Childhood Education Innovations
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Childhood Education: Innovations is an education magazine that provides unique, stimulating information about educational programs around the world. Articles explore solutions to specific challenges affecting schools, teachers, and learners and showcase the most recent innovations being developed and implemented to address those challenges. Readers will find inspiration for transforming education to better serve children and society. Published 6 times a year, CE Innovations provides a window into the work being done to bring quality, equitable education to all children. It stands alongside the Journal of Research in Childhood Education as one of our signature publications.
CONTENTS
November/December 2022
“Community: Education’s Greatest Innovation”
The conversation around innovation in education often treats it as synonymous with technology in education. While technology certainly has its advantages for enhancing learning, all the software, applications, and shiny tablets in the world cannot replace the fundamental truth that education systems start and end with community; the community educates the child and the children become the very citizens that form the community. So why are we focusing on edtech when we should be focusing on people and communities to improve our education systems?
“Playful Education Builds the Next Generation”
Learning through play is crucial for a child’s development, and the
importance of sports and play is recognized in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Through sports and play, children learn to express themselves, feel connected to others, take on leadership roles, think critically, and build essential qualities such as self-confidence and resilience. In addition, playful learning has excellent educational value: it improves cognitive skills and learning performance. The challenging circumstances many children in developing countries grow up under often lead to additional social and emotional needs. Sports and learning through play can do much to mitigate those challenging circumstances.
“The Promise of Collective Leadership”
Collective leadership employs a sociological lens to locate leadership in the context and relationships from which it emerges. It has been defined as a process of collective meaning making, developmental capacity building, and collaborative action. Its focus is directed toward developing groups of people empowered to act together to bring about change. This goal is what lies at the core of teacher collectives, which are teacher-led peer learning communities designed to create democratic and reflective learning spaces for teachers.
“The Skateboard as a Platform for Youth Development”
This article explores how the NGO Concrete Jungle Foundation (CJF) links skateboarding with education to reach and empower deprived individuals and communities around the world. CJF’s founders saw skateboarding as a platform for alternative youth
socialization—a practical school of life skills that attracts people from all walks of life. The free character of skateboarding seemed to have particular promise as a home for marginalized youth who don’t find their way onto the more conventional pathways of education and socialization (sometimes also referred to as “at-risk
youth”).
“From the Ground Up: The Ecosystem Approach to Transforming Education”
Most networking organizations are great at bringing people together. It’s the perfect way to spark new ideas and spur momentum for an emerging project. But without a way to further catalyze these ideas, the spark quickly fizzles. To help fan the flames, Remake Learning offers a pivotal next step—to catalyze through capital, in the form of grants. Funding, particularly funding that is fluid, flexible, and widely accessible, is what takes an exciting conversation or connection and elevates it to an actual pilot or prototype. Without it, many ideas never get off the ground.
“Inverse Inclusion, an Educational Model That Transforms Lives”
The ICAL Foundation in Colombia serves students with disabilities (mostly hearing disabilities) and has invited others without disabilities to learn in the same educational environment. This integration recognizes human rights and strengthens socio-emotional skills, which favor coexistence and respect for differences. Inverse inclusion provides opportunities for learning, developing autonomy, building healthy relationships, and exploring personal growth. This is empathic education, which always takes into consideration the needs and interests of children and adolescents with different functionalities, without detaching itself from the evolution of the educational reality for children without disabilities.
“Intergenerational Learning for Community and School Collaboration: Winterfest!”
How do families learn together after a pandemic that has driven them into isolation? The Gallia-Vinton Educational Service Center (ESC)—with the support of the Gallia County Job and Family Services, Gallia County Commissioners, and City of Gallipolis—decided to provide an event where families could have memorable experiences together as they learn. City and county officials partnered with educators to engage in this intergenerational family development. They presented a united community front, with everyone on board to encourage family engagement. They continued to emphasize the importance of family engagement through multiple community projects throughout the year—not just holding a one-time event. The ESC has found that many Appalachian families live in connection with multiple generations, and wanted to enhance and strengthen those bonds.
” ‘If Young Children Can Code, Why Can’t We Try?’ Computational Storytelling in Early Childhood Teacher Education”
Professional development for early childhood teachers reduces the socioeconomic and digital inequalities that disadvantage young children from low-income and non-employed families. Regarding the digital divide, teacher education in technology integration can bring more equitable opportunities for students’ computational literacy beginning in the early years. Like the grammar of writing, computational literacy is about using programming languages to communicate, express oneself, and test ideas. Recent research reveals that teaching of computational literacy cultivates students’ creativity and identity and prepares them for the 21st-century literacy classroom.
“I Have My Own Crayon!”
We learned many lessons in the years that we lived dangerously, as a determined and lethal virus wreaked havoc in our lives. We learned how vulnerable we are to infection, despite our 21st century knowledge of science, and we learned how best to prevent the spread of germs. We learned that our doctors and nurses, worn
to the bone from overwork, nevertheless went the extra mile and more to treat those who were falling ill in such large numbers. We learned that we needed to rely on our own resources to ensure that our children, kept out of school by quarantine, would not have fallen far behind their grade levels when they returned to in-person class.
“Harnessing the Power of Card Games to Teach Developing Math Skills”
Card games are easily accessible and familiar to many students, they connect numbers to quantities using recognizable images and patterns, and they are lots of fun. Recognizing these benefits, the authors have created a set of card games to teach math. They are designed to help students move sequentially from one game to the next, based on learners’ mathematical cognitive progression.
“Including Videos in Early Childhood Lessons”
Researchers have found that interactive technology in various forms may be an effective way to improve students’ education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at an early age. Results of another study indicated that “children’s attention to target words was greater in the co-viewing condition but appeared to contribute to expressive word learning . . . of lower repetition words. Attention mediated the relationship between co-viewing and low-repetition word learning for expressive, but not receptive, vocabulary.” The author has found videos appear to be most effective for topics that require rote memorization, such as numbers, counting, letters, and words, and also for social interactions and modeling multistep activities.