Search

Given its importance in children's development and learning, researchers have rigorously studied play, and many teachers have used it as a classroom tool. Music researchers have observed that music regularly accompanies children's play because music is part of their culture, and "playing with music" is the most natural form of expression of their existence as musical beings. Hence, play is at the heart of early childhood music, and music teachers design activities that are playful using manipulatives, instruments, movements, and musical sounds to engage children. However, scant research has explored the types of play enacted in guided music settings and how children construct musical understanding through play. This article discusses children's play and related theories, illustrates how children "play with music" in the guided music setting, and offers practical applications of play in guided music activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for short-term therapy with a clearly defined therapy plan and operative goals, which provides deep and lasting change, is constantly increasing. This demand is especially challenging for child psychologists. While classic psychodynamic approaches to child therapy are rich in theory, they do not provide the therapist with systematic steps for conceptualization, from which detailed therapy techniques could be derived. To fill this gap, this article provides an original extension of Experiential Dynamic Therapy (EDT) well-suited for children, adolescents, and families. This method facilitates the assembly of a clear, dynamic conceptualization of the difficulties encountered by children and their families; proposes clear therapeutic tools for achieving the therapy goals derived of this conceptualization, and enables deep, stable therapeutic achievements within a relatively short time. The paper presents a case study to demonstrate these principles. This novel adaptation of the theoretical principles of EDT for child psychotherapy opens a new horizon for application of EDT in diverse types of interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to develop a play therapy training program as a form of alternative learning for children with developmental disabilities. This study conducted a play therapy training program for experienced play therapists using flipped learning and analyzed the process of cooperation and change between researchers and the play therapists. Methods: To enable researchers and participants to create an online-based play therapy training program and to analyze the process of cooperation and change, a participatory action research (PAR) methodology was applied. Five play therapists with six to seven years of play therapy experience were the participants. The study analyzed various qualitative data (recorded materials for online conferences, learning results, video, online community activity materials, chat rooms, e-mail, participants' reflection essay, researcher notes, interview materials). Results: This study followed a process in which participants discussed specific educational contents and method through online communication, and then reflected on this discussion in the subsequent educational session. This study composed the final program through three action research processes. Also, the results of the study revealed topics such as: 1) "Come alive" (subtopics: Notice, “I'm not a beginner..."; Be aware, “I know but…”); and, 2) "Alive-alive" (subtopics: “LAN cable” colleagues; Learning “with my own”; Learning “in my opinion”) in the process of cooperation and change between researchers and participants. Conclusion: The findings of this study could be used for creating an online educational environment as a form of alternative learning. It is expected that the application of Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, that helps participants become subjects of learning through a cooperative process and mutual communication with researchers, can help overcome the limitations of the existing play therapy supervision method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juan: (Juan stands and embraces his father ... Juan turns to María. Anaya's Childhood Homeland: Sexual, Indigenous, and Spiritual Identities For Anaya, the oral tradition of storytelling was an important cultural practice in constructing a childhood homeland for young readers/audiences. 185 Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 46:1 Spring 2021 © University of California Re gents Ceremony of Sisterhood Performing Mestizaje in Rudolfo Anaya's Literature and Plays for Children Cecilia J. Aragón Having grown up in a family with strong ties to the Chicana/o movement and La Alianza Federal de Mercedes in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was heavily infl uenced by Rudolfo Anaya's literature. The other name that Anaya ascribes to Luz, in the context of the play Los Pastores, is Gila, connecting her to her mother, who once played Gila in her youth. [Extracted from the article]

Augmented Reality (AR) technology has provided a new technological platform for 'mirror worlds', where layers of information, meaning, and functions are integrated with a digital twin of the real world. To explore mirror worlds, we designed and developed +Andscape, an interactive AR sandbox. In this conceptual and empirical case study, we observed children's (5–6-year-old, N = 16) collaborative play and storytelling with +Andscape. The qualitative content analysis from observational video-based data allows us to infer how children's play with the AR sandbox engaged their questioning and reflections of both the real world events and the computational mirror worlds. The use of the tool triggered children's imagination and opened for them a story world for exploration of current media events in a unique way. We conclude that when introducing mirror worlds, the focus should be on creative play, participation and storytelling through which the children can construct their own story worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Play therapy is a developmentally appropriate approach to counseling that allows children to use a variety of toys and materials to express themselves. The purpose of this paper is to present a range of research-based strategies from play therapy that educators can incorporate in young children’s play to support their social and emotional learning and