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Fairy tales are ubiquitous in Australian primary schools. Drawing on a review of key literature, this paper aims to determine the implications of teaching fairy tales in the twenty-first-century primary classroom. Research points to the benefits of including fairy tales as a tool to improve all subject areas of the curriculum. Fairy tales present opportunities to positively engage students through the teaching of social justice and the development of emotional intelligence. The review of literature found that teachers need to be cautious and critical when teaching traditional fairy tales which often perpetrate an outdated, gender-ignorant representation of society, and allow students an opportunity to confront these ideas. The book form of Disney fairy tales can be problematic, particularly the earlier versions, which are criticised for being domesticated, sentimental and overly simplistic. The review has also found that multicultural fairy tales have enormous potential to increase cultural equity in the contemporary classroom, but unfortunately, they do not appear to be easily accessible in Australia. The fairy tale is constantly being reinvented and reimagined to fit into modern society, which has led to the emergence of the fractured fairy tale genre, where a traditional fairy tale is subverted. This review found that when used in a critical and inclusive manner, fairy tales have the potential to be an effective resource to teach primary school students in the contemporary classroom.

The concept of "perezhivanie" has gained theoretical attention and is beginning to feature in empirical studies of young children, where the role of emotion is foregrounded (e.g., Ferholt, 2010). However, the idea of a "collective perezhivanie" of adults and children in early childhood settings has not yet been researched. In the context of collective emotional imagination (Fleer & Hammer, 2013; Fleer & Peers, 2012), this paper foregrounds the key relations between audience and players, and between real relations and role relations. It extends a line of work developed by Zaporozhets (1986, 1986/2002, 1994/2005) and furthered by Strel'kova (1986) and El'koninova (2001, 2002) on a related concept known in Russian as "soperezhivanie." Through a study of 25 children, three educators, and the first named author, participating in a fairy tale festival in a multi-age children's care setting in Australia (60 hours of video observations) the concept of "soperezhivanie" is drawn upon to make sense of the experiences of the participants. It was found that moments of collective "perezhivanie" were co-experienced by children and teachers when teachers took a role in the play and the group united around a key moment of emotional contradiction in the fairy tale. This research provides insights into ways in which early childhood educators can plan for children's emotional development in collective whole group contexts. The outcomes make a contribution to the unfinished work of Vygotsky on the concept of "perezhivanie."

Whilst a lot is known about the digital environments of preschools, less is understood about the emerging digital pedagogies of teachers. This paper presents the findings of a cultural-historical study of pedagogical practices of teachers as they implemented a digitally enhanced play-based programme where the MyCreate app was used to make an animation of a fairytale. Over a period of 5.4 weeks, digital observations (27.3 h) of 5 teachers and their 31 children (aged 3.4-5.5 years; mean age of 4.4 years) were undertaken. The central findings capture both the existing practices found in the literature and a new practice named as a digital pop-up. The microgenetic analysis identified that the same digital pop-up afforded very different actions by the teacher to realise the goal for making a digital animation. It is argued that the new digital pop-up needs new pedagogies where teachers act as co-actors, co-animators, co-directors with sensitivities around person and digital intersubjectivity, virtual-concrete combination; virtual designing; stimulating digital motive; digital authenticity; pop-up digital area; digital imaginary situations. A digital pop-up is purposefully oriented towards the goals of preschool education and its original institutional structure, but in ways that capture the digital dynamic world of the young child.

Vygotsky (1986) draws attention to the interrelationship between thought and language and other aspects of mind. Although not widely acknowledged, Vygotsky (1999) also drew attention to the search for the relations between cognition and emotions. This paper discusses the findings of a study which examined imaginary scientific situations within the early years. The central research questions examined: What is the emotional nature of scientific learning? and How does "affective imagination" support early childhood science learning? Video observations were made of the teaching of science from one site in a south-eastern community in Australia (232 h of video observations). The teachers used fairy tales and Slowmation as cultural devices to support the concept formation of 3- and 4-year-old children (n?=?53; range of 3.3 to 4.4; mean of 3.8 years). The findings of this under-researched area (e.g. Roth, "Mind, Culture, and Activity" 15:2-7, 2008) make a contribution to understanding how affective imagination can work in science education in the early years.

