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In the United States, children are often given the opportunity to engage in pretend activities; many believe this kind of play benefits children's development (Haight & Miller, 1993; Haight, Masiello, Dickson, Huckeby, & Black, 1994; Parmar, Harkness, & Super, 2004; Roopnarine, 2010). Recent research has shown, though, that when children ages 4 to 6 are given a choice to do the pretend or the real version of 9 different activities, they would prefer the real one (Taggart, Heise, & Lillard, 2018). The reasons children gave for preferring real activities often concerned their appreciation of the functionality; when children did prefer pretend activities, their reasons often cited being afraid of, not allowed to, or unable to do the real activity. Given that children in Montessori classrooms have more experience performing real, functional activities, in this study we asked if this preference for real activities is even stronger among children in Montessori schools. We also asked children to explain their preferences. The data are from 116 3- to 6-yearold children (M = 59.63 months, SD = 12.08 months; 68 female): 62 not in Montessori schools and 54 in Montessori schools. Children explained their preferences for pretend and real versions of 9 different activities. Children in Montessori schools preferred real activities even more than did children in other preschools, but all children explained their choices in similar ways. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to play in preschool classrooms.

Teachers are the people performing the most important role in the educational process. In particular, in preschool education, teacher qualifications have become more crucial since the preschool period is a critical year in terms of all aspects of the child's development. It is the most important period in which children's attitudes towards book develop. In the preschool period, books that teachers choose for children have been seen to affect the attitudes and viewpoints of children towards books in their later ages. In this context, the research was conducted with the aim of revealing what criteria preschool teachers choose for children's book that they use in their classes. A situational study is a qualitative study in which a situation is investigated in depth. 26 preschool teachers working at kindergartens and nursery classes in elementary schools which are affiliated to Kütahya Provincial Directorate of National Education participated in the research. Research data were collected with semi-structured interview questions. The data were categorized by content analysis. According to the results of the research, preschool teachers pay attention to the fact that the textbook is robust physically in the selection of the books they use in the classroom, that the content is simple to understand and that the language used is plain and that the known writers and publishing houses are also considered when choosing books.

For several years, the authors were involved as volunteer literacy tutors in a low-income housing development with predominantly African American residents. In this volunteer role, the authors were troubled by the ways in which the youth and their families were misunderstood and not well served by the schools. The purpose of this study is to emphasize the perceptions and the voices of children, ages 11-16, as it relates to the research question: In a school system focused on closing the achievement gap, what qualities and characteristics do children from low income backgrounds identify in teachers that demonstrate care and respect?

The main aim of this study is to determine questions of 36 to 72-month-old children have about sexuality and to examine the answers given by parents. In the first stage of the study, 84 parents were contacted in order to determine children's most frequently asked questions on sexual development. In the second stage, top two questions from this list were selected and directed to 80 parents, all of whom were sampled from a separate pool. As a result of this study, it was discovered that children mostly question the physical features of girls and boys, and the pregnancy period. When parents' responses were examined, it was determined that a small portion of the responses were based on scientific grounds and that parents often provided answers based on avoidance-based and religious beliefs. Also, parents' gender, age, number of children, gender of their children, learning status and income do not make any difference.

In this study, it is aimed to discover childhood fears of 60-72-month-old children through the opinions of preschool children, preschool teachers and mothers. Study group of the investigation consists of 52 participants; 18 children aged 60-72 months, 16 teachers and 18 mothers with preschool children, in Istanbul. An "Interview Form" which consists of 9 questions, was developed by the researchers. According to the findings, there are not significant differences in fear types among preschool children in different socioeconomic levels. In general, the most common fear types among all children are animals, robbery, natural events and nightmares. According to the mothers in lower and middle socioeconomic levels, children are mostly afraid of the dark and loneliness and to the mothers from upper socioeconomic level, they are afraid of strangers and unfamiliar settings, animals and loneliness. According to the teachers working in lower socioeconomic level schools, children are mostly afraid of animals; to the teachers from middle socioeconomic level schools, children are mostly afraid of the dark, strangers and unfamiliar settings; and according to the teachers working in high socioeconomic level schools, children are mostly afraid of separation, strangers and unfamiliar settings and loneliness.

The aim of this paper is to explore how parents, teachers and children in early years' education understand the concept of resilience. The paper analyses the understanding of the concept of resilience in a Croatian kindergarten using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The qualitative research consists of a thematic analysis of data collected through 3 focus groups with 10 parents, 9 teachers and 11 children respectively. The quantitative research includes an analysis of data collected through the Scale of Socio-emotional Wellbeing and Resilience in Preschool Children which teachers and parents completed to assess the resilience of 116 children from a public kindergarten in a city of northern Croatia. The qualitative data indicates that parents and teachers have a different understanding of the resilience concept, while the quantitative data shows that parents, in comparison with teachers, assess all aspects of children?s resilience more positively.

