Susan Edwards

Learning Sciences Institute Australia, Australian Catholic University

This research investigates how children located in separate homes use the psychological function of imagination to engage in sociodramatic play using networked digital technologies. Specifically, it examines how 7- to 8-year-old children create imaginary play situations in the same Minecraft: Education Edition digitally-mediated environment whilst...

Young children have rights; they are agents and active constructors of their social worlds. Despite well-established theoretical foundations, the ‘methods’ and ‘ethics’ of qualitative research to elicit young children’s voice require further exploration to ensure young children are central to our research endeavors. This systematic review examined...

Playgroups are a unique form of early childhood education and care provision involving children and their adult caregivers attending and participating in shared play. Playgroups are known to promote positive social and educational outcomes for children and adult caregivers (e.g., parents, carers, or kinship members), however, the playgroup research...

This paper identifies the shared features of provision in exemplar school playgroups defined using the social capital concepts of bonding and bridging relationships. Relationships promote capabilities amongst people, with play a known capability for advancing children's developmental and educational outcomes. By attending to the bonding and bridgin...

This paper examines the evidence of children's agency in research about infants, toddlers and technologies. It finds that an implicit reliance on technological determinism as a theoretical perspective for positioning technologies relative to young children's development tends to shape research in terms of understanding the impact of technologies on...

A challenge for early childhood (EC) educators internationally is how to increase the integration of popular culture, media and digital technologies in EC settings to promote children's learning with digital media. But an ongoing puzzle is why the practices of some educators change, while others remain the same. Much research about teaching practic...

Adults who educate and care for young children are exposed to mixed-messages about what is in the best interests of young children in digital society. Such mixed-messaging makes adult decision-making about technology use in the best interests of young children hard to achieve. This project addresses this problem by working with leading organisation...

This paper discusses characteristics of converged play for early childhood education. The characteristics were derived from a four-year study of teachers’ interpretation and use of ‘web-mapping’ as an explicit conceptual tool, designed to mediate teaching practices and learning outcomes according to a definition of pedagogy as the relationship betw...

Community playgroups, which are one type of playgroup and early childhood service, operate on a weekly basis under the leadership of volunteer caregivers (including parents, kinship members, family-day carers and other adults in children’s lives). Caregivers and children voluntarily attend and participate in community playgroups. Although community...

Research indicates that children’s digital play practices seem to be in advance of teachers’ adaptation of curriculum and pedagogical approaches to incorporate digital technologies, digital media and popular culture, and the potential for learning that these materials generate. This chapter aims to present examples from the empirical data in order...

This paper reports on a systematic review of the literature conducted to inform Early Childhood Australia (ECA) in the development of a national Statement on Young Children and Digital Technologies. The review examines empirical studies published between 2012 and 2017 identified through systematic screening to advise adults on appropriate digital t...

THIS PAPER REPORTS FINDINGS from a randomised investigation into the effect of teacher-designed, play-based learning experiences on preschool-aged children's knowledge connections between healthy eating and active play as wellbeing concepts, and sustainability. The investigation used a ‘ funds of knowledge’ theoretical framework to situate young ch...

Cultural–historical perspectives on human activity argue that changes in cultural practices, such as teaching in early childhood education, can be fostered by introducing new conceptual resources, a process known as re-mediation. We report from an ongoing study that aims to change early childhood teachers’ curricular practices in response to childr...

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON the findings of a sector-wide survey conducted as part of a multi-component process in Early Childhood Australia’s development of a national Statement on young children and digital technology for those working within early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. The survey sought broad comment and feedback from the Austr...

A Research Report Prepared for Playgroup Victoria. Melbourne, VIC: Australian Catholic University

In this chapter we discuss supported playgroups in schools (SPinS) as sites for engaging families as the first mathematics educators of young children. We refer to findings from our work to show how caregiver (e.g. parents, grandparents, aunts) participation in SPinS can contribute to an awareness of children’s learning of mathematical concepts thr...

Although parents are active in social media the use of social media as a collaborative tool for parental learning about play is yet to be fully realised. Models for parental education including those that use social media, predominantly use top-down, deficit-based approaches to involving parents in learning about children's play. Increasing social...

PLAY-BASED LEARNING IS a cornerstone of early childhood education provision. Play provides opportunities for young children to explore ideas, experiment with materials and express new understandings. Play can be solitary, quiet and reflective. Play can also be social, active and engaging. While play is commonly understood as the basis for learning...

Balancing open-ended play and intentional teaching in early childhood education can be difficult. Open-ended play can appear to be at odds with intentional teaching. Open-ended play provides children with important opportunities for exploring materials and experimenting with ideas.

