The editors of this book have brought together contributors from many parts of the world. As such, the book offers a truly diverse, international flavour reflecting a broad range of research on babies and toddlers. Examining examples from both Eastern and Western cultures, the book’s overarching focus is on relationships, yielding a coherence beneficial to early childhood researchers and educators alike. Employing visual methodologies to help bring the chapters to life, the varied research studies presented concern babies’ and toddlers’ relationships and cultural contexts. Taken together, they offer a unique opportunity to conceptualise the use of a wholeness approach for studying babies and toddlers – our youngest citizens.

Think more intentionally about the play materials you choose and offer to preschoolers to enhance their development and learning

The editors of this book have brought together contributors from many parts of the world. As such, the book offers a truly diverse, international flavour reflecting a broad range of research on babies and toddlers. Examining examples from both Eastern and Western cultures, the book’s overarching focus is on relationships, yielding a coherence beneficial to early childhood researchers and educators alike. Employing visual methodologies to help bring the chapters to life, the varied research studies presented concern babies’ and toddlers’ relationships and cultural contexts. Taken together, they offer a unique opportunity to conceptualise the use of a wholeness approach for studying babies and toddlers – our youngest citizens.

Praise for the first edition:"The key advantage to this book is the way in which it is easy to read and the amount of information it provides with regard to the role of play in supporting young children's learning." Karen Phethean, University of Winchester"This book is excellent. It is an invaluable resource for both qualified and trainee early years practitioners. Tina Bruce has a real talent with how she expresses ideas. The concepts are presented in an accessible way. The material is suitable across a range of levels of study." Caroline McGrath, Programme Manger for Foundation Degree in Early Childhood Studies, City of Bristol College in partnership with the University of Plymouth"I would always recommend books by Tina Bruce to my students as she is highly accessible, combining theory and practice closely together. They are attractively laid out and are therefore popular with students." Maureen Brookson, University of East AngliaProfessor Tina Bruce CBE, an acknowledged expert on play, clearly presents the key ideas and demonstrates the best practices for cultivating play in an Early Years setting. The book covers historical perspectives, how we can observe and study play, and the role of play in learning, developing abstract ideas, helping children to relate to one another. She shows that play helps children to achieve the highest form of learning in early childhood.This new edition of Learning Through Play will provide students and practitioners with an invaluable guide to the core values behind play, the importance of play for children from 0 to 5 years old, and practical schemas for getting the best out of play in an Early Years or Educational setting.It will be an ideal text for those studying play at levels 3 and 4, Foundation Degrees, Undergraduate Early Childhood Studies and Primary Education courses, Post-graduate study and for those working in an Early Years setting.

In this book, renowned authorities Marschark and Hauser explain how empirical research conducted over the last several years directly informs educational practices at home and in the classroom, and offer strategies that parents and teachers can use to promote optimal learning in their deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