This study examines how the Home for Children with Disabilities and disability identities were construed by Thai undergraduates in their website project through an analysis of metaphors. Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) was the framework for analyzing the use of metaphors and the participants' enactment of identity and social representation. The critical analysis revealed four dominant themes: "JOURNEY", "FAMILY", "OBJECT" and "HOPE" all utilized to reproduce the Home for Children with Disabilities identity as a "warm", "effective" and "altruistic" organization that provides their children with forms of care and compassion. The analysis, in addition, showed the participants' representation of disability identity as a non-static and changeable entity. Children with disabilities were seen as "capable of becoming self-supporting". Additionally, the semi-structured interviews conducted with the participants indicated that social oppression was believed to be the cause of disability-related issues and that true understanding was needed to terminate social discrimination.

The purpose of this research is to determine what the game means from the perspectives of children studying at public and private schools. Four questionnaires were applied to all the third grade parents of four schools; two public and two private schools in Ankara, and questionnaires were completed and sent back by 212 parents. A total of 32 volunteer students from four schools, 4 girls and 4 boys, who were determined according to the results of parents surveys consist of our student research group. Qualitative data were obtained by semi-structured interview technique. Content analysis technique was used for qualitative data and six main themes were created. As a result, children at private and public schools have described as ''the meaning of the play'' theme, as ''having fun, being happy, having a good time with friends, "learning new rules, being healthy and doing sports''. In the research, they also stated that they play game types such as ''rope, hide, hide and seek'' which do not require materials in public schools while they indicated they play games such as ''ball, dart, taboo and technological games'' in private schools. Children indicated that they play at school competitive games prepared by teachers in physical activities lessons. It is concluded that, there is not too much change in the meaning of the game in terms of children who study at private and public schools. Children's type of game and materials especially change for both girls and boys and schools. Although there are purpose of "enjoy" for both of the two groups, but materials and games that used and played are different.

According to the preschool education program that came into effect by Turkish Ministry of Education in Turkey in 2013, teaching should be offered not only in classrooms but also in places outside classrooms likely to boost learning. The program required utilizing learning techniques, and environments different from conventional ones. The aim of the present study was to raise awareness about history through a museum education program created as described by the Ministry in 2013, and offering information about cultural heritage of Turkey and other cultures, and to test effectiveness of the program. The study was conducted in Izmir Tarih ve Sanat Müzesi (The History and Art Museum in Izmir, Turkey). Data were collected at face to face interviews with a semi-structured interview form created to determine what children thought about museums. Obtained data was evaluated with content analysis. The analysis showed that the education program offered was effective.

This study aims at uncovering the views of children 48-66 months old regarding sustainable development (SD), as well as the attitudes of their parents and teachers. Additionally, it seeks to identify activities related to SD that are promoted in homes by parents and in schools by teachers. The study was designed as a case study, with participants selected using the convenience sampling method. Study data were collected by interview forms as well as by utilizing the Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale-Preschool Version. One-to-one interviews were carried out with children, parents, and teachers, and data obtained were analyzed making use of descriptive statistics and content analysis. Major findings of the study are as follows: the sampled children expressed views about environmental, economical, and socio-cultural pillars of sustainable development. Furthermore, they appeared to take care of not using water and electricity when it is not needed, and to pay attention to recycling as well as to taking care of animals living in their immediate environment. The findings also showed consistency between the views of the participants about sustainable development and their experiences.

This article seeks to examine critically South African early child development (ECD) in order to uncover some of the challenges that lie ahead in creating a more equitable future for its youngest children. An investigation of play and learning within varied ECD contexts, using observation and interview, is presented. The social constructionist approach adopted allowed exploration of play and learning from the perspectives of a range of stakeholders. Three themes, role of play, sources of inequality and barriers to play, are interrogated. The role and contribution of the concepts of readiness, needs and play to maintaining unequal treatment of vulnerable children are identified. The possibility that these concepts may serve as mechanisms to reproduce social and cultural inequality is considered.

The study was conducted to determine problem-solving skills of preschool age children on environment as well as factors affecting this skill. For this purpose, quantitative and qualitative research methods were used together in the study and the research was designed in the screening model. This study is a descriptive type research since it questions the present status. The study group consisted of 168 children studying a preschool in the Province of Malatya. The random-sampling method was used to select the participating children. The Introductory Information Form and the Scale for Problem Solving in Environmental Education (SPSEE) developed by Ulutas and Saglam (2016) were used for research data collection. A semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher was used to perform the interviews with parents. As a result of the SPSEE analysis, 15 children with the lowest scores among the participating children were identified and interviews were performed with their parents in order to obtain in-depth information in this regard. Content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data, and one-way ANOVA was used for quantitative data analysis. As a result of the study, the results of both analyses were found to overlap.

