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The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of multiple exemplar training and social reinforcement on the maintenance and generalization of joint attention initiations across toy classes. Three children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participated. After analyzing samples of joint attention initiations from neurotypical peers, a composite score was developed and used to evaluate joint attention initiations of the children with ASD. Gaze shifting and commenting were taught using social reinforcement in a multiple exemplar format. Training sessions were followed by probes of untrained stimuli both within and across toy classes. Results showed that the participants acquired both gaze shifting and commenting using social consequences as reinforcers. Following training, participants initiated joint attention with a frequency within the range of their typically developing peers. Multiple exemplar training was also effective in facilitating acquisition within classes and joint attention maintenance during follow-up probes. Additionally, all participants generalized the acquired skills to a class of untrained stimuli.

The vast majority of joint attention interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are geared toward toddlers and preschoolers as it is an early developmental skill. However, many of the youngsters do not acquire joint attention despite these early interventions and subsequently do not exhibit joint attention later in life. In the current study, we used a multiple baseline design across three school-aged, non-verbal children with ASD, to assess the efficacy of a functional play intervention to increase joint attention. During baseline, all three children demonstrated minimal joint attention and appropriate play. Following baseline, the functional play intervention was presented, which consisted of teaching functional play through modeling. Post-intervention probes demonstrated gains in both joint attention and functional play. Furthermore, these behaviors generalized across person, setting, and stimuli. The results of this study provide evidence that functional play interventions may be a promising approach to teach and promote joint attention for older, school-aged children with ASD.

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between technology integration and play from a whole child perspective, specifically through online play groups. As play continues to decline and vanish from our schools completely, the author believes we must reexamine the countless benefits of play across STREAM education. With current digital advancements, children will adapt to online play and continue to develop their creative and analytical skills. The author suggests that with continued support from parents and educators, children who are encouraged to have a say in what and how they learn can use online play to build a solid STREAM foundation.

Community engaged learning has demonstrated educational benefits and is an especially promising method to engage a diverse group of students in engineering. In this work, we present toy adaptation for children with disabilities as a novel community engaged learning tool. According to students surveyed, this process is enjoyable, demonstrates the impact of engineering, and makes students feel more connected to engineering. Female students were especially impacted by toy adaptation, feeling more empowered by the experience, finding the experience more useful, and more often seeing the positive impact of engineering. Additionally, toy adaptation is highly translatable due to its short-term nature, low cost, and opportunity to leverage community connections through existing networks. Given the widespread need for adapted toys, the translatability of toy adaptation, and the overwhelmingly positive student feedback, we anticipate that toy adaptation will engage students in circuitry, inspire diverse students to pursue engineering, and provide developmentally essential toys to communities.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the use of the action-based manipulatives affects students' problem-solving skills, fluency, understanding, and reasoning ability in mathematics classrooms. A case study was conducted as an out-of-school project with seven second grade students who were part of the study group. Data collection instruments included interview protocols, student observation forms, and student worksheets. Data were collected from the students and their parents. Linguistic and content validity were checked by experts in the field. Finally, the data were analyzed descriptively. The results showed that the performance of the students was above 85%. Solving questions with both software and physical materials made the learning process easy. Students socialized and shared opinions and solutions. Parents reported that the use of this teaching tool encouraged students' creativity in learning abstract concepts and provided opportunities for regular communication and cooperative group work in class. As a result, students learned alternative ways to solve problems, which improved their problem-solving skills and mathematical fluency. Constructing physical models using LEGO materials and MathBuilder software also facilitated their understanding of abstract concepts. The suggestions presented in this study are important and pave the way for the use of hands-on materials and 3D software for teaching abstract concepts in the classroom.

The study aims to determine the status of organizing science activities for preschoolers aged 5-6 and teachers' views on improving science education quality for 5-6-year-olds in Vietnam. The research was undertaken on 150 preschool teachers working with 5-6 years old classes in 24 public preschools in 3 provinces, including Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien Hue. Mixed methods, including surveys, interviews with teachers, and observation of science discovery activities, were used. According to the study results, science education activities were regularly organized in the preschools with specific plans following the school-year curriculum and the national ECE framework of Vietnam. Teachers used various methods and forms for organizing scientific activities, but the classroom environment was dominant. The participation of family and society in science activities at preschools was limited. Teachers also highlight some measures to improve the quality of science education in preschools, including providing necessary facilities, equipment, toys for preschools and increasing modern teaching methods. The findings of this study provide necessary evidence on science education for preschool children in practical terms as the basis for further studies on solutions to improve the efficiency of science education for preschool children in Vietnam.

