skills. Play skills are related to processes of adaptive functioning and emotion understanding. The present pilot study implemented an in-person pretend play intervention to school-aged children (ages 6 to 9 years,…