As they develop, children become interested in and use increasingly diverse apps on devices such as smartphones. For more than a decade, pediatricians, developmental psychologists, and computer scientists like us have been studying children's ability to use smartphone apps and the positive and negative effects of doing so. In this article, the…

Preparing students with robust life skills, including social-emotional skills, is of paramount importance in today's world, particularly for children growing up in adversity. Dream a Dream was founded by 11 young people who wanted to engage with children who were terminally ill, abandoned, or HIV infected. The idea was to organize activities and…

Arts programs have much value to offer children and educators alike, and so it is important to seek avenues for providing these enriching opportunities. Emerging from the collective and personal traumas experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, arts programming may play an especially important role in welcoming students back to schools,…

Even before the global pandemic and record-breaking protests against racial injustice, Generation Alpha (born 2010-2024) were on track to be the most civically engaged group of students ever. They will be the most educated, the most digitally savvy, and the most diverse of any generation in history. They are learning from their savvy Generation Z…

An often repeated argument is that young children can not carry out meaningful research. The authors, who are lecturers involved in teacher training and childhood studies, are interested in the impact that children can have on their school lives and believe that it is often underestimated. The Young Researchers Project (YRP) was created in…

The HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa has been devastating. Over 200,000 Kenyan children under the age of 14 are infected with HIV and an estimated 1.1 million Kenyan children are orphaned due to AIDS. Nyumbani Children's Home works in communities made vulnerable by this disease and the accompanying poverty to reduce transmission rates and…

Content education is becoming less important than teaching children to understand and empathize with diverse individuals, thus supporting their ability to fully understand the context of challenges affecting the world and collaborate on solutions.

Children are always learning. Innovative initiatives that offer opportunities for learning and skill building in environments outside of school are as important as ones designed for the classroom.

Kids on Earth is a free online collection of interviews with children and teenagers, 8 years old to 15 years old, living around the world and sharing details about their lives, hopes, dreams, and interests. It is a unique tool for learning about the world and the young people who live in it.

Unique approaches are important to explore for every aspect of our work with children, including therapeutic support for traumatized children. Sometimes, these techniques involve inviting some furry friends into the classroom.

Literacy is a pivotal aspect of education and critical for economic development as well as individual and community well-being. Innovative programming that taps into culturally relevant local resources can increase literacy and strengthen social-emotional skills. This article describes the work of LitWorld, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that…

Four organizations were brought together by a common desire to create a unique community service program that focused on increasing the language and literacy skills of children born to teenage parents. This article explains the process of creating this project from conception through workshop design, implementation, and outcomes.

Kelsey Thingvold reflects on her experiences helping her students to think critically and consider their role in the world, and how those experiences served her well in her own collaboration with a global group of education leaders.

Thought leaders in peace education, Swee-Hin Toh was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 2000, and Virginia Cawagas served as a Professor at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. Both actively support the work of the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) under the auspices of UNESCO in Seoul, Korea.

Lessons in community building and cultural understanding are important aspects of a 21st-century education. Through such lessons, students gain the keys to societal understanding as they gain knowledge about their cultural and historical contexts, and use that understanding as a setting for exploration of deeper values, emotional experiences, and…