If one wants to close the gender gap in STEM, girls need to start STEM courses. The stereotypical socialization does not lead girls in the direction of science and technology. And although the influence of parents does decrease with age it is often still present in the initial choice of study. Therefore, this study explores the role of the parents on girls' choice for a career in STEM. Qualitative individual semi-structured interviews with parents of girls in the last grade of primary education were conducted. Results show that specific characteristics of the parents can possibly have a positive influence on their children's school career and choice for STEM.

Finding context, examples, and ample hands-on experimentation is fundamental for understanding complex ideas in subjects such as science and math. Recent popularity of competitive robotics has become a catalyst in the development of DIY and hobby kits. Manufacturers have made available easy to work, re-configurable, and functional, structural elements as well as control electronics. Additionally, extensive participation from the open-source software community is providing cutting edge and effective software. Despite all the right ingredients, competitive robotics continues to be unregulated and non-standardized. Additionally, in absence of regulations and standards, the organizers, suppliers, educators, and participants are left to their own means and resources that necessarily may not align with systematic learning. The cost of approved competitive kits as well as field kits becomes inhibitive for students from poorer communities. This paper surveys a wide range of competitive robotics avenues available to school-age students. A survey with various stake holders including participants, mentors, referees, and organizers is done and findings are included. A path for standardizing competitive robotics within the framework of the World Robotics League is found to be an effective tool to train the students. A description of the World Robotics League framework and initial findings are reported.

This study focuses on Arabic-speaking children with a refugee or/and migrant background and its purpose is to explore if and how the Persona Doll method can influence this target group in terms of their attitudes and learning. The present study is a qualitative research in the form of action research. On the basis of data collection through participant observation, interviews and identity texts, a Persona Doll was designed that mirrored specific characteristics of the participant children and shared stories that reflected their personal experiences. The designed sessions with the Persona Doll were based on Brown's methodology and were implemented in a non-formal education setting. In this paper, a detailed description is provided and after content analysis, the major findings are presented. Specifically, it was demonstrated that the Persona Doll generated positive attitudes, contributed to language education and empowered bicultural identity.

This paper presents a framework for implementing informal learning events through a multi-modal event. A specific example is provided using the Mars LEGO Robotics challenge during the global pandemic Novel-coronavirus-19 (COVID). Students in grades 4-6 typically develop Lego Mars Rovers and compete in a face-to-face large competition in three primary regions across the state of Idaho. Competitions typically include n=200-300 children and n=100- 200 adults. This year the competition will be held using multimedia posters and competition notebooks that accompany a virtual presentation and competition over an Internet-based platform. A mixed methods design is described as a methodology to collect data using a case study design and pretest/posttest survey. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations.

Technology and smart devices have become ubiquitous staples in every aspect of human life. Given the rise of computation in everyday life, introducing technology to early childhood students requires exposure to logical thinking and problem-solving skills through programming approaches or computational thinking. This research addresses an inquiry into a comprehensive elaboration of the development of early childhood computational thinking. A novel programming toy was introduced as an educational tool based on designated themes in accordance with early childhood education curricula. Five stages were conducted to reveal parental and child engagement in robotics activities and later, interviews were conducted on children's cognitive development from the parents' perspective. Children were observed exploring in various ways by concentrating and paying attention, doing the given activities and expressing their excitement and happiness. The notion that children learn from their social network environment was highlighted by the way in which the children involved in the KARIN programming toy's hands-on activities were driven to be more actively engaged in the exercise. In addition to parent-student engagement, the use of the KARIN programming toy helps to shed light on how students in early childhood learn while away from their social relations during a pandemic.

Understanding others' perspectives and integrating this knowledge in social interactions is challenging for young children; even adults struggle with this skill. While young children show the capacity to understand what others can and cannot see under supportive laboratory conditions, more research is necessary to understand how children implement their perspective-taking (PT) skill during interactions and which socio-cognitive skills support their ability to do so. This preregistered study examined children's Level 1 visual PT in a real-time social interaction and tested whether social-cognitive skills (focusing on inhibition of imitation) predicted PT. Thirty-six 3-year-old children (mean age: 37.3 months) participated in a PT task and responded implicitly (via eye gaze) and explicitly (via toy choice) to situations where their communicative partner could see some objects but not others. Three-year-olds demonstrated sensitivity to another's perspective via implicit responses, but did not consistently take their partner's perspective into account in their actions when considering objects their partner could not see. Contrary to adult findings, children who struggled to inhibit imitating (those more affected by another's actions) demonstrated better PT, again when considering objects outside their partner's sight. Thus, 3-year-olds' sensitivity to others' perspectives was robust, while "acting" on PT knowledge may still be developing; further, children more affected by another's actions demonstrated improved PT skills. [This article was published in "Journal of Cognition and Development" (EJ1306580).]