decrease their use of aggressive behaviors. Identifying interventions to support children with challenging externalizing behaviors (e.g., aggression, disruption) is paramount as these behaviors interfere with classroom contexts and student social development. Class-wide practices that address classroom climate are an important intervention point, and play-based interventions may serve as proactive methods prior to the need for more intensive or intrusive intervention. These strategies are presented generally but can be used with the whole class, small groups, or individually with students. We end the article with a case study illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary issues abound in the best‐seller graphic novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid, where Heffley, his little brother Manny, and his friend Rowley often try to borrow or use others' money, the failure of which often develops into stealth or abuse of money, not to mention Heffley's mom's failed effort of disciplining him by introducing Mum Bucks. Money plays the role of currency and is one of the regulating and most fundamental principles in the adult society. Those who disregard the commonly accepted way of the use of money are often marginalized or even become criminals. On the contrary, in the children's world, money is often marginalized and destabilized—it is not respected with reference to its proper function in the adult world and it is often abused, counterfeited, or denied, the degree of which often indicates the degree of maturity of the character. This article analyzes different characters' regards and uses of money in Diary of a Wimpy Kid in an attempt to reveal the marginalized or even destabilizing role money plays in the children's world. It argues that the least mature character holds the most careless attitude toward money and this behavior often upsets the more mature character, who to a certain extent has partly internalized the central role of money in the adult world. It is, therefore, not surprising that Heffley's mom's introduction of Mom Bucks fail to work in the end because it symbolizes adults' futile enforcement of the disciplinary power of money in the children's world where it is not recognized as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Ciência & Saúde Coletiva is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Pos-Graduacao em Saude Coletiva and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, particular focus is on micro-ethnographic studies of children's peer play-in-action and how children create shared peer cultures through their collaborative performances in situated game activities. It will be shown how children create micro dramas in play that serve as cultural frameworks to i) dramatize and transform experiences from the outside world; ii) playfully subvert hierarchies and gendered orders; and iii) comment upon and unravel controversial issues in their social life. The data are drawn from three sets of video-recorded data of children's everyday play activities collected during fieldwork in separate school and after-school settings located in middle-class and low-income multiethnic suburban areas in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study aims to analyze the evolution of play from a diachronic perspective, evoking at the same time the mythical, realistic, imaginary, cognitive, emotional and social dimensions, starting with the earliest days of humanity and up to the present day. At the same time, we captured the universal, multidisciplinary and polysematic nature of play by approaching it from a synchronic perspective. The objectives and functions of play, from the perspective of human development, have been researched for more than a century by thinkers and scientists who have established the value of play for learning and development, but also the consequences of the lack of play in the children's life. In carrying out this study we analyzed the published literature and summarized the most relevant researches, opinions and recommendations concerning the evolution of play and its importance for the harmonious development, wellbeing and happiness of the children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Babylon Center for Humanities Studies is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The mechanical transmission of motion, which is observable in gears' turning direction (TD) and turning speed (TS) can be understood as part of the core concept "force and motion". Previous studies have suggested that most children before the age of nine have naïve concepts of gears' TD and TS. However, these studies relied on children's explanation data and might have therefore underestimated young children's potential. Moreover, these studies did not examine whether preschoolers can overcome their naïve concepts through teaching. Recently, educators have proposed guided play as an educational approach that combines children's play with teacher guidance in a purposefully designed environment. We conducted two subsequent studies. In Study 1, we investigated the children's (naïve) concepts of gears' TD and TS with a cross‐sectional approach using a nonverbal test procedure. This study comprised 248 children aged 5–10 years and 73 adults. The results showed that the proportion of children with adequate concepts increased with age. More specifically, 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds differed significantly from 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds, indicating a developmental shift around this age. However, naïve concepts of TS were more persistent with age than naïve concepts of TD. Altogether, the results indicated the potential to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds' concepts of both TD and TS in an intervention. Thus, in Study 2, we developed and tested a guided play intervention to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children's concepts of TD and TS. We conducted a prepost‐intervention design with a guided play group (n = 19) and a free play group (n = 21). The results suggested stronger learning gains in the guided play group (dTD = 0.337, dTS = 0.758) than in the free play group (dTD = 0.224, dTS = 0.158). