This study documents patterns of cultural value conflict and harmony for Latino students in two relational domains--among the students themselves and between the students and their teachers--in two second grade classrooms in the Los Angeles area. One of the classrooms was led by a teacher who participated in a professional development program, the…

Currently, the place of play in schooling and education is controversial. Even in pre-school, where play is most likely to be found, its status is often precarious. This article notes that in many ancient religious traditions, play is sometimes viewed as sinful, whereas work, its antithesis, is seen as virtuous. The German educationist, Friedrich…

Cultures recreate themselves constantly, sometimes through natural transformations, sometimes through imposition. While colonialism was atrocious, partly because it transformed cultures by imposing disfigured identities and understandings (Fanon, 1963), we cannot reset cultures to how they were before conquest. That would require erasing languages…

Children in mainstream schools who struggle academically and disengage in regular schooling may be helped when teachers change their practice to include what the students themselves have reported makes a difference. Student voices need to be listened to, not as a token gesture, but as a way of making a positive difference in their lives at school…

Choice theory identifies five psychological needs: survival, freedom, power, belonging, and fun (Glasser, 1998). There are close parallels with self-determination theory (SDT), which specifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as essential needs (Deci & Ryan, 2000). This case study examines a very successful example of choice theory…

This article begins by revisiting an old dispute between the children's writer Chukovsky and the child psychologist Vygotsky on whether and how child literature should mediate development. It then considers child language language lessons in South Korea for clues about how such mediation might happen, and finds the development of rote language,…

This article examines the code-switching (CS) practices of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) young children in kindergarten and grade 1 classrooms. The author argues that their use of CS went beyond relief of psycholinguistic stress or coping with liminality (sense of living between two languages and cultures). Through several narratives…

This pilot study investigated the efficacy of "Phonics Alive 2: The Sound Blender", a computer-based phonological skills training program, delivered with both at-home and at-school components over a 10-week period, as a potential treatment of phonological dyslexia. Participants were 20 dyslexic primary students with an average delay of…

This study examines the use of a cooperative physical games program "The Game Factory" on social behaviour among children. Children are required to work together towards positive collective outcomes. A pretest-intervention-posttest design is used. Parents and teachers assessed 90 Australian primary school children in two experimental…