Children learn to perform actions on artifacts in their environments from infancy, but the ways caregivers support this learning during everyday interactions are relatively unexplored. This study investigated how naturalistic caregiver-child teaching interactions promoted conventional action learning in toddlers. Caregivers of 32 24- to 26-month-old children taught their children to perform novel target actions on toys. Afterward, an experimenter blind to the toys children had been taught tested children's action learning. Results indicated that children's propensities to assemble objects and vocabularies were positively associated with learning. Whereas caregivers' speech did not directly support learning, caregivers' action performance negatively related to children's learning. Importantly, children's own actions related to learning: Children who performed proportionally more actions relative to their caregivers with higher action accuracy demonstrated better learning of the taught material. Thus, children who ''drove" the teaching session and were more accurate in their actions learned more. Caregivers contributed by supporting their children's actions: Caregivers who provided more specific instructions and praise had children who were more active during instruction. Importantly, analyses controlled for child-level individual differences, showing that beyond children's own skills, active experience supported by caregiver guidance related to conventional action learning. These findings highlight children as central agents in the learning process and suggest that caregivers contributed by coaching children's actions.

This article outlines a trend in popular historical culture which has seen the increasing replacement of a concept of history that rests on some form of evidence base by visions of fictional pasts, or -- to put it more precisely -- by an ambiguous blend of the past and fictional pasts. Drawing on ethnographic research focused on the contents of Austrian children's rooms, this paper explores traceable manifestations of history and historical fiction, particularly toy dragons and dinosaurs, in their properties as objects and as focuses of their owners' interpretations as ascertained in interviews. The research finds little clear demarcation in the minds of the children interviewed (all between 8 and 12 years old) between imaginings and cognitive attempts to reconstruct the past. The article examines the influence of these factual-fictional representations on historical thinking from a history education perspective.

Engaging, focusing, and persisting in the completion of tasks are among the skills needed for school success. Tracking whether a child is learning cognitive problem-solving skills is essential in knowing if they are acquiring skills important for development and school readiness; and if not, how they are responding to early intervention. Use of the Early Problem-Solving Indicator (EPSI) was documented by data for 2,614 children (6-42 months of age) collected by the early childhood staff from 45 programs. Results indicated that the EPSI was (a) scalable across programs, assessors, and assessment occasions, (b) reliable, (c) sensitive to growth over months of age, (d) comprised a dynamic continuum of skills within and across skills over time, and (e) moderated by children's disability status but not gender or home language. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

We tested 6- and 8-month-old White and non-White infants (N = 53 total, 28 girls) from Northern California in a visual search task to determine whether a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous display (a singleton) attracts attention because it is a unique singleton and "pops out" in a categorical manner, or whether attention instead varies in a graded manner on the basis of quantitative differences in physical salience. Infants viewed arrays of four or six items; one item was a singleton and the other items were identical distractors (e.g., a single cookie and three identical toy cars). At both ages, infants looked to the singletons first more often, were faster to look at singletons, and looked longer at singletons. However, when a computational model was used to quantify the relative salience of the singleton in each display--which varied widely among the different singleton-distractor combinations--we found a strong, graded effect of physical salience on attention and no evidence that singleton status per se influenced attention. In addition, consistent with other research on attention in infancy, the effect of salience was stronger for 6-month-old infants than for 8-month-old infants. Taken together, these results show that attention-getting and attention-holding in infancy vary continuously with quantitative variations in physical salience rather than depending in a categorical manner on whether an item is unique.

