A creative arts program for talented students in Johannesburg (South Africa) is intended to foster perceptual-, aesthetic-, cultural-, social-, and self-awareness, understanding of the arts, as well as an emphasis on expanding creative potential focuses on the processes of sensory, intellectual creative, and aesthetic development. A four-phase…

Noting that Maria Montessori pioneered early childhood education (ECE) reform in Italy, and the surge in innovation in ECE after WWII, this videotape describes the early childhood system in the city of Pistoia, Italy, known for its high-quality and innovative services. The 30-minute video offers footage from 2 of the 9 full-day infant toddler…

Argues that the arts are basic to educational development, as they provide the tools and skills that are central to early language development including story, metaphor, rhyme and rhythm, binary structuring and mediation, image formation from words, affective abstraction, and others that underlie more complex learning. (Author)

Performance in drama, dance, music, puppetry, or combinations of these arts can be an exciting encounter for young children. This case study investigated one 4-year-old's responses to a children's opera. Her responses before, during, and after the performance were systematically observed and analyzed. Data showed that the child had some knowledge…

This collection of 18 essays and interviews documents the unique approach to early childhood education taken by schools in the Reggio Emilia region of Northern Italy for the last 30 years. The book is divided into four major parts. Part I includes an introduction by Carolyn Edwards and others, and the essay, "What Can We Learn From Reggio…

This article reports on a school-based research project into teaching composing at GCSE, setting this alongside a review of the literature. It suggests that research into cognition in composing in school students and teaching composing within a school context may be synthesised by understanding composing as problem solving. Composing is described…

Drawing on existing work in the area of creativity and early years education, this paper maps the process of an exploratory study which sought to identify what characterizes "possibility thinking" as an aspect of creativity in young children's learning. With the aim of developing a framework for identifying "possibility…

This book is designed to be of interest to anyone working or intending to work with 3- to 6-year-old children. The book draws on the knowledge of staff involved in early childhood education courses at the Institute of Education, University of London, and other experts in early childhood education, integrating research and theory in various subject…

Children mature into adults through their own activities and the influence of their social environment. One such social influence, education, is purposeful, planned, and institutionalized. Educational psychology investigates the psychological foundations of this process, particularly in the development of humankind. The publication focuses on such…

Argues that the arts provide a powerful means with which to promote future-oriented learning because they involve nonverbal, symbolic ways of knowing, thinking and communicating. Suggests that the arts in the emergent curriculum promote central education skills of discovery, pursuit, self-awareness, personal communication, social interaction,…

Argues that children need play time to explore the world because it is valuable, irreplaceable, spontaneous, and provides situations where children can learn with all their senses. Examines play in terms of its role in exploration, imagination, creative activity, work, learning, knowledge expansion, art, and the culture of children. (Author/SD)

The purpose of this study was to develop a program to help cultivate divergent thinking in mathematics based on open-ended problems and to investigate its effect. The participants were 398 seventh grade students attending middle schools in Seoul. A method of pre- and post-testing was used to measure mainly divergent thinking skills through…

Projects are in-depth studies of a topic undertaken by a class, a group, or an individual child. Projects are intended to strengthen children's dispositions to be interested, absorbed, and involved in in-depth observation, investigation, and representation of worthwhile phenomena in their own environments. This Catalog on the Project Approach, the…

This booklet is intended to help parents and teachers of primary school children understand children's growth, development, and learning. The first section, following a general introduction, lists methods parents and teachers can use to share information about children, schools, and classrooms. The second section discusses the learning process,…