Robotics has emerged as a popular interdisciplinary pedagogical approach in the field of education to teach children STEM concepts. By providing playful learning experiences, the use of robots engages children in an active learning process, making it an effective tool to promote their targeted knowledge, skills, and disposition towards STEM,…

The importance of incorporating digital technologies into early childhood education is now widely accepted to help position children as creative producers and not just consumers of technology. Early childhood educators in turn have a key role to play in developing technology-related skills and competencies such as coding and computational thinking…

Objective, quantitative measures of caregiver-child interaction during play are needed to complement caregiver or examiner ratings for clinical assessment and tracking intervention responses. In this exploratory study, we examined the feasibility of using automated video tracking, Noldus EthoVision XT, to measure 159 2-to-7-year-old autistic…

Recent studies have shown that playing with coding toys enhances children's skills in STEM-subjects, especially problem-solving abilities. However, there is limited knowledge of early childhood education and care (ECEC) teachers' roles in facilitating children's problem-solving through coding-toy play activities and the high-quality pedagogical…

Recently scientists have underscored a significant mismatch between the latest theoretical Computational Thinking conceptualizations as an upcoming literacy that goes beyond computer science, and its operationalizations in current empirical research and designs, which are limited to coding-centred and domain-specific tools and approaches. To…

When thinking of early childhood STEM, images of active, play-based design challenges, experiences with robotics/coding, or hands-on experiences with open-ended materials (e.g., balls, ramps, loose parts) often come to mind. While these are certainly images that align with developmentally appropriate early childhood STEM practices, some of the…

Guided play activities were developed so that coding clubs could promote computational thinking skills in preschool children. The clubs involved fifteen children aged between 2 and 4 years, including a group of children with communication difficulties. The children took part in an action-research scoping study over three coding clubs involving six…

Digital play is a pedagogical construct used in early childhood to explain young children's engagement with technologies. Digital play draws upon theories of play to explain young children's learning with technologies. This paper proposes the further development of digital play by examining how the digital aspect of digital play may also be…

We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and how it impacted on a focus group of 3 and 4-year-old children's creativity. The questions that guided the design experimental method were: (1) how do young children develop and demonstrate creativity when learning through play with digital coding…

This article highlights the findings of an empirical research project, using an ethnographic approach, taking place over one academic year. It investigates the different forms of engagement that children may present, when acting in free play situations in a nursery in NW England, without direct adult intervention. This range of engagement includes…

Research has highlighted the importance of early literacy development. In light of this, there has been a growing concern around boys' underachievement on language and literacy assessments. Given the recent mandate for play-based learning in Ontario kindergartens, this paper examines children's literacy integration during play from a gender…

The present study set out to investigate theoretical speculations that regulation and musical play, an initial manifestation of musicality, are directly linked. This study aimed to explore the potential for regulation to occur during musical play and investigate the nature of the regulatory behaviours. Thirty-six children, aged 6 and 8, were…

Research Findings: Research has demonstrated the developmental and educational benefits of play. Despite these benefits, teacher-directed academic instruction is prominent in kindergarten. There is increasing acknowledgment in curricula and policies of the challenges presented by a lack of play in classrooms and the need to support academic…

The present study examined maternal responses to infants' spontaneous communicative behaviors in a sample of 20 extremely-low-gestational-age (ELGA) infants and 20 full-term (FT) infants during 30 minutes of play interaction when infants were 12 months of age. Relations between maternal responses and infants' communication skills at 12 and 24…

In this ethnographic research, discovery of how preschool-aged children use play to wield their individual power in the outdoors is documented in a single classroom. Embedded as a participant-researcher and working from constructivist and critical theory orientations, the researcher seeks to understand how children use their play to construct the…