Abstract Although the presence of toys in childhood has remained steady for decades, the types of toys that fill children's toy boxes have changed, especially over the last 10-15 years. Many of today's toys are marked by technological enhancements, from a shape sorter driven by a singing bear to robotic plastic animals designed to match a toddler's favorite television show. Although examining the effects of these changes is still an unexplored area, research to date suggests that there may be costs to the quality of caregiver-child interaction when using these toys together. This leads to two possibilities: (1) the design of the enhancements themselves hurt interactions; or (2) these toys can still be beneficial to interactions, but caregivers simply need to be aware of the potential pitfalls. In this study, we explore whether providing caregivers with a subtle cue about the potential negative impacts of technological toys on caregiver--child interaction affects their behavior.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of block play on the creativity of children. The present study adopted a quasi-experimental research design, with pre- and post-test control groups. The study group consisted of a total of 52 children, enrolled at preschool education institutions in Ankara province in Turkey. The children were submitted the 'Personal Information Form', 'Stages of Block Building Evaluation Form', 'Creative Thinking Test through Figure Analysis' and 'Research Diary' was used. The findings indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the pre- and post-test mean scores for the subtests, attention to details, acceptance of differences, fluency, and originality, and the total creative skills of the children in the experimental group when compared to both control groups. It was concluded that the block play intervention had positive effects on the stages of block building and the creative skills of children.

Drawing on a mixed-methods cross-cultural study undertaken in five locations in Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, England and the United States in 2018, this paper explores how children (aged five and seven) conceive of playfulness. Following a card-sorting task, 387 children selected familiar activities that they felt were most representative of play and not-play and explained their reasons. The children's justifications were fully transcribed, and five corpora were created (one per site). Lexicometry was applied, generating sets of the characteristic responses per age in each site. In-depth qualitative interpretation of these modal responses revealed nine dimensions across play and not-play: pleasure, social context, materials, movement, agency, risk, goal, time and focus. Commonalities revealed that children's ideas around play are not aligned with specific activities but with the sense of agency in a secure physical and social context when carrying out an activity experienced as an end in itself. Implications for playful pedagogies highlight the need to open up play with opportunities for children's choice and initiative, confident exploration and immersion in the activities in which they participate. [Spanish translation by Mercè Rius.]

This article illustrates the potential of using children's play and interest in constructive materials like LEGO bricks to support early literacy, particularly in improving the use of descriptive language. The article describes an action plan using storytelling and constructive LEGO play to improve the children's use of descriptive language and thereby sustain a peer audience's attention during storytelling. The plan included three phases of implementation over seven weeks, with the teacher observing and recording how the children told their stories, noting any descriptive words the children used in their narratives. The children were asked for their perspectives and feelings about their storytelling experience during informal chats, which gave insights about how effective they thought the LEGO props were in their storytelling experience.

The Little Bosses' Market, now in its second year and organized by the Hualien Parent-Child Center, challenges the perspective that young children cannot learn about economics. The children participating in this activity took on the responsibilities of planning and selling their goods and services. They interacted with customers by noting prices, explaining how to play a game, or demonstrating how to use a toy. They accepted payments of real currency and made change, while parents watched approvingly. Re-using is a goal for sustainability supported by the Hualien Parent-Child Center. The huge success of the Little Bosses' Market proved that young children and their parents could actively contribute to the achievement of that goal by re-using toys and games.

Kids are drawn to dolls and dump trucks, and crashing the two together might just be a child's favorite pastime. Who knew such a simple pleasure could serve as an accessible, compelling phenomenon for instigating investigations of force and motion. With a few inexpensive materials straight out of the toy box (literally, a doll, a dump truck, a ramp, and some weights), teachers can set up and facilitate a whole suite of Crash Test Physics investigations that are easily adaptable, and that have been effectively piloted in classrooms, festivals, and outreach events alike with student populations that range from preschool to pre-service elementary teachers.

Traditional values in many cultures prioritize a deep respect for the environment and a recognition of the interdependence between humans and the natural world. They can help to broaden children's thinking about their choices, inform their decision-making, and help ensure children develop a closer connection with nature and pursue sustainable lifestyles through their day-to-day communication and social practices. The notion of enacting sustainable lifestyles through stories, artisanal toys, and traditions is particularly important in communities that mig/ht lack adequate awareness and understanding of the importance of sustainable consumption and production among consumers, businesses, or governments, or do not have access to the latest technologies and capital-intensive innovations needed to support sustainable consumption and production systems. This article charts a pathway for action that raises environmental awareness by re-telling the sustainability narratives about existing, easily available products. Educating children on sustainability through fairy tales and other stories, artisanal children's toys, and traditions can not only increase awareness on these issues, but also encourage the adoption of new social norms and values that prioritize nature over financial profits.