In psycholinguistic research there has traditionally been a strong emphasis on understanding how particular language types of are processed and learned . In particular, Romance and Germanic languages (e.g. English, French, German) have, until recently, received more attention than other types, such as Chinese languages. This has led to selective emphasis on the phonological building blocks of European languages, consonants and vowels, to the exclusion of lexical tones which, like consonants and vowels, determine lexical meaning, but unlike consonants and vowels are based on pitch variations. Lexical tone is pervasive; it is used in at least half of the world’ languages (Maddieson, 2013), e.g., most Asian and some African, Central American, and European languages. This Research Topic brings together a collection of recent empirical research on the processing and representation of lexical tones across the lifespan with an emphasis on advancing knowledge on how tone systems are acquired. The articles focus on various aspects of tone: early perception of tones, influences of tone on word learning, the acquisition of new tone systems, and production of tones. One set of articles report on tone perception at the earliest stage of development, in infants learning either tone or non-tone languages. Tsao and Chen et al. demonstrate that infants’ sensitivity to Mandarin lexical tones, as well as pitch, improves over the first year of life in native and non-native learners in contrast to traditional accounts of perceptual narrowing for consonants and vowels. Götz et al. report a different pattern of perception for Cantonese tones and further demonstrate influences of methodological approaches on infants’ tone sensitivity. Fan et al. demonstrate that sensitivity to less well-studied properties of tone languages, such as neutral tone, may develop after the first year of life. Cheng and Lee ask a similar question in an electrophysiological study and report effects of stimulus salience on infants’ neural response to native tones. In a complementary set of studies focused on tone sensitivity in word learning, Burnham et al. demonstrate that infants bind tones to newly-learned words if they are learning a tone language, either monolingually or bilingually; although it was also found that object-word binding was influenced by the properties of individual tones. Liu and Kager chart a developmental trajectory over the second year of life in which infants narrow in their interpretation of non-native tones. Choi et al. investigate how learning a tone language can influence uptake of other suprasegmental properties of language, such as stress, and demonstrate that native tone sensitivity in children can facilitate stress sensitivity when learning a stress-based language. Finally, two studies focus on sensitivity to pitch in a sub-class tone languages: pitch accent languages. In a study on Japanese children’s abilities to recognise words they know, Ota et al. demonstrate a limited sensitivity to native pitch contrasts in toddlers. In contrast, Ramachers et al. demonstrate comparatively strong sensitivity to pitch in native and non-native speakers of a different pitch accent system (Limburghian) when learning new words. Several studies focus on learning new tone systems. In a training study with school-aged children, Kasisopa et al. demonstrate that tone language experience increases children’s abilities to learn new tone contrasts. Poltrock et al. demonstrate similar advantages of tone experience in learning new tone systems in adults. And in an elecrophysiological study, Liu et al. demonstrate order effects in adults’ neural responses to new tones, discussing implications for learning tone languages as an adult. Finally, Hannah et al. demonstrate that extralinguistic cues, such as facial expression, can support adults’ learning of new tone systems. In three studies investigating tone production, Rattansone et al. report the results of a study demonstrating kindergartners’ asynchronous mastery of tones – delayed acquisition of tone sandhi forms relative to base forms. In a study interrogating a corpus of adult tone production, Han et al. demonstrate that mothers produce tones in a distinct manner when speaking to infants; tone differences are emphasised more when speaking to infants than to adults. Combining perception and production of tones, Wong et al. report asynchronous development of tone perception and tone production in children. The Research Topic also includes a series of Opinion pieces and Commentaries addressing the broader relevance of tone and pitch to the study of language acquisition. Curtin and Werker discuss ways in which tone can be integrated into their model of infant language development (PRIMIR). Best discusses the phonological status of lexical tones and considers how recent empirical research on tone perception bears on this question. Kager focuses on how language learners distinguish lexical tones from other sources of pitch variation (e.g., affective and pragmatic) that also inform language comprehension. Finally, Antoniou and Chin unite evidence of tone sensitivity from children and adults and discuss how these areas of research can be mutually informative. Psycholinguistic studies of lexical tone acquisition have burgeoned over the past 13 years. This collection of empirical studies and opinion pieces provides a state-of-the-art panoply of the psycholinguistic study of lexical tones, and demonstrate its coming of age. The articles in this Research Topic will help address the hitherto Eurocentric non-tone language research emphasis, and will contribute to an expanding narrative of speech perception, speech production, and language acquisition that includes all of the world’s languages. Importantly, these studies underline the scientific promise of drawing from tone languages in psycholinguistic research; the research questions raised by lexical tone are unique and distinct from those typically applied to more widely studied languages and populations. The comprehensive study of language acquisition can only benefit from this expanded focus.

This book anchors the social studies as the central unifying force for young children. Teachers use the inquiry process to foster child development of social skills and citizenship ideals in their first classroom experiences. Curriculum is built starting with children’s natural curiosity to foster literacy in all its form—speaking, listening, reading, writing. Along the way, young children acquire knowledge and academic skills in civics, economics, geography and history. Shown throughout are ways to promote social learning, self-concept development, social skills and citizenship behaviors. Featured here are individually appropriate and culturally relevant developmental practices. Considered are the importance of family collaboration and funds of knowledge children bring to early care and education. Contributors to this edition bring expertise from bilingual, early education, literacy, special education and the social studies. Beginning with citizenship and community building the authors consider all aspects of teaching young children leading to a progression of capacity to engage civically in school and community.