Games have played an important role in modern educational methodologies. Beginning with the work of luminaries like Froebel, Montessori, and Dewey and continuing through the Cold War, the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and '70s, and into the present day, shifts in educational practice can be traced historically using the lens of games,…

In this article, I propose that research which focuses on young children's experiences with the interactivity of new media not only furthers findings about young children's digital lives but also enriches the conclusion that children's engagement with artmaking--in general and in traditional ways--is richly complex, affective, and…

This article utilizes the story of an art studio project involving 2nd-grade students in a new urban elementary school as they explored and engaged with architectural spaces in their community during their yearlong study of the theme of "Community." The purpose of this writing is to theorize and codify some major tenets of a narrative and…

In this article, I present a reexamination of the myth of inherent creativity in early childhood to elucidate how still-dominant discourses of optimization such as child development, individualism, expression, creativity, and visual realism exert limiting pressures on understandings of the art and visual culture that children consume and create.…

Research has shown that the study of children's drawings can shed light on certain problems, allowing many invisible sides of children's school life to emerge. Based on the results of that research, this article will study whether the use of drawings, and art in general, could lead to the reduction of social and academic marginalization and to the…

This article examines how children's construction of relationships in exploring materials helps to explain the constructivist foundations of the Reggio Emilia approach. A quasi-naturalistic study of 12 preschool children, ages 3 and 4 years, individually exploring different kinds of collage papers reveals a range of constructivist categories…

This research analyzes the attitudes of teachers, children, and parents toward artwork in Israeli kindergartens and the role this attitude plays in the reproduction theory of social status. This micro-ethnographic field research was carried out in two kindergartens. The teacher and the majority of parents of Kindergarten A concurred with the…