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of ouvirOUver is the property of ouvirOUver and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education is the property of International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Rhymes, poetry, stories, wrestling, music and dancing were essential cultural elements through which childhood play was promoted in traditional Africa. "Modernisation" brought about by colonialism led to distortion and decline in the use of traditional play for childhood education in many parts of Africa. This work assessed the value of play in Africa's childhood education, using documentary analysis and a survey of views from South African and Nigerian childhood educators. The documentary analysis involved a review of existing research to give an overview of traditional play in Africa, while survey data generated from 62 respondents in South Africa (SA) and Nigeria (Nig) were used to illustrate the findings of the review. Traditional African play, when properly deployed, could enhance children's physical, mental, social and emotional development. This study identified 5 major obstacles to the integration of traditional and modern forms of children's play. It therefore calls for concerted efforts by policymakers, educators and parents to address the challenges associated with the identified obstacles within a trado-modern paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a diachronic case study of history textbooks used in Slovak primary and secondary schools since 1918, this article discusses the roles biographies of historical heroes can play in school education. The case study analyses history textbook narratives about the medieval ruler Svätopluk published during three different political regimes, tracing their heritage up to present-day history textbooks. The text argues that the presentation of Svätopluk's qualities, talents and achievements has been used not only in depicting him as a representative of the community, and as a desired prototype of a good citizen, but also in the formation of negative stereotypes about the representatives of the Other. This excluded significant segments of pupils of certain national minorities from the mainstream narrative and labeled them as enemies. An examination of the images of Svätopluk in history textbooks confirmed that these were politically motivated and influenced by current ideologies. However, it also showed that 19th century Romanticist ideals, resulting in apologetic and nation defending narratives, remained an integral part of history textbooks throughout the 20th century, prevailing over the narratives offered by official contemporary historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's ability to engage in pretend play is important for healthy development. However, relative to cognitive play features, only a handful of studies have examined the influence of affect expression in pretend play on child development. This study evaluated prospective relations of 250 preschoolers' (Mage = 49.05 months, SD = 2.95; 50% female; 46% Latinx) expressions of prosocial and aggressive affect themes in solitary pretend play with their prosocial and aggressive behaviors in laboratory and school settings two years later. Prosocial and aggressive affect themes in preschoolers' pretend play evidenced specific and positive relations with prosocial and aggressive behaviors in the laboratory two years later, but not with teacher‐reported behaviors in school. Multigroup analyses indicated these relations did not vary as a function of child gender, ethnicity‐race, or poverty status. This study illustrates the complexity and behavioral significance of children's affect expression in pretend play. Implications for understanding children's play and social development include the need to consider affective (in addition to cognitive) play features, including specific affect themes in pretend play, as a potential window into children's behavioral strengths and vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of social pretend play may have a positive impact on children's development. This study investigated to what degree this quality is a characteristic of a child versus a function of the play partner or the specific pairing of two children. For this purpose, preschool children's general pretend play quality (actor effect), their general influence on their play partner's pretend play quality (partner effect) and the role of the specific constellation between two children (relationship effect) were examined in a dyadic setting. Potential associations of the effects with children's age, gender, social cognitive and social competencies, as well as the dyadic composition of these variables and their friendship were examined. Children completed two to four dyadic pretend play situations with different peers. They were tested for their language ability, theory of mind and emotion understanding. Educators rated children's social competence (cooperation and sociability) and evaluated their friendship with one another. A social relations model analysis was conducted. The results indicated that children's pretend play quality was determined to the same degree by the child and by the specific pairing of two children. Positive associations were found between children's pretend play quality and age, emotion understanding and sociability on the individual level. Further, the quality of children's social pretend play benefited from having older and more advanced play partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's play remains a key site for negotiating identities as young children try on different possibilities from popular culture and the broader social landscape. While this play can be generative in broadening available gender expressions in particular, such play can also reproduce harmful and limiting stereotypes that serve to narrow and exclude identities, particularly for girls of color. This qualitative study of three girls in a kindergarten classroom illustrates the tensions inherent in claiming centrality, specifically for girls of color who are often decentered, underrepresented, and tokenized in curriculum and popular culture. Against this backdrop, intersectional theories and artifactual literacies frame how identities are (re)constructed and sedimented on texts as historical and social artifacts, documenting how children move between multiple expectations and presumptions about their identity. In order to construct and justify certain play scripts, children apply dominant gendered and racialized narratives to interpret the