The following article aims to present, from children's perspectives, the value of literacy and how they use it in their everyday lives. Through the use of ethnographic methodology, including observations, interviews and collection of artifacts, it seeks to examine how children rely on their literacy skills authentically, as they play and move between spaces and respond to stimuli in their environment. I followed six children as telling cases and used Strauss and Corbin's (1990) Grounded Theory to illuminate the findings. Two dominant themes emerged: connecting and participating in significant moments. These findings provide much guidance on how teachers and parents can more readily support young children in their literacy development. It also supports the notion that children's perceptions of the value of literacy are inextricably linked to how they use it within their personal contexts: at home, school, and the wider community. This also supports children's use literacy as a means of bonding with and participating in social experiences.

This study was carried out with the goal of investigation of perceptions and views which are related to children's rights of forth grade primary school students. The research was designed properly to qualitative research approach. This research was made with 156 4th grade students. In determining of the research group, criterion sampling technique was used. In the process of getting research data, survey form, written documents and semi-structured interview form were used. The research data were analyzed with content analysis method. As a result of research, it was determined that children indicated that they have some rights such as have adequate nutrition, be respected by everyone, play games, feel being loved and attract attention, have fun and get qualified education. On the other hand, some rights such as make decisions and choices independently on issues related to self, live, shelter, protect themselves from all kinds of danger and get information are expressed by participants more less than other rights. In addition to this, it was determined that some responsibilities are perceived as rights by children. Consequently, it was determined that the children have not adequate awareness about own rights. Depending on the research results it was suggested that awareness and perceptions of students related to own rights should improved with qualified and entertaining children's rights education.

The purpose of the current study is to determine the effect of talking drawings on Turkish preschool children's mental models of the water cycle. The study was conducted in the city of Kastamonu, located in the north-west of Turkey. A total of 40 five-year-old preschool children participated in the study in the spring term of the 2015-2016 school year. Within the context of the study, prior to the initiation of the experimental process, the children were asked to illustrate their opinions about the water cycle through drawings. At the end of the experimental process, they were asked once more to draw pictures to depict the water cycle, after which the code differences between the drawings were determined. At the end of the study it was found that, before the initiation of the experimental process, the codes used by the children most frequently within the framework of the water cycle could be presented in rank order as follows: rain (f = 42, 95.4%), cloud (f = 36, 81.8%) and human (f = 24, 54.5%); after the completion of the experimental process, the same rank order was found: rain (f = 39, 88.6%), cloud (f = 39, 88.6%) and human (f = 28, 63.6%). On the basis of the post-test results, the Mann-Whitney U Test was conducted and revealed a significant difference in the children's drawings in favor of the experimental group (U = 28, z = -5.531, p = 0.000, r = 0.8). Thus, it was concluded that the technique of talking drawings had a positive effect on the children's mental models of the water cycle. In light of this finding, it can be stressed that the technique of talking drawings built on both student-student and teacher-student dialogues, and we recommend that a great emphasis be placed on group work in early childhood science education.

"Little emperors" and "little princesses" are not new terms for describing the young generations of China after the 36-years' implementation of its one-child policy from 1979 that has triggered the launch of wave upon wave of massive and long-lasting campaigns of gratitude education at all levels of schools cross China from 2005 up to the present. Yet, on 10th December 2015, the "People's Daily Online," an official newspaper flagship of China, reported that a lack of gratitude in young generations came out top of a list of the top ten deficiencies of Chinese people. What went wrong with the Chinese young generations and China's gratitude education? This article employs the morality of justice theory to explore the crux of a widespread lack of gratitude in young Chinese generations with the main focus on the role of chores in child development.

Play areas of entertainment and development are new recourses for modern city children, but at the same time, they produce risks of road traffic accidents, deviation, social inequality and social exclusion. Playgrounds in city/town yards are free zones of children's pastime, where children communicate and play together. The aim of this article is to consider children's playgrounds as semantic centers of town children's everyday life and to analyze their role in the social life of children of different age groups. Our research has made it possible to compare children's and adults' views on playgrounds. The position of parents is characterized by assessment of safety, variety of play equipment and developmental orientation. The importance of playgrounds for children is defined by possibilities of free communication and playing with other children.