Children with autism spectrum disorder often demonstrate difficulty communicating with others, and this may affect the extent to which they can engage in contextually appropriate language during play. This study examined the effects of a social script-training intervention using generic picture cues on the number of contextually appropriate play statements for children with autism spectrum disorder. We also examined the extent to which responding generalized to novel toy sets and analyzed play statement types. A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline-across-participants design with embedded reversal components was used to evaluate the effects of the generic picture-cue intervention on contextually appropriate play statements. Three participants demonstrated a higher number of contextually appropriate play statements in the training condition as compared with the baseline and no-cue conditions. Further, two out of three participants continued to emit a similar number of contextually appropriate play statements when we introduced novel toy sets.

Given the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on children's schooling and learning, evidence for interventions implemented by parents is urgently needed. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a parent-mediated LEGO intervention on the social interactions of four children on the autism spectrum in China. The intervention involved four sets of two parents engaging with their child in collaborative LEGO construction, with each person assigned a role as Engineer, Supplier, or Builder. Using a multiple probe design across the four family triads, the intervention effectively increased spontaneous social initiations and responses in all four children, and these behaviors were maintained for 6 weeks following the intervention. The effect on inappropriate interactions was not detected; parental prompts increased in initial intervention sessions but decreased over time. Parents implemented the intervention at home with high fidelity. Efficacy of the intervention and potential benefits of virtual parent training are discussed.

Play is a place of diverse meaning-making for young children and often central to family life. This paper reports on a family study in which the authors analyse Author One's family photos of young children's play across four generations. The photo analysis shows continuity and transformations in the types of play activities the young children engaged with across the generations. A facet of this study is gaining insights into how these familial photos operate in the cultural sphere of family, community and broader socio-political contexts with the analysis set against the seven rhetorics of play espoused by play historian Sutton-Smith. The study explores how young children's play lasts and transitions across four generations in line with early childhood education ideologies of the times.

This study examined preservice teachers' understanding of children's play in diverse cultures. Using digital photo essay methods, a total of 37 early childhood preservice teachers in Myanmar, Korea, and the U.S. engaged in a critical discussion on children's play in diverse cultures. The findings suggested that the participants typically showed three layers of cross-cultural awareness: distance, friction, and flow. Korean and the U.S. participants conducted critical reflections on their preconceived notion of play, as influenced by the idea of Western childhood play. Although Myanmar participants revealed a desire for Western play materials, we did not observe substantial evidence of critical reflection throughout the cross-cultural exchanges. This paper discusses the implications of investigating culturally sensitive strategies for engendering preservice teachers' implicit beliefs by exchanging digital photo essays across diverse cultures.

Many children in developing countries do not acquire functional literacy skills despite being in school. We apply a cumulative risk (aggregate over a range of risk) and protection framework to assess Ghanaian kindergarteners' early academic skills (N = 1,852, M(age) = 5.3 years; 50.2% female), considering how family-level risk factors and classroom-level protective factors contribute to the development of early academic skills over one school year. Using multi-level regression analyses, we find that cumulative risk negatively predicts children's early literacy and numeracy skills at the start of kindergarten, as well as literacy skills at the end of the school year controlling for autumn scores. Additionally, high quality teacher--child interactions promote learning regardless of cumulative risk. However, further analyses indicate that classroom quality does not moderate the association between cumulative risk and spring outcomes. Implications for policymakers to engage in a two-generation (targeting parent and child) approach to child development in low- and middle-income countries are discussed.

Increased recognition of the need to study child development outside of research labs in naturalistic contexts has led to the formation of partnerships between researchers and museums. Researcher-museum partnerships provide researchers access to families and naturalistic contexts in museums to study learning and social development. Although benefits for researchers are well established, benefits for the museum and museum visitors are less clear. To investigate the potential benefits of research exhibits for museum visitors, we compared the impacts of a research toy exhibit and permanent museum exhibits on parents and caregivers attending a children's museum. Although caregivers reported that their children had less fun at the research exhibit, caregivers learned more at the research exhibit and reported that the research exhibit raised more questions and had greater relevance to them compared with permanent exhibits. Caregivers who visited research exhibits were also more likely to be reminded of and to apply ideas from the exhibit to their daily life compared to those who visited permanent exhibits. Our findings support the unique benefits of research exhibits for caregivers and indicate a need to showcase potential learning opportunities for visitors in future researcher-museum partnerships.

