This study examines how students in the Netherlands perceive the formal opportunities provided by the educational system to realize their educational aspirations. Drawing on 15 focus groups with 61 students in primary and secondary education, we investigate how students interpret key features of the opportunity structure, such as mobility, selectivity, and stigma, as well as…

Free play is recognized in early childhood education and care as a crucial form of learning, and children’s disposition to engage in play is termed playfulness. The emphasis that free play places on children’s autonomy and self-control raises questions about teachers’ roles in this learning environment to encourage children’s engagement in play.

This qualitative study focuses on the ways kindergarten teachers used metaphors as a professional coping strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is underpinned by the conceptual metaphor theory, analyzing these metaphors as evident of the verbalized expressions of 74 kindergarten teachers in northern Israel, via questionnaires and interviews. Findings indicate that the metaphors enabled…

This qualitative study focuses on the ways kindergarten teachers used metaphors as a professional coping strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is underpinned by the conceptual metaphor theory, analyzing these metaphors as evident of the verbalized expressions of 74 kindergarten teachers in northern Israel, via questionnaires and interviews. (pdf)

At a writing retreat in the middle of the woods, we considered the trees. Inspired by our surroundings, we discussed possibilities for how we might demonstrate an inquiry cycle with our undergraduate teacher candidates. (pdf)

While digital play remains a dominant pedagogical construct, it is unclear how digital learning is understood by teachers, beyond a reliance on theories of play. This paper reports on a two-year collaborative project conducted with teachers working in the early years of schooling alongside three university-based researchers. (pdf)

This article examines the rise of biometric technologies that aim to interpret learners’ behaviour through automated facial, postural and attentional analysis. These systems are increasingly embedded in classrooms, platforms and assessment environments, offering institutions a stream of data about how learners appear to feel, engage or deviate. (pdf)

This study explores how middle school youth engage in collaborative game design to question and reimagine the social structures that shape their everyday educational experiences. (pdf)

The production of education fiction fosters social inquiry to imagine more equitable and socially just education futures. To support these claims, we reflect on our work developing character-based stories representing aspects of what it might mean to become an academic of working-class heritage and propose a design heuristic for creators and analysts of education fiction.…

Young people's aspirations have been the focus of many educational, sociological and psychological studies. This paper argues, firstly, that the concept of aspirations holds greater generative potential than suggested by the policy-oriented ‘aspiration discourse’. Secondly, drawing on a sociocultural perspective, it is suggested that the processes of imagination and semiotic mediation are key aspects of aspiration articulation and instantiation,…

The transition from primary to secondary school is widely viewed as the most demanding in a child's educational journey. Despite a wealth of research on this transition, little is known about the children's ‘lived experience’ of it across different contexts. We target this research void by drawing on semi-structured individual interview data gathered from 24…

Children's school readiness is widely recognized as a critical foundation for successful school adjustment. However, there has been considerable debate about what abilities are most influential and how they interact. To address this, the present study explored six domains of school readiness, including self-regulation (SR), social emotions (SE), mathematics, teacher–child relationships, approaches to learning, and…