Early childhood is a period of life in which lifelong attitudes, values and patterns of behaviour regarding nature are shaped. Environmental education is becoming a growing area of interest in early childhood education. The aim of the research study was to identify children's understanding of why and how their pro-environmental behaviours influence the environment. The sample was composed of 40 children aged 5 and 6. A quasi-experiment was conducted with control and experimental groups, each made up of 20 children. The initial semi-structured interviews sought to identify their initial ideas about the meaning of pro-environmental actions. Children from the experimental group then participated in activities in which they acquired knowledge in the natural sciences through direct experience and were becoming familiar with the meaning of the following pro-environmental behaviours: walk/cycling/using public transport instead of driving by car, turning off lights (rational use of electricity) and turning off the tap (rational use of water). At the end, the interviews in both groups were repeated. The results showed that at the beginning the great majority of children had no idea about how they influence the environment with each individual environmental behaviour. In their statements they expressed they behaved pro-environmentally because this was the socially desired behaviour. After they carried out the activities, the experimental group children's knowledge about the influence of pro-environmental behaviours was strongly improved with regard to those pro-environmental behaviours they had studied--the large majority of children had acquired a correct and precise idea about them. We find that, even in the preschool period, children are able to understand the scientific background and the impact of pro-environmental behaviours if presented to them in a way appropriate for their age. We propose that during preschool children should not only perform environmental behaviours, but should also be given the opportunity within environmental education to acquire knowledge and understanding through experiential learning about the impact of these behaviours on the environment.

Literacy and literacy skill development remain critical concerns in the U.S. "Two of every three students in the U.S. do not have the necessary reading proficiencies to successfully complete grade-level work" (Allington, 2011). Camp Read-a-Rama, a summer day camp in South Carolina for 4- to 11-year-olds, creates innovative programming using children's literature as the springboard for all camp activities. Activities connect with and reinforce concepts in children's literature, thereby helping children learn to "live books" and understand connections between their reading and their lives. For six summers (2009-2014), Camp Read-a-Rama has provided fully-engaged, week-long themed literacy immersion experiences that seek to turn "summer slide" into "summer stride." The purposes of this longitudinal, mixed methods study were: (1) to ascertain the impact of Camp Read-a-Rama's interventions on helping children develop positive attitudes toward reading; and (2) to determine best practices for literacy skill programming with children in libraries and the communities libraries serve. Findings offer compelling evidence that strategies employed through Camp Read-a-Rama programming positively impacted children's attitudes toward reading and their interactions with books, a critical step in literacy skill development and improvement. Analysis of parent/guardian evaluations revealed the following emerging themes as perceived impacts of Camp Read-a-Rama programming upon campers: increased love and enthusiasm for reading, improved reading and listening skills, and a belief that camp activities create a deeper understanding of books and vice versa. Findings suggest that integrating literacy skill instruction and programming into LIS curricula could better prepare librarians and LIS professionals to have a greater impact on literacy skill development among the children they serve.

Since it is a known fact that the "point de depart" of "Nostra Aetate" is the recognition of diversity, pluralism, and inclusiveness in modern society in its declaration more than forty years ago, it is the aim of this paper to point out the pedagogical problems and difficulties underlying the continued and intentional segregation of children from the same or within the same society based on religious belief and faith, especially in line with the noble intention of the same document to enhance mutual relations with other non-Christian religions, especially Muslims and Jews (as well as Buddhists, Hinduists) etc. There are two ways of looking at this: from the point of view of the type of education given to children and young ones in the name of religious beliefs and from the type of social attitudes they are meant to exhibit, which cuts them off from normal interaction with other children. The conclusion of the paper will point to the type of danger associated with this kind of segregation or isolation, leading to discriminative behaviour--especially as it works against the dynamic principles of social behaviour, based on openness and the moral values of justice, love, and honesty. The paper, whose approach is interdisciplinary, also shows that religion when mishandled, could be a major instrument of social disruption, especially in a pluralist and multi-cultural society, thus working against the very purpose of writing "Nostra Aetate" by the Second Vatican Council Fathers.

The present paper addresses children's participation through pedagogical structuring in an early childcare programme in Australia. Research shows inequality in participatory opportunities depending on skills in the spoken (majority) language. Against this background, the focus in the present study is on participatory opportunities for toddlers with a first language other than English. The toddlers' participation was video recorded over a six-week period. Participatory opportunities are understood in terms of pedagogical structuring, with an institutional and an interactional level. Through the use of a model of conditions for participation as an analytic tool, teachers' attending to children's perspective as a starting point for guidance is shown to characterize the pedagogical structuring. Non-verbal actions can become a useful tool for interaction, and offer a starting point for experiencing extended communication at an early age. In addition, the study shows an alternative way of interpreting decision-making in relation to the youngest children. A pedagogy built on a nuanced understanding of conditions for participation is emphasized and discussed.

Drawing on a recent doctoral research project that examined the everyday life perspectives during kindergarten mealtime, this paper discusses the methodological issues related to the concepts of child and adult perspectives during mealtime, and to the children's participation in research. Through the paper, we take part in a critical discussion of the dichotomization of child and adult perspectives (Lee, 2001; Spyrou, 2011; Wyness, 2013). Instead, we suggest to approach perspectives as something that is created through situated interactions between human and nonhuman elements. We argue that perspectives could be studied as constructed from a net of human, material, and discursive elements. In doing so, we also question children's participation in research as a source for production of knowledge that is more authentic than that produced by adults (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2008; Lomax, 2012). Hence, the kindergarten mealtime will provide the arena for discussing methodological issues that are relevant beyond studies on food and meals.