Early object name learning is often conceptualized as a problem of mapping heard names to referents. However, infants do not hear object names as discrete events but rather in extended interactions organized around goal-directed actions on objects. The present study examined the statistical structure of the "nonlinguistic" events that surround parent naming of objects. Parents and 12-month-old infants were left alone in a room for 10 minutes with 32 objects available for exploration. Parent and infant handling of objects and parent naming of objects were coded. The four measured statistics were from measures used in the study of coherent discourse: (i) a frequency distribution in which actions were frequently directed to a few objects and more rarely to other objects; (ii) repeated returns to the high-frequency objects over the 10-minute play period; (iii) clustered repetitions and continuity of actions on objects; and (iv) structured networks of transitions among objects in play that connected all the played-with objects. Parent naming was infrequent but related to the statistics of object-directed actions. The implications of the discourse-like stream of actions are discussed in terms of learning mechanisms that could support rapid learning of object names from relatively few name-object co-occurrences.

Purpose: This study explores one-to-one LEGO® Serious Play® in positive psychology coaching (1-1 LSP in PPC) as an intervention to help emerging adults (EAs) in higher education develop a growth mindset. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative single-participant case study of an EA undergraduate student's experience with 1-1 LSP in PPC to help him navigate uncertainty about making a decision that he felt would influence his future career. Findings: 1-1 LSP in PPC enabled the participant to create a metaphoric representation of how a growth mindset operated for him, promoting self-awareness and reflectivity. The LEGO® model that the participant built during his final session acted as a reminder of the resources and processes he developed during coaching, which helped him navigate future challenges. Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to the emerging literature on the impact of using LSP as a tool in one-to-one coaching in higher education. The participant's experience demonstrates that 1-1 LSP in PPC may be an effective way to support positive EA development. More research is needed to explore its potential. Practical implications: This study provides a possible roadmap to incorporate 1-1 LSP in PPC into coaching in higher education as a reflective tool to build a growth mindset in EA students. Originality/value: Because most undergraduates are EAs navigating the transition from adolescence into adulthood, universities would benefit from adopting developmentally informed coaching practices. 1-1 LSP in PPC may be an effective intervention that provides the structured and psychologically safe environment EAs need to develop lasting personal resources.

Previous studies have found that block play results in better spatial ability which may lead to greater mathematical skills. The current study examined a specific type of block play, structured block play in which a copy of a block configuration is constructed. Structured block play is a difficult cognitive task that requires an understanding of spatial relations, hand-eye coordination, and spatial working memory among others. This preliminary study was designed to determine whether training using structured block play would lead to improvements in skills linked to mathematical thinking. Two groups of children participated in the study. One group played a competitive structured block building game once a week for 8 weeks. A control group was also tested. All participants completed a kindergarten readiness assessment before and after the 8-week period. Children in the block play group showed significant improvements in the computation module of the assessment, showing improvements in the "makes a set of objects smaller or larger" skills. No such effect was observed for the control group. The results presented demonstrate that young children can, with assistance, engage in structured block play and that they have cognitive benefits from such block building activities.

When given the opportunity to play with mathematical materials and ideas, children demonstrate their mathematical understanding in innovative ways. The open-ended nature of the "Pattern Blocks" activity provides agency for children to decide how to approach the tasks, ways to differentiate beyond more common pattern-block puzzle choices, and opportunities to demonstrate a variety of content and practice standards. Although the examples for this article were from a kindergarten classroom, we believe that similar opportunities at any grade level may provide a chance for young mathematicians to employ their imaginations and thereby demonstrate what they know.

This study sought to increase awareness of ADHD though the context of a school assignment completed by a student with ADHD. The student (pseudonym Jim) sought opinions of 67 Australian school students with ADHD between 11-16 years to investigate their schooling experiences. Findings revealed that schooling mostly was a positive experience due to the student/teacher relationship, scaffolded learning opportunities and devices such as fidget toys to reduce off-task behaviours. However, school was challenging for some due to their teachers and peers' limited understanding of ADHD. These findings provide starting points to ensure educators receive on-going professional learning about ADHD and offer evidenced-based academic supports and interventions to enhance the academic learning for these students. Finally, it is important to consider the personal views of this student group to ensure schooling is a positive experience and teachers gain further knowledge and understanding about ADHD through adolescents' own life and school experiences.

