As we progress in the 21st century, children learn to become proficient readers and writers of both digital and non-digital texts. Knowledge, skills, and understandings of literacy emerge through sociocultural interactions with non-digital tools (e.g., paper-printed books) and digital tools (e.g., touch screen tablets). However, debate is ongoing…

Drawing on a study of children's musical games in urban South Africa, this article employs two theoretical frames: that of multimodality and the multiliteracies pedagogy. These are applied to a contextual analysis of the forms of musicality that musical games embody and to ways of incorporating children's play into pedagogy. Based on ethnographic…

Research has demonstrated that providing labels helps children notice key features of examples. Much less is known about how different labels impact children's ability to make inferences about the structure underlying mathematical notation. We tested the impact of labeling decimals such as 0.34 using formal place-value labels ("3 tenths and 4…

Poorly developed word recognition skills are the most pervasive and debilitating source of reading challenges for students with learning disabilities (LD). With a notable decrease in word reading instruction in the upper elementary grades, struggling readers receive fewer instructional opportunities to develop proficient word reading skills, yet…

Minecraft has become well established in the world of education. Around the world, the game is being used in a variety of educational settings for virtual project work and as a virtual world for collaboration and social interaction. Minecraft is an activity players want to talk about. It is a game they want to learn more about. In order to do…

Desmos Battleship is an engaging activity in which students can improve their visualisation skills, and deepen their understanding of linear functions and circles by making connections between algebraic and graphical representations. The Desmos Battleship activity was used in a Saturday STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)…

"Pregnant Rapunzel Emergency" is part of a series of online free games aimed at young girls (forhergames.com or babygirlgames.com), where dozens of characters from fairy tales, children's toys and media feature in recovery settings, such as "Barbie flu". The range of games available to choose from includes not only dressing,…

Previous studies in both typically and atypically developing children have shown that approximate number system (ANS) abilities predict formal mathematical knowledge later on in life. The current study investigated whether playing specially designed training games that targets the ANS system using nonsymbolic stimuli only would improve preschool…

This article reports a study that aimed to contribute to the theory of good toy design in terms of the value of using toys for children development. Moreover, the study attempts to evaluate ways in which children play and study the toys they commonly use with respect to how it influence their adulthood. The authors firstly looked into the…

Background: A fundamental dimension of school physical education (PE) is arguably movement and movement activities. However, there is a lack of discussion in the context of PE regarding what can be called the capability to move in terms of coordinative abilities, body consciousness and educing bodily senses. Purpose: This article explores and…

This study explored the effects of literacy-rich sociodramatic guided play on kindergarten student literacy performance and behavior. Kindergarten students of varying socioeconomic status attending two elementary schools in the same school district participated in this repeated measures, counterbalanced design study. Students received the mandated…

Although creativity is helpful if not needed to deal with conflicts, research on the effects of conflict on creativity shows inconsistent findings. In this study, the possibility that effects may depend on people's role in conflict was considered. Whether, when, and why assuming the role of attacker or defender in conflict affects creative idea…

This piece reports on an early attempt at gamification (reframing post-secondary classrooms drawing on the structure of games). The attempt began in the 2011-2012 academic year and is structured to allow students substantial autonomy in determining which assignments, and how many of them, to complete over the course of the semester. Initial…

Over the summer of 2015, the Plug-In Studio (a new media art collective) collaborated with a group of African American teen artists from Chicago's South Side on a series of art videogames. The teen artists selected issues important to them as the subjects for the games: White privilege, racial profiling, police misconduct, and others. Working…

In an era where computational thinking is regarded as a basic skill for the 21st century that needs to be taught across the K-12 curriculum, research shows that teacher education programs do not adequately prepare preservice teachers to promote computational thinking skills in classroom teaching. Accordingly, the present study contributes to the…