Supported Playgroups in Schools (SPinS) are a new initiative in the Australian early childhood education landscape. SPinS are playgroups hosted by a playgroup coordinator co-located on a local school site. Research has identified positive benefits of playgroup participation for children and families. However, little is known about the potential for...

Preschool children’s interest in popular culture is linked to many determinants of obesity development including branded energy-dense foods and sedentary play using digital technologies. In addition, highly packaged foods and throwaway toys reinforce unsustainable environmental habits encouraged by immersive marketing systems. Interrupting the effe...

Play-based learning in the early years.

Digital play: what can we learn from theories of technology and development?

Young children from around the world are accessing the internet in ever increasing numbers. The rapid increase in internet activity by children aged 4–5 years in particular is due to the ease access enabled them by touchscreen internet-enabled tablet technologies. With young children now online, often independently of adult supervision, the need fo...

THE TRANSITION TO FORMAL schooling is a significant milestone for young children and their families. Congruence between an early childhood setting and school experience is known to impact on children’s positive start to school. Despite policy efforts at the Victorian state level, preschool educators and Foundation teachers do not have a strong unde...

Advancements in technology have increased preschool children’s access to the Internet. Very little research has been conducted to identify pre-school-aged children’s understandings of the Internet and ramifications of being ‘online’. Without an understanding of children’s thinking about the Internet, it is difficult to provide age- and pedagogicall...

A digital disconnect perspective is founded on an assumption that technology use in the home is frequent, creative and generative, and that technology use in the early childhood centre should be the same as that found in the home. However, such arguments divert our attention from understanding the nature of the setting and thereby from an understan...

We sought to evaluate the feasibility of conducting a randomized trial to evaluate the efficacy of a preschool/kindergarten curriculum intervention designed to increase 4-year-old children's knowledge of healthy eating, active play and the sustainability consequences of their food and toy choices. Ninety intervention and 65 control parent/child dya...

Keynote: Play-based learning and intentional teaching: Forever different?

Keynote: Digital play and early childhood education

Technology, digital media and popular culture form an important aspect of young children’s life-worlds in contemporary post-industrial societies. A problem for early childhood educators is how to most effectively integrate these aspects of children’s life-worlds into the provision of play-based learning. Traditionally, research has considered barri...

There is widespread international interest in parental education as a means of promoting educational equality through improving educational outcomes for young children. The research in this area suggests an association between the home learning environment and children's educational outcomes and highlights the importance of parental education for s...

In the past fi ve years young children's access to and usage of the internet has burgeoned, mostly due to the availability of internet-enabled, touch-screen and mobile technologies. While this creates exciting learning opportunities for young children, internet activity in this age-bracket raises several issues of practical, research and pedagogica...

Partnering early childhood education and care (ECEC) and the home together may be more effective in combating obesogenic risk factors in preschool children. Thus, an evaluation of ECEC obesity prevention interventions with a parental component was conducted, exploring parental engagement and its effect on obesity and healthy lifestyle outcomes. A s...

Early childhood educators currently provide content focused learning opportunities for children in the areas of well-being and environmental education. However, these are usually seen as discrete content areas and educators are challenged with responding to children’s interests in popular-culture inspired food products given these influence their c...

Early childhood education settings are characterized by the use of play-based learning and the assessment of children’s play by teachers to promote further learning. A problem with technology use in early childhood settings is that little is known about how children learn to use technologies through play. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult f...

Digital play and technologies are increasingly recognised as significant aspects of young children’s experiences and participation in contemporary, post-industrialised communities. As a consequence, many countries have begun to grapple with the pedagogical and curriculum implications associated with integrating digital play and technologies into ea...

Digital technologies are increasingly accepted as a viable aspect of early childhood curriculum. However, teacher uptake of digital technologies in early childhood education and their use with young children in play-based approaches to learning have not been strong. Traditional approaches to the problem of teacher uptake of digital technologies in...

Educational technology research has traditionally focussed on the potential technologies have for supporting teaching and learning across a range of contexts. In the main, this work has attempted to understand the impact of technologies on student learning and/or approaches to teaching. While technologies were emerging as a new significant aspect o...

A PAL (Peer-Assisted Learning) project supported research that focused on e-learning and Web 2.0 technologies as part of a pedagogical approach in the context of a tertiary institution. This project responded to a call for a rejuvenation of conventional approaches to pedagogy while teaching an early childhood unit in a large Australian university....

Keynote: Digital play and the early years

Melbourne, VIC: Australian Catholic University.

Participatory research methods argue that young children should be enabled to contribute their perspectives on research seeking to understand their worldviews. Visual research methods, including the use of still and video cameras with young children have been viewed as particularly suited to this aim because cameras have been considered easy and fu...