Research has shown that the use of pre-reading activities, such as graphic or advance organizers can positively affect student acquisition of vocabulary and meaning when reading new concepts presented in text. One particularly effective strategy, semantic mapping, can significantly impact students who previously had a lack of prior knowledge on new content reading material by assisting them to better understand the vocabulary and content of the reading material prior to actually reading the material. The strategy of semantic mapping, as with all advance and graphic organizers, is based on the theory that a student's structure of prior knowledge and experiences (schemata) related to the acquisition of new concepts is a critical element in the student becoming a successful learner and reader. (Contains 1 figure.)

Rhymes are often useful teaching devices for small children, and can even become a creative resource for teaching mathematics. The students and their teachers can change many of them to better fit their environment and/or extend the rhyme so that higher numbers are involved. A number of rhymes and folk tales lend themselves to more detailed analysis by students to uncover mathematical ideas. Here, a number of examples are given for finding patterns, mapping and measurement, and estimating--all critical aspects of mathematics. (Contains 3 figures and 1 note.)

Fairy tales are ubiquitous in Australian primary schools. Drawing on a review of key literature, this paper aims to determine the implications of teaching fairy tales in the twenty-first-century primary classroom. Research points to the benefits of including fairy tales as a tool to improve all subject areas of the curriculum. Fairy tales present opportunities to positively engage students through the teaching of social justice and the development of emotional intelligence. The review of literature found that teachers need to be cautious and critical when teaching traditional fairy tales which often perpetrate an outdated, gender-ignorant representation of society, and allow students an opportunity to confront these ideas. The book form of Disney fairy tales can be problematic, particularly the earlier versions, which are criticised for being domesticated, sentimental and overly simplistic. The review has also found that multicultural fairy tales have enormous potential to increase cultural equity in the contemporary classroom, but unfortunately, they do not appear to be easily accessible in Australia. The fairy tale is constantly being reinvented and reimagined to fit into modern society, which has led to the emergence of the fractured fairy tale genre, where a traditional fairy tale is subverted. This review found that when used in a critical and inclusive manner, fairy tales have the potential to be an effective resource to teach primary school students in the contemporary classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and Gretel tale as a metaphorical device, this paper explores how arts education can disrupt the hidden curriculum in schools (Rosenberg & Thurber, 2007). This paper provides a symbolic representation of the education context by likening the secondary school art studio to the Gingerbread House, featured in the fairy tale story, and in turn the art teacher to a feminist reenvisioning of a witch. In this contemporary version, the ‘art teacher-witch’ creates recipes for challenging and confronting increasing government involvement in the education sector through contemporary art practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores Australian fairy tales and its early divergence from colonial folklore and indigenous tales to national tales injecting European traditions into Australian landscape and its convergence to 20th century picture book publishing. It cites the early fairy tale collection of Angela Carter, the narrative references of Hume Cook on waratahs and wallabies and indigenous artists including Tommy McRae and Juliet O'Connor. It notes that "Elves and Fairies of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite" was the first elaborate Australian colour publication.

In Australian children's literature' was the assessment Paul Jennings made of Alan Marshall (1902-1984) during an ABC Radio National program broadcast to celebrate the centenary of Marshall's birth. When Marshall released this "space age fairy tale" (Marks, 314) into the "moon-mad" (Marshall, "What Happened to "Whispering"?" Stephen Murray-Smith noted something similar in 1974, ten years before Marshall's death, when he commented that Marshall had been "punished" for being neither "pretentious", "trendy", nor "selfconsciously folksy"; Murray-Smith said that he would be 'very surprised if Alan Marshall's creative reputation does not bloom very considerably over the next fifty years, as his deceptively concealed powers become more accessible to investigation' (quoted in Marks, 343). [Extracted from the article]