Biology and the particular gun culture of the United States come together to explain the persistent and powerful attraction of American boys to both real guns and toy guns. The 1990s saw adults begin to conflate "the gun problem" with "the boy problem," sparking attempts (largely failed) to banish toy guns from homes and…

The words "real", "really" and "pretend" are used in developmental research paradigms to reflect both the notions of 'authenticity' (in pretense-reality and appearance-reality research) and 'existence' (in fantasy-reality research). The current study explored whether children also expressed these notions in their everyday uses of "real", "really",…

This paper is a tentative attempt to unwrap and understand one aspect of playful practice and the influences which determine its existence in early years settings. "Storying" events, those occasions when teachers and children together "make up" stories or parts of stories, develop roles or co-construct fantasies, occur moment by moment in some…

The transition from kindergarten to Grade 1 is marked by a sudden decrease in children's play time (Brostrom, 2005; Hartmann & Rollett, 1994). This study sought to examine 69 Montreal-area Grade 1 children's beliefs about out of school play, as well as their parents' (N = 56) perceptions of their play. Findings indicate that parents value play…

The creation and cultivation of an imaginary companion is considered to be a healthy form of pretend play in early childhood, but there tends to be a less positive view of older children who have them. To test the extent that having an imaginary companion in middle school is associated with positive or negative outcomes, an ethnically diverse…

This article opens by raising a need to examine today's moral education for a new century. John Dewey insists that "arts are educative," so that "they open the door to an expansion of meaning and to an enlarged capacity to experience the world." This insight retains remarkable implications for today's moral education. Aesthetic experience is…

Multicultural education and a multicultural curriculum are vital components of contemporary education. While most educators recognize the value of multicultural education in attempting to create a more just world, some lament that they do not have time to incorporate multiculturalism into their classrooms in light of all the content that must be…

One way to merge imagination with problem-posing and problem-solving in the English classroom is by asking students to respond to "cultural and political vignettes" (CPVs). CPVs are cultural and political situations that are presented to students so that they can practice the creative and essential decision-making skills that they will need to use…

Improvisational techniques derived from the experiences in improvisational theatre can be adapted for the college classroom to leverage the characteristics of the Net Generation, their multiple intelligences and learning styles, and the variety of collaborative learning activities already in place in a learner-centered environment. When…

Sociological imagination is a quality of mind that cannot be adopted by simply teaching students its discursive assumptions. Rather, it is a disposition, in competition with other forms of sensibility, which can be acquired only when it is practiced. Adhering to this important pedagogical assumption, students were assigned to write their…

This study continues the effort to investigate the possible influence of bilingualism on an individual's creative potential. The performances of Farsi-English bilinguals living in the UAE and Farsi monolinguals living in Iran were compared on the Culture Fair Intelligence Test battery and two creativity tests: divergent thinking test (the…

This repeated measures study examined second graders' (n = 21) performance in creating inventions related to animal adaptations for simple products under two conditions that alternated each week for a six-week period. In the analogy condition, students used form and function analogy object boxes to learn about animal adaptations, applying these…

This article explores how reading strategy instruction that targets children's literature can unwittingly interfere with the development of a reading life. It compares the use of story-based children's literature for reading strategy instruction with the "untaught" story. It asks: What, if any, role does a read aloud that is unfettered by formal…

This article describes an emerging theoretical framework for examining relationships between learning dispositions and learning architecture. Three domains of learning dispositions--resilience, reciprocity and imagination--are discussed in relation to the structures and processes of early childhood education settings and new entrant classrooms.…

This paper continues to explore the relationship between the imagination and learning. It has been claimed by Maxine Greene, amongst others, that imagination is the most important of the cognitive capacities for learning; the reason being that "it permits us to give credence to alternative realities". However little work has been done on what…