SUPPORTED PLAYGROUPS IN SCHOOLS (SPinS) are playgroups co-located with primary schools that are hosted by a playgroup coordinator. For schools, SPinS are associated with making primary school venues more accessible to the local community While research shows that caregivers do value supported playgroups, little research has investigated which eleme...

This article introduces the notion of ‘contemporary’ play in relation to existing ideas about children’s play, learning and development from a sociocultural perspective. The need to think about the nature of contemporary play is considered in response to arguments suggesting that the quality of children’s play has declined in line with their increa...

Digital technologies are increasingly acknowledged as an important aspect of early childhood education. A significant problem for early childhood education has been how to understand the pedagogical use of technologies in a sector that values play-based learning. This paper presents a new framework to understand how children learn to use technologi...

This article represents the early collaboration of Cutter-Mackenzie and Edwards in early childhood environmental education. The article grappled with the notion of knowledge and its role in the teaching and learning of early childhood education. At that time, ‘knowledge’ was viewed as difficult to integrate with play-based approaches to learning in...

Background This paper details the research protocol for a study funded by the Australian Research Council. An integrated approach towards helping young children respond to the significant pressures of ‘360 degree marketing’ on their food choices, levels of active play, and sustainability consciousness via the early childhood curriculum is lacking....

This chapter presents Josh’s (an early childhood teacher) and the children’s experiences at St. Kilda and Balaclava Kindergarten, Melbourne, Australia. The outdoor environment at the kindergarten provided opportunities for children to find and observe living things and explore their habitat. Josh orientated the implementation of his three play type...

This chapter presents Jeanette’s (an early childhood teacher) and the children’s experiences in implementing the three different play types at Cornish College Early Learning Centre, Melbourne, Australia. Using Jeanette’s knowledge of the children's past interests she planned an adventure to the pond (also referred to as the lake) in the grounds of...

This chapter turns the reader to critical debates and typologies in the environmental education research and literature. Such debates are contextualised within early childhood education and play pedagogies in particular. The authors initially discuss the concepts of sustainable development and sustainability, leading to further critical discussion...

This chapter problematises play in the twenty-first century and begins with a review of the work of Rousseau, Froebel and Dewey highlighting their enduring influence on play-based practices in early childhood education. The chapter reviews the influence of Piaget's theory on the construction of knowledge via active exploration through play. Working...

In this chapter, the authors discuss the two principles that emerged from this research project, and that can be applied for play-based learning in early childhood environmental education. These principles are (1) Valuing different play-types according to their pedagogical potential for engaging with aspects of environmental education; and (2) Crea...

This chapter orients the reader by introducing the underlying premise of the book, in addition to outlining the remaining six chapters. The book’s foundation lies squarely in an era in which environmental education has been described as one of the most pressing educational concerns of our time, leading to the critical need for further insights in u...

This chapter presents Robyn’s (an early childhood teacher) and the children’s experiences. Robyn’s kindergarten was located in an outer suburban part of Melbourne, Australia. Robyn focused on worms and making a wormery (a worm farm) owing to the children's interest in worms, and her goals were to provide children with greater understanding of worms...

‘This Handbook offers diverse perspectives from scholars across the globe who help us see play in new ways. At the same time the basic nature of play gives a context for us to learn new theoretical frameworks and methods. A real gem!’ – Beth Graue, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, USA Play and learn...

Research into children’s learning with digital technologies is represented by a growing body of literature examining the relationship between home–school technological practices. A focus of this work is on the notion of a ‘digital-disconnect’ between home and school. This argument suggests that children are such native users of technologies they st...

Video-based research methodologies in educational settings have been associated with the perceived user-friendliness of the technology for children, teachers and researchers. Video is considered an appropriate way of capturing the pedagogical complexity of classrooms, and a supportive medium for encouraging children to participate in research activ...

Sustainability education is increasingly understood as necessary for young children. An important aspect of early childhood sustainability education is associated with how best to integrate the conceptual basis of sustainability education with existing play-based pedagogies. Play-based pedagogies can be understood as occurring along a continuum, in...

The second edition of Early Childhood Curriculum provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to curriculum theories, approaches and issues in early childhood settings. Drawing on contemporary research and case studies, the book employs a cultural-historical framework to illustrate a variety of approaches to early childhood education. In this n...

In many countries technologies are still not fully integrated with perspectives on play-based learning in early childhood education. This is evidenced in international curriculum documents that continue to separate descriptions of play as a basis for learning from the use of technologies as learning outcomes for young children. Meanwhile, technolog...

There is mounting evidence that current food production, transport, land use and urban design negatively impact both climate change and obesity outcomes. Recommendations to prevent climate change provide an opportunity to improve environmental outcomes and alter our food and physical activity environments in favour of a 'healthier' energy balance....