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The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on war play and aggression. The paper begins with an introduction to play and the theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Corsaro. This is followed by a definition of pretend aggression and the war play debate. Literature is reviewed on how violent television, war toys, and war play shapes children’s imaginary play and aggressive behaviors. Attention is also given to the teacher’s role in war play and the methods used to investigate war play. Suggestions are made for future approaches to the study of war play within the context of the peer culture. The paper concludes with implications for early childhood educators.

The aim of this article is to explore how young children (five year olds) collectively construct pretend identities with peers in play while using and negotiating consumer knowledge and experiences. Particular attention is given to children’s collaborative transformation of objects, ideas, places and persons, as they occur in the context of pretend play.

Data were gathered from ethnographic fieldwork in a local preschool in Japan. Two classes of five-year-old children (both boys and girls) were observed over four months. The theoretical framework highlights the dynamic and fluid interactional sphere and conversational exchanges through which pretend identities are created, negotiated and expanded.

In the findings, children’s construction of pretend identities is identified in terms of three characteristic forms of interaction in play: children’s reciprocal immediacy; maintaining and challenging participation; and willingness and collaboration to expand a play theme. Children’s collective construction of pretend identities indicates that playing roles means playing rules.

Through participant observation focusing of children’s perspectives and practices, this study contributes both to childhood studies and consumption studies. It also contributes to insight into how young children in the Japanese preschool experience consumer culture in a specific socio-cultural environment and how they construct peer relationships.

In a postmodern context this paper proposes that analogical scholarship in which one conceptual schema is used to view another in order to generate new perspectives, be used to view play. Hermeneutic philosophy specifically is used in a process modelling hermeneutic inquiry. Included are a review of play, hermeneutic philosophy, and the outcomes of the juxtaposition of hermeneutic concepts against play. Resultant perspectives on key issues in play, such as the meaning of play, play in meaning making, the binaries of play, play and practice, and play in the reconceptualizing movement in early childhood education, follow.

Early childhood education is a visual field. Much of our work begins with observing and documenting children's talk and actions. The knowledge gleaned from looking is then used to plan curriculum, much of which involves the creation of materials-rich environments to engage children's learning. Yet, quite often we do not question what we see. This chapter uses visual cultural theory to examine the multicultural props used in dramatic play with young children. By examining these images for what is both seen and not seen, I illustrate how these props create a specific discourse in early childhood education.

Much of the extant research literature on the initiatives to attract, inspire and recruit Black males to the teaching profession has focused on middle and high school students. Black boys’ socialization into dominant narratives regarding who can and cannot become teachers occurs as early as in early childhood classrooms; however, little attention has been given to ways to attract, inspire and recruit them to the professional teaching ranks where a paltry 2 per cent are Black men.

This paper explores the concept of imaginative play experiences with respect to Black boys and unearths possibilities for future Black male teachers through culturally relevant play.

Based on findings from the literature, this conceptual paper makes connections between the early childhood play literature and the Black male teacher recruitment and retention literature to create possibilities to inspire Black boys to enter the teaching profession.

This paper presents a nuanced integration of imaginative play and culturally relevant pedagogy with specific attention to Black males.

Empathy is part of what makes us human and humane, and it has become a core component of the Social Awareness competency of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) (CASEL, 2019). SEL fosters the understanding of others’ emotions, is the basis of Theory of Mind skills and frames the development of empathy. The purpose of this paper is to trace the links between empathy development and social and emotional learning when using real versus virtual environments. Empathy is a uniquely human emotion facilitated by abstract thinking and language. Virtual play is a teaching tool for acquiring prosocial behaviors. And finally, human-mediated (traditional and virtual) play is most favorable for SEL growth. Recognition of emotions such as empathy and other socio-communication skills have been taught to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Therefore, technology can be a venue for acquiring empathy.

This paper uses a qualitative interpretive methodology to advocate for the use of technology with human mediation to teach Social and Emotional Learning skills, based on the premise that cognitive and social-emotional development occurs synergistically and mediated by speech and interaction with the environment.

Technology is best seen as an instrument of assessing and teaching socio-emotional skills, but not as the only means to an end, because what makes us human can only be taught within an ecology of human interaction in real-life situations.

This paper reviews previous research works (both empirical and theoretical) that bring to light the connection between socio-emotional development, specifically empathy development, and virtual environments.

Purpose – This chapter examines children's options for responding to parental attempts to get them to do something (directives).

Methodology/approach – The data for the study are video recordings of everyday family mealtime interactions. The study uses conversation analysis and discursive psychology to conduct a microanalysis of sequences of everyday family mealtimes interactions in which a parent issues a directive and a child responds.

Findings – It is very difficult for children to resist parental directives without initiating a dispute. Immediate embodied compliance was the interactionally preferred response option to a directive. Outright resistance was typically met with an upgraded and more forceful directive. Legitimate objections to compliance could be treated seriously but were not always taken as grounds for non-compliance.

Research implications – The results have implications for our understandings of the notions of compliance and authority. Children's status in interaction is also discussed in light of their ability to choose whether to ratify a parent's control attempt or not.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter represents original work on the interactional structures and practices involved in responding to control attempts by a co-present participant. It offers a data-driven framework for conceptualising compliance and authority in interaction that is based on the orientations of participants rather than cultural or analytical assumptions of the researcher.

This column aims to advocate for taking an empathetic approach in the evaluation of patron-oriented digital services.

This is a regular column with citations that the reader can use to investigate further.

The column explores justification for this approach and how it fits into the larger evaluative picture. It then explores methods and tools that can be used to understand patron needs from a desirability-based approach.

Design of effective online library services is becoming more nuanced by the need to understand patron needs from an insider’s perspective. Taking a more empathetic approach will greatly complement the standard objective metrics that libraries typically engage in when performing assessment on their services.

Purpose – This chapter examines an episode of pretend play amongst a group of young girls in an elementary school in Australia, highlighting how they interact within the membership categorization device ‘family’ to manage their social and power relationships.

Approach – Using conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, an episode of video-recorded interaction that occurs amongst a group of four young girls is analyzed.

Findings – As disputes arise amongst the girls, the mother category is produced as authoritative through authoritative actions by the girl in the category of mother, and displays of subordination on the part of the other children, in the categories of sister, dog and cat.

Value of paper – Examining play as a social practice provides insight into the social worlds of children. The analysis shows how the children draw upon and co-construct family-style relationships in a pretend play context, in ways that enable them to build and organize peer interaction. Authority is highlighted as a joint accomplishment that is part of the social and moral order continuously being negotiated by the children. The authority of the mother category is produced and oriented to as a means of managing the disputes within the pretend frame of play.