This article focuses on how Early Childhood Education and Care institutions provide for 1- to 3-year-olds' risky play--a previously little researched topic--utilizing data from an exploratory, small-scale study investigating aspects of risky play in the age-group. The main findings describe how three essentially different Early Childhood Education…

This article presents data from a survey of Early Childhood Education and Care services in Australia. The study investigated outdoor play provision in terms of space, resources and planning for risk-taking in play. Overall, the results indicate that the participating centres are well-resourced to promote physical play, but vary in terms of…

This case study explores how an emergent bilingual preschooler used transmodal practices to engage with objects and compose narratives in sociodramatic play. Video recordings and field notes were collected in a dual language preschool classroom in the United States to examine the actional, verbal, and visual modes used by the focal child during…

In 1998, Sturrock and Else introduced the Play Cycle which has been integrated into both playwork theory and practice. An online survey with 157 responses found that playworkers' understanding Play Cycle varied to how they were first introduced to the theory. In addition, understandings of the six elements of the Play Cycle were significantly…

How children experience the major transition from pre-school to compulsory schooling influences their immediate and future success and wellbeing. This complex process of change and adaptation is impacted by school readiness policy drivers, which prioritise children's performance and achievement. Pedagogic and curriculum progression shifts from…

Social pretend play may have a positive impact on children's social development because it involves positive peer interactions and challenges their social-cognitive abilities. The current study aimed to investigate whether variations in play tutors' active support and play management are associated with variations in children's social pretend play…

Play materials designed to enhance children's pretense were investigated; namely, how the specific characteristics of the play sets (thematically open-ended village set vs thematically closed-ended train set) influenced children's play communication regarding their co-construction of shared meanings. Participants included 44 7-year-old focal…

A number of studies have identified childcare environments as significant resources for children's development, learning through play, and contact with nature. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how, from a child's perspective, specific outdoor physical environments in preschools stimulate children's cognitive play. Emphasizing on the…

The goal of this study is to inform teachers' practice by identifying specific language strategies that young children use in their play and suggesting ways that teachers can build on our findings to support students' language and literacy. Deductive analyses of video-recordings of 5-year old children playing at the sand center revealed that…

This article introduces the notion of "contemporary" play in relation to existing ideas about children's play, learning and development from a sociocultural perspective. The need to think about the nature of contemporary play is considered in response to arguments suggesting that the quality of children's play has declined in…

This article aims to explore how the interactive whiteboard is situated in the social and material conditions of an early years free-flow learning environment. It examines how the affordances of the interactive whiteboard and the expectations of the surrounding classroom impact how activity involving the interactive whiteboard unfolds. It achieves…

We need methods to measure friendship among very young children to study the beginnings of friendship and the impact of experiences with friendship for later development. This article presents an overview of methods for measuring very young children's friendships. A behavioural sociometric method was constructed to study degrees of friendship…

Learning how to respond appropriately in risk situations comes not only from the child's direct experiences but also through the guidance of those around them. The role of parent practices in guiding children's decision-making in risky situations has mainly been investigated in experimental contexts. The present study examined children's…

The article discusses how children make use of their preschool context in order to withdraw. Ethnographic observations were made of two-to five-year-old children's interactions during free play and teacher-led activities in the preschool, and documentation was carried out through field notes and video recordings. The empirical material was…

Young children often use actions rather than talk as they interact with objects and each other to strategically shape the social, material, and cultural environment. New dynamic research designs and methods are needed to capture the collaborative learning and social positioning achieved through children's non-verbal interactions. Mediated…