In this study, we used Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth CMT) for the benefit of English for Academic Purposes' teaching and learning. CMT underpins how in metaphorical expressions, one concept is understood in terms of another. We argue that CMT can help students understand and master argumentation skills and essay structure, although there is little research on this topic. In this research, we focus on two metaphors: "Arguments Are Buildings" and "WRITING IS COOKING EATING, DIGESTING." The study was conducted through workshops for students of EAP using either Legos or cooking props to help them link the metaphors to their writing skills. After the workshops, students wrote an essay which was marked in accordance with the International English Language Testing System's specification and compared to their average writing score throughout the semester. Findings show that students who took part in the workshops obtained a higher grade, particularly students who attended the workshop on the metaphor writing is cooking, eating, digesting.

This article describes and analyzes the findings of children's observation records of block play with a focus on the wide range of mathematical outcomes resulting from children's block play. To this end, children's mathematical learning was analyzed in five areas: set and classification; pattern and symmetry; number and arithmetic; comparison and measurement; and geometry and space. It is found that symmetry accounts for the biggest proportion of mathematical concepts articulated, followed by attribute features and comparison, and graphic feature recognition. In comparison, children performed poorly in the categories of arithmetic, pattern expansion and creation, and measurement. Based on the performed analyses, it is found that investigating the types and frequency of mathematical knowledge that children acquire through block play is helpful to clarify the value and significance of block play in facilitating children's mathematical learning.

The present study examined the effectiveness of a cooperative skill intervention program using theme-based joint block play for young children. Thirty-two 4--5 years old preschoolers from Shanghai, China, were assigned to the experimental group while thirty-two children comprised the comparison group. The experimental group was engaged in an 8-week theme-based joint block play program, whereas the comparison group received no intervention but engaged in free block play during school time. Baseline, post-intervention and 2-month follow-up measures included the Deutsch & Krauss Trucking game and observations of children's cooperative skills in pretend activities that occurred in the preschool classroom. Results indicated that the experimental group achieved significantly higher scores in the trucking game, and was observed to endorse significantly less mandatory strategy and more prosocial strategy in pretend play activities than the comparison group. The findings suggest that theme-based block play activities can enhance children's cooperative awareness and skills effectively.

The paper outlines the design of a LEGO Serious Play (LSP)-based undergraduate management module delivered to a diverse group of students, and consequently evaluates the LSP workshops. It argues for the importance of participatory and co-creational approaches to management education, and demonstrates that LSP is a method that has the potential to address these requirements. This paper is unique in outlining the use of LSP throughout an entire intensive management module, including the assessment. It also contributes by utilising music to enhance the benefits of the LSP method. Student reflections have been used to evaluate the learning experience; additionally, I draw on my positionality as a lecturer and LSP facilitator to reflect on the benefits and challenges of the LSP method. The reflections were analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis. The findings identify LSP as a learning method where the benefits outweigh its limitations, and highlight that LSP also helped develop important management and employability skills.

Gender-stereotyped beliefs develop early in childhood and are thought to increase with age based on prior research that was primarily carried out in Western cultures. Little research, however, has examined cross-cultural (in)consistencies in the developmental trajectory of gender-stereotyped beliefs. The present study examined implicit gender-toy stereotypes among 4- to 9-year-olds (N = 1,013; 49.70% girls) in Canada, China, and Thailand. Children from all three cultures evidenced implicit gender-toy stereotypes over this developmental period, but cultural differences in the developmental pattern and strength of these stereotypes were apparent. Gender-toy stereotypes were relatively strong and stable across age groups among Thai children and relatively weak and stable across age groups among Chinese children. Canadian 4- to 5-year-old children displayed weaker stereotypes, whereas 6- to 9-year-olds displayed stronger stereotypes. These findings highlight the contribution of culture to children's gender stereotype development. Although gender-toy stereotypes were found among 4- to 9-year-olds in all three cultures examined here, the strength of these stereotypes varies by culture. Furthermore, the previously described increase in gender stereotyping over this developmental period appears to not apply across cultures, thus challenging the conventional view on development in this domain based on prior, mainly Western, research.

The objective of this research was to determine if and to what extent students' learning of geographic concepts can be improved through incorporation of hands-on play with Play-Doh® and LEGO® and geospatial technologies, specifically drones. The project team conducted six months of biweekly, collaborative instruction at Comstock Middle School in Michigan incorporating in-class activities such as drawing mental maps, creating contour lines of model landscapes in water boxes, constructing 3D landscapes from 2D topographic maps, building and operating small drones, and more. Compared pre- and post-tests reveal a 14% increase in overall scores, a statistically significant improvement in student performance.