Listening to young children's voices is an issue with increasing relevance for many researchers in the field of early childhood research. At the same time, teachers and researchers are faced with challenges to provide children with possibilities to express their notions, and to find ways of comprehending children's voices. In our research we aim to provide a method for listening to, and analyzing young children's voices on educational issues. In this article we describe a new step in our research in which we are dealing with the issues of validity and reliability for the evaluation of our coding system: is our coding system for analyzing young children's voices valid and reliable?

Joen Bettmann's depiction of practical life exercises as character-building reveals how caring, careful, and independent work leads to higher self-esteem, more concern for others, better understanding for academic learning, and a self-nurturing, respectful classroom community. Particular aspects of movement and silence exercises bring out what Joen calls the child's "quiet soul," the contemplative and reflective side of life that brings peacefulness and a state of grace. [Excerpted from a presentation given at the NAMTA conference titled The "Casa dei Bambini on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century," October 7-10, 1999, Arlington, VA. Reprinted from "The NAMTA Journal" 25,1 (Winter, 2000): 101-116.]

There has been an increasing amount of concern about the lack of direct exposure that young children have to nature and the outdoors in Canada and the United States, leading to an increase in outdoor- and nature-based learning models for young children. However, very little research has been done in the field of early childhood environmental education. In particular, studies investigating young children's perspectives on outdoor learning and environmental education are extremely scarce. This article gives a critical summary of two previous studies that do consider young children's perspectives in relation to environmental education, and then describes a recent case study in which one young child's perspectives on outdoor play were sought. The findings from the three studies are compared. The importance of young children's choice in active, co-constructed environmental education is discussed. As well, the need for early childhood environmental education to take place in locations that are familiar to young children is highlighted.

Play, an elusive concept despite the extensive literature on the subject, remains especially problematic for research focused on the perspective of children. The author discusses her study on children's perspectives about play, exploring drawing as a method for learning how young children conceptualize play within a social-semiotic framework. Her study emphasizes children's own definitions and representations of play, and her findings suggest that children look at play not as a set activity but as a kind of experience related to many different activities.

This paper is based on an inquiry carried out among a small group of children between the ages of 10 and 12 years, who, in the framework of an art-workshop, attended two theatrical performances of the same subject, Homer's Odyssey, but of quite different directorial approaches: the first performance had a narrative character following the basic principles of the dramatic model, while the second one belonged to the postdramatic paradigm that tends to subvert all traditional concepts about the structure and the content of a theatrical act. The conversation that followed showed that children have only to gain by their approach to unconventional artworks, as they get stimulated to think in new and diverse directions. As an informed instructor on philosophical and theoretical art-matters is a prerequisite, this paper aims at the construction of a fundamental theoretical framework for the postdramatic model and at the examination of the possibilities of postdramatic performances to function both as carriers of information and as stimulators of new kinds of aesthetic experiences, in an educative manner.

The aim of the study is to clear the significance of craft skills for the pupils in age nine and twelve years. More than 200 pupils were asked to define, what are the most important skills for the pupils of their age. The results bring out that category of the skills related to craft subject is of the most presented categories in pupils' self description. Thus the primary school pupils essentially defined themselves by the activities they could do practically (building, cooking, repairing of things). The most undefined relation to craft activities is reflected in the answer of smaller boys in our study. A suspicion arisen from the analysis of pupils' sayings, that the craft lessons in the 1st school stage tend to be organized kind of poorly was asserted by the teachers who pointed out the need for special rooms and materials to implement different techniques.

Musical preference has long been a research interest in the field of music education, and studies consistently confirm the importance of musical preference in one's musical learning experiences. However, only a limited number of studies have been focussed on the field of early childhood education (e.g., Hargreaves, North, & Tarrant, 2006; Roulston, 2006). Further, among these limited early childhood studies, few of them discuss children's musical preference in both the East and the West. There is very limited literature (e.g., Faulkner et al., 2010; Szymanska, 2012) which explores the data by using a data mining approach. This study aims to bridge the research gaps by examining children's musical preference in Hong Kong and in South Australia by applying a data mining technique--Self Organising Maps (SOM), which is a clustering method that groups similar data objects together. The application of SOM is new in the field of early childhood education and also in the study of children's musical preference. This paper specifically aims to expand a previous study (Yim & Ebbeck, 2009) by conducting deeper investigations into the existing datasets, for the purpose of uncovering insights that have not been identified through data mining approach.

Parenthood is a phenomenon that is not easy to research. This study analyzed the emphases of parenting in the light of three comparison groups. The research was grounded on Bradley's (2007) theory of six fundamental parenting tasks. This was a case study focusing in one second-grade classroom. The teacher, 18 parents, and 19 pupils were recruited in the study. The data comprised three sets as well: questionnaires for parents, pupils' essays and drawings, and the teacher interview. The data were collected in 2012. The analysis represented theory-led content analysis. The results showed that the emphases of parenting tasks varied among the comparison groups and the emphases are illustrated in a triangle showing the variation. The most important task was the present parent who loves the children, and discusses and gives time for them. The role of parental love as the fundamental basis of parenting is discussed.