world and set up their play. Through an analysis of the social context, play episodes, popular culture artifacts, and the use of symbolic tools, this paper shows how children straddle and mobilize themselves across varying social contexts and assert their voices despite the dominance of White girls within their social, cultural worlds. Although the girls featured in this paper show that monolithic images are malleable as children work out their social positionings, the invisibility of girls of color in popular culture reinforces powerfully normative cultural scripts. Consequently, young children normalize whiteness while limiting and excluding possibilities for girls of color to express intersectional identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kâzım Karabekir has also made a name for himself with his success and various studies on education of children. Since he is also the commander of the Eastern Front, there are options for education in schools and the application of his ideas and education of children. Karabekir has 54 works in total. These works shows diversity include history, education, souvenir, theater and economics etc. There are 4 known works of Karabekir for children. These are "Çocuk Davamız", "Çocuklara Öğütlerim", "Hâlâ Bu Mektep", and "Şarkılı İbret". "The first two include theoretical knowledge and advice for raising children, while the last two include games. Karabekir, both in the built schools and children's games he has written about the profession as well as himself as an ideal Turkish people grow up. In this respect, it has shown that the development of the state and the nation is a good duty to educate people through education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Croatian Journal of Education / Hrvatski Časopis za Odgoj i Obrazovanje is the property of Uciteljski Fakultet u Zagrebu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores how preschools can be purposefully designed to aid cultural learning through guided play practices. In recent literature, there has been a renowned interest in the role of the exogenous environment in psychological processes, including learning. The idea that the design of preschools can meaningfully be seen as cultural niche construction and that guided play practices in these environments can aid the preparation for cultural action is promoted, and a theoretical framework is presented. The empirical data draw from a synthesis from three ethnographic research sites in multilingual communities, and data are used to explore how cultural affordances are used in designed environments as part of guided play practices. The results indicate how niche construction of affordances aid cultural learning and is achieved through both direct guided play interaction between teachers and children and also in the way of the indirect design of environments that is incorporated in children's peer play. It is discussed what this means for play research as well as for guided play practices that aim to promote cultural learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are sensitive to both social and non‐social aspects of the learning environment. Among social cues, pedagogical communication has been shown to not only play a role in children's learning, but also in their own active transmission of knowledge. Vredenburgh, Kushnir and Casasola, Developmental Science, 2015, 18, 645 showed that 2‐year‐olds are more likely to demonstrate an action to a naive adult after learning it in a pedagogical than in a non‐pedagogical context. This finding was interpreted as evidence that pedagogically transmitted information has a special status as culturally relevant. Here we test the limits of this claim by setting it in contrast with an explanation in which the relevance of information is the outcome of multiple interacting social (e.g., pedagogical demonstration) and non‐social properties (e.g., action complexity). To test these competing hypotheses, we varied both pedagogical cues and action complexity in an information transmission paradigm with 2‐year‐old children. In Experiment 1, children preferentially transmitted simple non‐pedagogically demonstrated actions over pedagogically demonstrated more complex actions. In Experiment 2, when both actions were matched for complexity, we found no evidence of preferential transmission of pedagogically demonstrated actions. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between our results and previous literature showing an effect of pedagogical cues on cultural transmission, and conclude that our results are compatible with the view that pedagogical and other cues interact, but incompatible with the theory of a privileged role for pedagogical cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a look inside one school community. The school implemented Let Grow Play Club and a recently expanded 40-minute recess period. Data are from observations of children's play periods, child interviews, and teacher interviews. We argue that play has significant cognitive, emotional, and social benefits for elementary school children. Periods of play at school help students to focus, build friendships, improve mood, work cooperatively, and work through conflict without adult intervention. The study has implications for the expansion of play, including recess and programs like Let Grow Play Club, for all schools as a social justice issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some science educators claim that children enter science classrooms with a conception of heat considered by physicists to be incorrect and speculate that "misconceptions" may result from the way heat is talked about in everyday language (e.g., Lautrey and Mazens, 2004; Slotta and Chi, 2006). We investigated talk about heat in naturalistic conversation to explore the claim that children often hear heat discussed as a substance rather than as a process, potentially hindering later learning of heat as energy involved in emergent processes. We explored naturalistic speech among children and adults to understand the nature and the frequency of heat- and temperature-related conversations that young children are involved in. This study aims to investigate the actual linguistic resources that children have available as part of a sociocultural approach to cognitive development. Parents' everyday conversations about heat and temperature with their 2–6-year-old children