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Recent and increasing efforts to standardize young children’s academic performance have shifted the emphases of education toward normative practices and away from qualitative, substantive intentions. Connection to human experience, compassion for societal ailments, and the joys of learning are straining under the pressure of quantitative research, competition, and test scores, exemplified by federal funding competitions and policymaking. Disrupting Early Childhood Education Research critically interrogates the traditional foundations of early childhood research practices to disrupt the status quo through imaginative, cutting-edge research in diverse U.S. and international contexts. Its cha...
Young Children and the Arts: Nurturing Imagination and Creativity examines the place of the arts in the experiences of young and very young children at home and in out-of-home settings at school and in the community. There is great need for development of resources in the arts specifically designed to introduce babies and toddlers to participatory experiences in the visual arts, dance, music, and storytelling/theater. This book presents valuable guidelines for early childhood teachers, families, caregivers and community organizations. Young Children and the Arts presents a comprehensive approach to the arts that is aligned with early childhood developmentally appropriate practice and that co...
Educators have long been pursuing and applying ways that play can be a context and even a medium for teaching and learning. Volume 15 of Play & Culture Studies focuses on the special topic on Play and Curriculum, a long waited topic to many educators and researchers in the field of play and education. This volume includes chapters reporting recent studies and practical ideas examining the relations between the play and curriculum from early education to higher education. The volume has 3 sections with the 9 chapters grouped to represent various voices on play and curriculum: in Culture, in STEM, in Higher Education. The uniqueness of this book is represented by its breadths and depths of diversity from investigating play and curriculum in an indigenous group in Columbia to play in a New York City Public school and from play and curriculum in a Family Child Care context to the uses of play with college students.
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and other Vygotskian approaches are becoming increasingly popular among social scientists interested in studying human actions, thoughts and emotions in their cultural contexts. Building on non-dualist, dialectical materialist epistemological premises, these approaches, however, can pose important challenges to the scholar and the student aiming at first adopting them in their research. What are the concrete, method-related implications of CHAT perspectives for the way we do research in the field? Showcasing the work of well-established as well as emerging CHAT scholars, this volume presents from-the-field insights of non-dualist CHAT methodology for both newcomers and the initiated. Contributors are: Sylvie Barma, Michael Cole, Patricia Dionne, Philip Dupuis-Laflamme, Ritva Engeström, Beth Ferholt, Alfredo Jornet, Isabelle Rioux, Frédéric Saussez, Chris Schuck, Anna Stetsenko, Marie-Caroline Vincent and Samantha Voyer.
Historical changes in play are taking place in childhood all over the world, with the digitalisation of children’s lives. Researchers are worried about the disappearance of advanced forms of play and the prioritization of time spent with loving adults, supporting play with babies and toddlers. At the same time, our understanding about the crucial importance of individual development is becoming clearer. The Routledge International Handbook of Early Childhood Play explores these issues and more. It proposes the importance of adult participation in play, as adult guidance brings the possibility of moral, cultural and symbolic elements to children’s play, and enhances the educational opportunities in adult-child joint play. The book also examines the aesthetic dimension of play and its role in the development of imagination and creativity. With contributors from many parts of the world, this unique handbook brings together the latest research and highlights practice which focuses on play. This is an essential and engaging read for all students, academics, teachers and practitioners with an interest in play.
In a time of worldwide turmoil and pervasive social displacement, universities and communities have come together to meet these urgent challenges in order to support the academic and social development of displaced young people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It is crucial to understand and review how institutions, as well as individuals and collaborative groups, have worked together to expand institutional culture and practice in a process of cross-institutional expansive learning. A Cultural Historical Approach to Social Displacement and University-Community Engagement: Emerging Research and Opportunities focuses on university-community collaborative engagement as a strat...
An analysis of self-starvation as a significant mode of staging political arguments across the institutional domains of the clinic, the gallery, and the prison.
Play and Performance offers hope to those lamenting the loss of play in the twenty-first century and aims to broaden the understanding of what play is. This volume showcases the work of programs from early childhood through adulthood, in a variety of educational and therapeutic settings, and from a range of theoretical and practical perspectives. The chapters cover an array of practices that can be seen across the play to performance continuum. Taken together, the myriad ways that play is performance and performance is play become clear, sometimes blurring the need for distinction. The volume provides play advocates, researchers and practitioners a wealth of practical and theoretical ideas for expanding the use of performance as a tool for creating playful environments where children and adults can create and develop.
The human mind is best understood when it is studied in the context of meaningful and goal-oriented interactions between individuals and their environment. These internal and external activities help to shape the human consciousness and experience. Contemporary Approaches to Activity Theory: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Behavior is an opportunity to study the complex, socially-oriented contexts of humans by considering the entirety of our environments: cultures, motivations, signs and tools, and various activities. Highlighting strategies in design, educational and work practice, and methodological analysis, this book is an essential reference source for academicians, researchers, and students interested in gaining a thorough understanding of the interaction between humans and their environments.
The Authentic Dissertation is a road map for students who want to make their dissertation more than a series of hoop-jumping machinations that cause them to lose the vitality and meaningfulness of their research. Students and tutors are presented with practical guidance for the kind of alternative dissertations that many educators believe are needed to move Doctoral and Master’s level work beyond the limitations that currently stifle authentic contributions for a better world. Drawing on his Cherokee/Creek ancestry and the Raramuri shamans of Mexico the author explores how research can regain its humanist core and find its true place in the natural order once more. Four Arrows provides a d...