Young children's eating behaviors have a direct link to their future health and attitudes regarding food. Similarly, positive nutrition during the toddler years leads to increased brain development and thus children are generally healthier (Weaver, More, & Harris, 2008). This makes eating behaviors extremely important. During the toddler years children begin to eat table foods similar to adults. The adult role includes choosing food, encouraging children to listen to their bodies, and facilitating interaction and learning. The adult decides what to serve the child and, based on what is offered, the child will decide what and how much to eat (Horodynski & Stommel, 2005). In providing the child with food options, the adult may also reflect and respect the child's home and cultural experience with the food that is presented (Ziegler, Hanson, Ponza, Novak, & Hendricks, 2006). Teachers can use mealtimes with toddlers to encourage healthy eating behaviors (among other skills). However, mealtimes can often be the most challenging time of the day for caregivers. Toddler mealtimes can turn from exasperating to an enjoyable learning experience when caregivers are equipped with the right tools for each child. This article begins by discussing how to overcome picky eating, the impact of interactions during mealtime, and the role of children's internal cues of hunger and how many adults unknowingly override them. It then addresses mealtime control and creating healthy habits that will last into adulthood, modeling healthy practices to set a good example for children, and cultural and social norms that impact children's interactions with food during mealtime.

This article is concerned with ways in which children's social lives appear to have meaning and with children's subjective orientation in the transition from kindergarten to school. The article presents the development of theoretical concepts for ways in which we can understand children--by the aid of the analysis of empirical data dealing with children's subjective views of the life they are living and participating in. In other words, if we wish to understand children and children's actions, we also have to conceptualise the world in which they live just as that world is seen by children at the place where they stand and where they participate. The article covers on the one hand the presentation of the principal findings of a major research project and on the other a more detailed exploration of the concept of communities, including definitions of what children share and of how what they share links to what adults arrange for them. It also presents arguments for how a social approach to children's issues paves the way for more productive measures than an individual approach offers.

This study examined how children's perceptions of economic inequalities impacted their moral judgments about access to opportunities. The sample included ethnically diverse 8- to 14-year-olds (N = 267; M = 11.61 years, SD = 1.88) of middle- to upper-middle-income backgrounds. The larger the economic inequality in access to opportunities children perceived, the more negatively they evaluated granting access to a specific opportunity (an educational summer camp) to high-wealth peers alone, and the more they reasoned about the importance of fair access to learning. Further, children were more supportive of admitting low-wealth peers when they knew they had been excluded from the opportunity in the past, and children who chose to admit low-wealth peers reasoned about the implications of broader economic inequalities. Finally, most children preferred to take an active role in determining who should receive access to this special opportunity rather than leaving the decision to chance. These findings provide evidence for how perceptions of both broad and context specific intergroup relations contribute to moral judgments in childhood.

Hostile attribution bias (HAB) has been shown to predict aggressive behavior, especially toward peers. The current study examined whether HAB is also related to conflict with teachers, an important predictor of academic and social success in school-aged children. A total of 282 second to fourth grade boys in 74 classrooms completed a self-report measure of HAB toward teachers, while their teachers assessed conflict in the teacher-student relationship. Results supported the presence of a positive relationship between HAB toward teachers and conflict with teachers. These findings suggest that HAB toward teachers may be an indicator of difficulties and, pending further research, a potential avenue for intervention to improve teacher-student relationships.

Babies are miraculous linguistic creatures. From an early age, they seamlessly master the language or languages in their early environment. Babies' early language-learning abilities turn out to not just be about language--they are also social in nature, orienting children to cultural in-group members. Infants and young children demonstrate preferences for people who speak in a familiar language or accent, and they selectively learn from those people. In this article, the authors discuss how early social preferences toward language develop, their function for learning about one's culture and community, and how thinking about language may relate to later social biases. They also examine how children's attitudes toward speakers of different languages may be flexible based on children's experiences, including differences in children's own cultural backgrounds and exposure to diversity. Language is a critical component of identity and culture, and children pick up on this right away.

Play is an important part of early childhood education and has been defined from different perspectives and paradigms. However, definitions of play have been studied more from adults' perspectives than from those of children themselves. This ethnographic research, with children aged three to five years and built on sociological constructs, will explore children's views on play in two preschool settings in Iceland. Video-stimulated recordings were used to support children's conversations about their different activities in the settings, to explore which activities they considered play. Most of the children said that they were playing when they took on roles and could decide what to do with the material. When the children were preparing the play or were drawing, they usually said they were not playing. These findings add to the understanding of play from children's perspectives and are valuable to the research field and for educators working with young children.