were drawn from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) language database and from a parent–child book-reading study. Parents used the word heat rarely, but they did so in ways that implied it is a substance. Parents never talked about heat as an emergent process but sometimes as a direct causal process. Most of the heat- and temperature-related talk, however, focused on words like hot and cold to describe temperature as a property of objects. This investigation of what young children actually experience in everyday conversations is a step toward studying how everyday language may play a role in children's understanding of heat and temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preschool children in the United States spend a great deal of time watching television. The content and characters represented on preschool television programs play a role in children's learning and behavior. The purpose of this content analysis was to investigate role models in television programs targeted toward preschool children, with research questions focusing on gender and race/ethnicity of lead characters, content themes, leadership roles, comparison of public and private networks, and demographics of program creators. One hundred thirty-six programs from public television, cable channels, and private networks/streaming services were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Chi-Square tests of independence. Findings revealed more male than female lead characters and more white, non-Hispanic characters than underrepresented races/ethnicities. Males were more likely than females to be lead characters on programs about STEM and problem-solving. There was a greater proportion of males portrayed as group leaders, corresponding to the greater proportion of male lead characters. Creators of preschool television programs are primarily white and are more often male. Recommendations for improvement of diversity and equality are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Mustansiriya Journal of Arts is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We examine the role that parental engagement with child's education plays in the lifecourse dynamics of locus of control (LOC), one of the most widely studied non-cognitive skills related to economic decision-making. We focus on parental engagement as previous studies have shown that it is malleable, easy to measure, and often available for fathers, whose inputs are notably understudied in the received literature. We estimate a standard skill production function using rich British cohort data. Parental engagement is measured with information provided at age 10 by the teacher on whether the father or the mother is very interested in the child's education. We deal with the potential endogeneity in parental engagement by employing an added-value model, using lagged measures of LOC as a proxy for innate endowments and unmeasured inputs. We find that fathers', but not mothers', engagement leads to internality, a belief associated with positive lifetime outcomes, in both young adulthood and middle age for female and socioeconomically disadvantaged cohort members. Fathers' engagement also increases the probability of lifelong internality and fully protects against lifelong externality. Our findings highlight that fathers play a pivotal role in the skill production process over the lifecourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Der Beitrag untersucht Tankred Dorsts Umgang mit Märchenhaftem. Im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit stehen folgende Aspekte: Dorsts Erwägungen über Marionetten und Marionettentheater; Stoffe, Motive und Figuren, die Dorst bekannten Märchen direkt entlehnt hat; die Verbindung der Artus-Welt-Mythen und -Figuren mit märchenhaften Elementen; Kindertheaterstücke. Dorsts Texte sind Variationen auf alte Geschichten. In Sinn- und Rätselbildern spiegeln sich die Grundmuster menschlichen Verhaltens und existentielle Wahrheiten wider. Ziel des Beitrags ist, die Rolle und Umsetzung des Märchenhaften sowie dessen Bezug zur gegenwärtigen Wirklichkeit in Dorsts Werken herauszuarbeiten. The aim of the paper is to examine Tankred Dorst's use of fairytale motifs. We focus on the following: Dorst's view of puppet theater; motifs and characters from fairy tales; combination of Arthurian myths and figures with elements of fairy tales; plays for children. Dorst's texts are variations on old stories, symbols and mysterious images reflect basic behaviour patterns and existential truths. We examine the role and the way of implementation of fairytale motifs and their relationship with today's reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Academy is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Libri & Liberi is the property of Croatian Association of Researchers in Children's Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal History of Latin American Education / Revista Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana is the property of Universidad Pedagogica y Tecnologica de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Yaratici Drama Dergisi is the property of Yaratici Drama Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research highlights that early childhood teachers (ECTs) hold varied opinions on the value of superhero play (SP) to young children's learning and development. This study sought to investigate how ECTs in Victoria are responding to superhero play, and to examine the beliefs that underpin their responses. Interviews were conducted with eight ECTs from the Bayside area in Melbourne. The study revealed that while the majority of the teachers interviewed responded to children's superhero play in a variety of ways, there were a number of barriers to supporting superhero play in early childhood education and care settings. This paper concludes by identifying the value of ECTs engaging in critical reflection to ensure that their responses to superhero play are based on professional knowledge that is informed by theory and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have significant difficulty in social functioning to include engaging in natural play with peers. Many children with ASD exhibit significantly less interactive play and more physiological stress during benign social encounters with same-age peers on a playground. Theatrical role-playing and performance with expert role models may provide