The purpose of this study was to explore how kindergarten students (aged 5-6 years) engaged with mathematics as they learned programming with robot coding toys. We video-recorded 16 teaching sessions of kindergarten students' (N = 36) mathematical and programming activities. Students worked in small groups (4-5 students) with robot coding toys on the floor in their classrooms, solving tasks that involved programming these toys to move to various locations on a grid. Drawing on a semiotic mediation perspective, we analyzed video data to identify the mathematics concepts and skills students demonstrated and the overlapping mathematics-programming knowledge exhibited by the students during these programming tasks. We found that kindergarten children used spatial, measurement, and number knowledge, and the design of the tasks, affordances of the robots, and types of programming knowledge influenced how the students engaged with mathematics. The paper concludes with a discussion about the intersections of mathematics and programming knowledge in early childhood, and how programming robot toys elicited opportunities for students to engage with mathematics in dynamic and interconnected ways, thus creating an entry point to reassert mathematics beyond the traditional school content and curriculum.

Bagless intervention is a term used by professionals to describe early intervention (EI) services in which the provider refrains from bringing a bag of toys into the home for sessions. Instead of using a toy bag to work on child outcomes, the service provider uses materials in the child's home, as well as family routines, to address the developmental outcomes that each family has for their child. Bagless intervention has become a recommended practice, replacing more traditional methods of therapy in which practitioners bring toys into homes to work on specific outcomes outlined on the Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP). The purpose of this article is to share information about bagless intervention based on the EI principles, using a question and answer format. Answers include references to research and position papers in the field of early childhood special education. Bagless intervention can be used by all EI professionals including special instructors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech and language pathologists.

In this study, the play preferences of 80 five-year-old children, 40 girls and 40 boys, from four schools in Turkey and the characteristics that shape their preferred plays were examined. The research was designed by descriptive method, which is one of the qualitative research patterns, and the data were collected using draw-and-tell technique. Crayons and drawing papers were distributed to the children participating in the study and they were asked to draw a play they wanted to play. During the drawing, the children were interviewed by asking questions. Thematic analysis method was used in the study; open coding was performed to group the drawings and interview records of the children under the themes and sub-themes. As a result of thematic analysis, five main themes were created regarding the plays preferred by children and how and where they prefer to play them. The results showed that all children preferred open-ended plays, they mostly prefer modern plays (50%) (type of play), playing with friends (44%) (social connection), dynamic plays (69%) (physical function), indoors plays (54%) (playground) and to use ready-made toys (42%) (toys used).

This national study used the Delphi method to identify perceived barriers women face in the pursuit of STEM careers. The study used a series of three web-based questionnaires. The first round of the study used a questionnaire with an open-ended question to facilitate the generation of a wide array of response categories. In round two, respondents were asked to rate the 24 perceived barriers from round one on a Likert-type scale and to make changes as necessary. In round three, respondents were asked to provide a dichotomous indication of whether they agreed or disagreed with each of the items. Consensus on 22 perceived barriers was reached after three rounds. The major barriers identified by the respondents were: male domination of STEM careers, lack of awareness of educational and career opportunities, STEM education and toys directed at boys, a lack of female mentors/role models, minimization of barriers, personal expectations, the time required to become proficient in a STEM field, lack of encouragement from men, and the perceived glass ceiling of women in STEM careers. It is recommended that future research focus on the efficacy of formal, informal, and non-formal education models toward increasing awareness of educational and career opportunities in STEM. Researching effective methods to recruit and retain females in STEM degree programs is also suggested.

Lego has been a popular toy since 1932. "LEGO" is an abbreviation of two Danish words "leg godt" which means "play well." In today's LEGO-based learning and teaching environments, it has been revealed in studies that students working to solve problems presented to them were often unaware of how much time has passed. In this study, it was aimed to determine how Lego Mindstorms EV3 based robotics education changed the concept of what is a scientist in the minds of students. Twenty-one students from the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades participated. In the study, a single group pre-test and post-test design was applied. The "Draw a scientist test (DAST)" measurement tool was used to reveal the perceptions of scientists. In the study, a program developed for robotic education was offered to students during the robotic club hours for 4 weeks. DAST was administered to the students before and after the robotic education. The students worked in groups and participated in structured, guided, and inquiry-based learning. In the past week, students were asked to develop solutions to a socio-scientific problem using the Lego Mindstorms kit. The findings showed that the students changed their drawings using different styles in not only the scientists' body and facial expressions but also work environments. The results show that Lego Mindstorms EV3 based robotics education played an important role in changing the perceptions of scientists in the students' minds.