Childcare within Australia has undergone significant reform as a result of the implementation of the nationally mandated "Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework" [EYLF] (Department for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR]. 2009. "Belonging, Being and Becoming. The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia." Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations). The EYLF articulates contemporary perspectives of the child through its principles, practices and learning outcomes. Educators are required to promote these principles, practices and learning outcomes with children aged from birth to 5 years. This paper reports the findings from a research project that sought to investigate how educators applied their understanding of learning outcome two of the EYLF (children are connected with and contribute to their world). The focus of this research was educators working with children aged two to three years within childcare centres operating on school sites, in metropolitan Western Australian. The research design was qualitative and situated within the interpretivist paradigm. Observations were used as the method for gathering data and these were analysed through a process of coding. This paper presents the observational findings of educators' practices within learning outcome two. Composite vignettes from the voice of the child are included to present the observational findings. In centralising the voice of the child, contemporary perspectives are made explicit.

Children learn about the world through others' testimony, and much of this knowledge likely comes from parents. Furthermore, parents may sometimes want children to share their beliefs about topics on which there is no universal consensus. In discussing such topics, parents may use explicit belief statements (e.g., "Evolution is real") or implicit belief statements (e.g., "Evolution happened over millions of years"). But little research has investigated how such statements affect children's beliefs. In the current study, 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 102) were shown videos of their parent providing either "Explicit" ("Cusk is real") or "Implicit" ("I know about cusk") belief testimony about novel entities. Then, children heard another speaker provide either "Denial" ("Cusk isn't real") or "Neutral" ("I've heard of cusk") testimony. Children made reality status judgments and consensus judgments (i.e., whether people agree about the entity's existence). Results showed that explicit and implicit belief statements differentially influenced children's beliefs about societal consensus when followed by a denial: explicit belief statements prevented children from drawing the conclusion that there is societal consensus that the entity does not exist. This effect was not related to age, indicating that children as young as 4 use these cues to inform consensus judgments. On the reality status task, there was an interaction with age, showing that only 4-year-olds were more likely to believe in an entity after hearing explicit belief statements. These findings suggest that explicit belief statements may serve as important sources of both children's beliefs about novel entities and societal consensus.

Technology is important to all aspects of our lives, so helping students develop an accurate understanding of technology should be an educational goal at the K-12 level. Assessments are important tools in reaching this goal. We developed an instrument to measure the technology conceptions of children ages 8-11, the 'What is Technology' (WT) instrument. We gathered evidence for the validity of using the WT instrument to measure children's conceptions of technology, including changes due to an intervention, and we describe those changes. We used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to establish scales, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with new samples of subjects to confirm our hypothesised model of children's conceptions. For further evidence, we analyzed and coded the written responses children gave to open-ended questions asking them to explain their understanding of technology, then calculated correlations between these codes and the CFA-confirmed scale measures. We found that children tend to think of technology as artifacts that are powered by electrical energy; however, after instruction most children's conceptions become more consistent with definitions given in educational standards. The instrument is shown to be valid and reliable for its intended use, to assess preadolescent children's conceptions of technology, and evaluate the impact of an intervention.

This study aims to explore the efficacy of literature relating to Anne Frank to reduce children's attitudes of prejudice and discrimination with respect to specific dimensions, including ethnicity and race, religion and gender. A quasi-experiment was employed with pre-post control design. The sample consisted of 100 students of the upper key-stage 2 (UKS2) level, recruited from the two British schools in Karachi. These schools represented an Experimental Group (EG) and a matched Comparison Group (CG). A research instrument titled 'Muggles world of differences' (MWD) was developed and validated. It was administered on CG and EG, both before and after intervention. The intervention plan 'Reading of Young Anne's Literature' (ROYAL) was developed based on selected readings from Anne Frank related literature (AFL). Intervention was provided to EG, while CG studied similar concepts using a more standard method. Results of the pretest revealed a high level of prejudice and discrimination in both the EG and CG, with no significant difference (p > 0.05) in the overall scores, as well as in the specific content domains. However, the post-test of the two groups revealed that the students in the EG had outperformed their CG counterparts in overall MWD scores, as well as in specific content domains. The difference was found to be significant (p < 0.05) with the large effect size (r = -0.63). Results support the efficacy of teaching Anne Frank related literature in reducing attitudes of prejudice and discrimination.

Communication is a multidimensional process. No matter what the field of the interaction is, there is always a crucial point in terms of the negotiation of social roles. This becomes more apparent in the field of education where institutional norms influence not only the children's behaviour, but at the same time the shaping of their consciousness. In this paper, we analyse the interaction between a pupil and his teacher. The field of the activity is a recount of a pupil's weekend. The aim of this study was to analyze the implicit negotiation of the appropriate behaviour and the socialization according to the school norms. The process of socialization, as it is presented in social psychology, is analysed through the selective use of Systemic Functional Grammar. This methodological combination revealed the way linguistic choices and the construction of the story reflected the formation of the child's social identity.