a unique opportunity for children with ASD to learn to engage with other children in a safe, supportive environment. SENSE Theatre® is a peer-mediated, theater-based program aimed at improving social competence in youth with ASD. Previous studies have shown significant improvements in social and communication skills following SENSE Theatre® intervention. The current project examined play with novel peers and self-reported anxiety before and after participation in SENSE Theatre®. Participants included 77 children between 8 and 16 years with high-functioning (IQ ≥ 70) ASD. The combined sample of three cohorts was randomized to the experimental (EXP, N = 44) or waitlist control (WLC, N = 33) group. Participants in the EXP group received 40 h (10, 4-h sessions) of SENSE Theatre®. The Peer Interaction Paradigm (PIP), an ecologically valid measure of natural play, was administered before and after the intervention. Group Play and Self Play on the playground equipment during solicited (T4) and unsolicited (T1) play were used in the current study. The State Trait Anxiety Scale for Children (STAIC; Spielberger et al., 1983) was used to measure self-reported current and persistent anxiety, respectively. Following treatment, children in the EXP group engaged in significantly more Group Play with novel peers [ F (2,73) = 7.78, p = 0.007] and much less Self Play [ F (2,73) = 6.70, p = 0.01] during solicited play compared to the WLC group. Regression analysis revealed that pretreatment play and group status were significant predictors of solicited Group Play. Children in the EXP group reported significantly less Trait anxiety following intervention [ F (2,71) = 6.87, p = 0.01]; however, State anxiety was comparable. Results corroborate previous findings of significant changes in social and play behavior in children with ASD following the peer-mediated, theater-based intervention. Acting and theatrical performance with supportive role models facilitates social engagement in everyday settings with novel peers and reductions in self-reported anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's names play a critical role in early literacy learning at home (Martens, 1999) and in classroom settings (McNair, 2007). However, children who are linguistically and/or racially minoritized often experience the denigration, mispronunciation, or changing of their names in schools. In this study, we examined how second-grade students composed poetry about their own names using the poem "My Name Is Jorge" / "Me llamo Jorge" (Medina, 1999, pp. 6-7) as a mentor text. Drawing on critical orientations to the elementary writing workshop (Lewison & Heffernan, 2008) and theories of translingual writing (Canagarajah, 2013), we used qualitative methods to document how young children wrote across languages and modes to enact resistance against the changing and/or mispronunciation of their names. However, we also describe how a small group of children wrote in ways that seemed to reinscribe dominant discourses, asserting preferences for names more closely associated with English and whiteness. This study suggests that young children can intentionally and skillfully draw on the breadth of their communicative repertoires to enact resistance in and through their writing. It also underscores the complexities and tensions associated with enacting a critical approach in elementary writing classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's entertainment has grown massively on YouTube in recent years, and the channels with the most subscriptions and views host content designed for children. This article investigates the toy review genre as present in YouTube videos targeting children. This topic has been discussed previously, most notably in regard to digital parenting and child infringement scandals. This analysis aims to more deeply understand the forms and functions of toy reviews in the contexts of YouTube's political economy, branding and commercialization, as well as regulation. We analyzed the narrative strategies of 180 videos across 35 toy review channels in order to gain an emic understanding of reviewing. Besides producing repetitive content characterized as "kidbait," these channels also employ creative aims and strategies to convince adults of the benefits of watching. Toy reviews are, however, a complex hybrid genre mediating children's commodities and play culture, and more attention should be dedicated to the ethical principles of their production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on research carried out for my master's thesis (Winslow, 2019), which explored three- to five- yearold children's perceptions and working theories of kindness. Literacy, in the traditional sense, was not an intended focus of this research, however, the importance of children's ability to express the complexity of their perceptions and working theories became a central consideration for the research. What was needed was an approach to research that allowed children to express themselves within the parameters of their vocabulary, but still allowed the researcher to capture the fullness of their thinking and ideas on the rather complex topic of kindness. A case study methodology allowed the researcher to select multiple avenues of data collection. The two most important methods of data gathering were the observation and audio recording of the children's puppet play and the conversations between the researcher and children about their puppet play. The outcome of these data gathering methods were rich and revealed dialogic conversations. The conversations became opportunities for children to discuss, share and expand on their working theories of kindness. Over the course of the research, the children became increasingly confident as puppeteers, storytellers and conversationalists. The researcher found herself as co-puppeteer and co-inquirer, rediscovering the importance of time and space for authentic conversations with children. Puppet play and conversations encouraged children and researcher to explore their perceptions and working theories together by revisiting and retelling favourite stories and characters, challenging existing ideas and building complexity over time and with practice. Puppet play also served as a mediating tool for the researcher to better understand children's points of view on abstract concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]