A Child's Work

A Child's Work

Author: Vivian Gussin Paley

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-09-15

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 0226644987

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The buzz word in education today is accountability. But the federal mandate of "no child left behind" has come to mean curriculums driven by preparation for standardized tests and quantifiable learning results. Even for very young children, unstructured creative time in the classroom is waning as teachers and administrators are under growing pressures to measure school readiness through rote learning and increased homework. In her new book, Vivian Gussin Paley decries this rapid disappearance of creative time and makes the case for the critical role of fantasy play in the psychological, intellectual, and social development of young children. A Child's Work goes inside classrooms around the globe to explore the stunningly original language of children in their role-playing and storytelling. Drawing from their own words, Paley examines how this natural mode of learning allows children to construct meaning in their worlds, meaning that carries through into their adult lives. Proof that play is the work of children, this compelling and enchanting book will inspire and instruct teachers and parents as well as point to a fundamental misdirection in today's educational programs and strategies.


The Absorbent Mind

The Absorbent Mind

Author: Maria Montessori

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-03-25

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1625588682

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The Absorbent Mind was Maria Montessori's most in-depth work on her educational theory, based on decades of scientific observation of children. Her view on children and their absorbent minds was a landmark departure from the educational model at the time. This book helped start a revolution in education. Since this book first appeared there have been both cognitive and neurological studies that have confirmed what Maria Montessori knew decades ago.


All Art is Ecological

All Art is Ecological

Author: Timothy Morton

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 014199701X

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In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. Provocative and playful, All Art is Ecological explores the strangeness of living in an age of mass extinction, and shows us that emotions and experience are the basis for a deep philosophical engagement with ecology. Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.


Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Author: Gregory Bateson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 9780226039053

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Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.


The Artground Ecology

The Artground Ecology

Author: Chee-Hoo Lum

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-05-24

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9811605823

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This book presents qualitative research narratives on children’s engagement and learning in play and arts experiences. Using The Artground Singapore - a registered arts charity that offers interactive visual art spaces for children - as a site of study, the book also offers reflective and practical insights into the professional development and incubation of art practitioners dedicated to the creation and implementation of works for young audiences. With reference to other such purpose-built arts spaces specifically dedicated to the engagement and learning of young audiences through play and varied arts experiences, such as The Ark in Dublin and ArtPlay in Melbourne, the authors show how these spaces are also dedicated to the development and creation of new quality works for young audiences through various professional development programmes. The Artground Singapore was developed along similar lines of interest, and provides a dedicated arts space for children and their caretakers to explore, play and create together through its interactive visual arts play space, as well as arts programmes that include music, theatre and dance, amongst others. Sharing critical insights into the aesthetical, logistical, and management aspects of providing a dedicated arts space for children, this book will be of interest to arts practitioners, child educators, and cultural studies scholars interested in dance, drama and music performance and pedagogy.


The Ecological Context of Children's Play

The Ecological Context of Children's Play

Author: Marianne N. Bloch

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13:

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This volume illustrates the wide range of current theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and research directions in studies of the ecology of children's play. The contributors represent a range of disciplines and methods including ecological psychology, ethology, cross-cultural psychology and anthropology, education, and architecture.


Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Ecological Settings and Processes

Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Ecological Settings and Processes

Author:

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-04-06

Total Pages: 944

ISBN-13: 1118136802

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The essential reference for human development theory, updated and reconceptualized The Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, a four-volume reference, is the field-defining work to which all others are compared. First published in 1946, and now in its Seventh Edition, the Handbook has long been considered the definitive guide to the field of developmental science. Volume 4: Ecological Settings and Processes in Developmental Systems is centrally concerned with the people, conditions, and events outside individuals that affect children and their development. To understand children's development it is both necessary and desirable to embrace all of these social and physical contexts. Guided by the relational developmental systems metatheory, the chapters in the volume are ordered them in a manner that begins with the near proximal contexts in which children find themselves and moving through to distal contexts that influence children in equally compelling, if less immediately manifest, ways. The volume emphasizes that the child's environment is complex, multi-dimensional, and structurally organized into interlinked contexts; children actively contribute to their development; the child and the environment are inextricably linked, and contributions of both child and environment are essential to explain or understand development. Understand the role of parents, other family members, peers, and other adults (teachers, coaches, mentors) in a child's development Discover the key neighborhood/community and institutional settings of human development Examine the role of activities, work, and media in child and adolescent development Learn about the role of medicine, law, government, war and disaster, culture, and history in contributing to the processes of human development The scholarship within this volume and, as well, across the four volumes of this edition, illustrate that developmental science is in the midst of a very exciting period. There is a paradigm shift that involves increasingly greater understanding of how to describe, explain, and optimize the course of human life for diverse individuals living within diverse contexts. This Handbook is the definitive reference for educators, policy-makers, researchers, students, and practitioners in human development, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience.


The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Play

The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Play

Author: Anthony D. Pellegrini

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0195393007

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The role of play in human development has long been the subject of controversy. Despite being championed by many of the foremost scholars of the twentieth century, play has been dogged by underrepresentation and marginalization in literature across the scientific disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Play marks the first attempt to examine the development of children's play through a rigorous and multidisciplinary approach. Comprising chapters from the foremost scholars in psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, this handbook resets the landscape of developmental science and makes a compelling case for the benefits of play. Edited by respected play researcher Anthony D. Pellegrini, The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Play is both a scientific accomplishment and a shot across the bow for parents, educators, and policymakers regarding the importance of children's play in both development and learning.


The Ecology of Human Development

The Ecology of Human Development

Author: Urie BRONFENBRENNER

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0674028848

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Here is a book that challenges the very basis of the way psychologists have studied child development. According to Urie Bronfenbrenner, one of the world's foremost developmental psychologists, laboratory studies of the child's behavior sacrifice too much in order to gain experimental control and analytic rigor. Laboratory observations, he argues, too often lead to "the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time." To understand the way children actually develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it will be necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. This book offers an important blueprint for constructing such a new and ecologically valid psychology of development. The blueprint includes a complete conceptual framework for analysing the layers of the environment that have a formative influence on the child. This framework is applied to a variety of settings in which children commonly develop, ranging from the pediatric ward to daycare, school, and various family configurations. The result is a rich set of hypotheses about the developmental consequences of various types of environments. Where current research bears on these hypotheses, Bronfenbrenner marshals the data to show how an ecological theory can be tested. Where no relevant data exist, he suggests new and interesting ecological experiments that might be undertaken to resolve current unknowns. Bronfenbrenner's groundbreaking program for reform in developmental psychology is certain to be controversial. His argument flies in the face of standard psychological procedures and challenges psychology to become more relevant to the ways in which children actually develop. It is a challenge psychology can ill-afford to ignore.