Australia holds some of the most unique, diverse and vulnerable ecosystems in the world, ranging from marine, coral reefs, to the arid and semi-arid outback, to tropical rainforests. Young children's perceptions of, and attitudes to their environment carry with them into adulthood, determining their capacity to learn about and interact with their world. To sustain Australia's unique landscapes it is essential that these future adults have an informed knowledge of the role, value and function of the country's environment. To ensure that we are helping the youth of today understand the natural environment we must first determine their current perceptions of it. This research describes an Arts/Science nexus; while traditional data collection methods, such as surveys, interviews and focus groups are often used to determine children's understandings, these methods are limited by their reliance on words. Children, particularly young children, do not always have the words to describe what they see, think or feel. The Arts, however, can be used as tools to help children express their ideas and feelings. So our research question was: how can we use an arts-based methodology to determine children's perceptions of their environment? To answer this question, five arts-based strategies were trialled, tested and refined. This article elucidates these different strategies, including the methods used and the impact of these methods on children's expression of their environmental understandings. It concludes with a description of the researchers' key learnings relating to arts-based data collection methods to determine children's environmental perceptions.

This study examines the conceptual understanding of the mechanisms of rainwater among elementary educational level children by means of two different experimental procedures: a semi-open questionnaire and drawings. The sample study comes from four different schools located in The Basque Autonomous Community (Spain) and is comprised of 124 children enrolled in two different educational levels: the final course of preschool education (5-6 year old children) and the first course of primary education (6-7 year old children). This paper describes the differences with regard to the performance in the drawing tasks among children from the different educational levels considered in the investigation. However, no difference was found concerning their verbal explanations. The results are discussed in the light of a socio-cultural standpoint. Therefore, the study attempts to contribute to the growing body of investigations that aim to understand the process of the comprehension of natural phenomena during the early education.

Childhood shyness plays an important role in terms of learning and socialization and can have profound effects on individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can carry over into adulthood. The present study investigated how self-identified childhood shyness might influence elementary school teachers' current perceptions of shyness among their students. Participants were 14 elementary school teachers. Interviews were conducted over the telephone and transcribed for content analysis. Analysis revealed themes of "social factors", "personal factors", and "relating to shyness" that contributed to childhood shyness. Moreover, these experiences of childhood shyness appeared to contribute to teachers' current perceptions of shyness (among teachers who self-identified as shy children). Implications for future research and holistic educational practices are discussed.

Early childhood is a significant time when children begin to develop their place identity. As they discover their environment, young children claim special places in which to construct their own experiences. In exploring ways to connect children with place, particularly nature, caregivers need to consider children's place perspectives in the various settings of their lives. This research explored the question: how do young children experience special places in the home environment? Qualitative data were collected during two phases. The first consisted of book discussions and representational activities with 51 children at school. The second included special place tours and informal interviews with 12 children and parents in their homes. Analysis revealed four activities representing children's place experiences: playing, hiding, resting, and exploring. Children's descriptions and observed behaviors were categorized and quantified to demonstrate their range of place use. Through self-initiated activities, children gained a sense of spatial autonomy and control of their environment. This is important to the development of their place identity and environmental competency in using the environment to meet social and personal goals. Additionally, through adult supported exploration, children gained an appreciation for the natural world. Early childhood educators should consider the balance between child-initiated and adult guided experiences with place particularly by designing open-ended spaces and activities that allow children to gain a sense of control.

Interlocutors who come from different cultural backgrounds often find themselves in need of a shared language in order to successfully communicate. Sometimes the language they share may be the native language of one and the second language of the other, or it may be the lingua franca of both speakers. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of immigrant families' attitudes toward language learning in the United States. Developing second language proficiency in English is important for both social interaction and educational achievement of immigrant children in the US whereas their parents may have a different set of linguistic needs for social interaction or professional advancement. This research investigated perceptions of immigrant parents and children about second language learning by administering an attitudinal questionnaire developed by Henry & Apelgren (2008). Data were collected from both children and their parents in the Southeastern US, and analysis revealed that parents perceived their children's attitudes toward second language learning to be more positive than the children's actual attitudes.

Music technology is a term commonly used to refer to electronic form of the musical arts, particularly devices and computer software that enable the facilitation, playback, recording, composition, storage, and performance of various musical compositions. There has been a growing awareness of the importance of aesthetics in early childhood education, especially for the music technology that offers young children benefits from the implementation of an appropriately complete music technology curriculum in the early childhood educational environment and instruments application. The findings in this paper demonstrate such music courses encourage creativity and foster a sense of cultural understanding and appreciation amongst children in an early education program. In short, with the progress of developmentally appropriated program, this study demonstrates that music technology curriculum is not only valuable, but essential to the early education program for young children.