Childhood Education Innovations
Subscribe and receive Childhood Education Innovations magazine, bringing you cutting-edge innovations in children’s education from around the world.
Childhood Education: Innovations 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 ideas and innovations being developed and implemented to address those challenges. Readers will find inspiration and guidance 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.
CONTENTS
September/October 2021
“Project-Based Learning: Helping Students Thrive Socially and Emotionally”
The Destination Imagination educational pedagogy draws from learner-centered education and project-based learning paradigms to explore the creative process, which is important for their future career paths. As they work to create unique solutions to DI Challenges, they are exposed to teamwork, leadership, problem-solving, project management, and hands-on skills that allow them to determine their strengths, weaknesses, and interests.
“The Transforming Power of ProFuturo ‘E-ducation’ ”
ProFuturo works to ensure that all children, no matter where they are born or live, have the same opportunities. To do so, it implements its digital education program in places where there are great needs and few resources, including areas with low socioeconomic development levels and poor school attendance rates, remote areas, and conflict zones.
“Enhancing Education Quality With Localized Lessons”
Quality education has the power to change the trajectory of a person’s life. Yet academic achievement for too many children remains frustratingly low. This is particularly true in Pakistan. To change that, Developments in Literacy (DIL) has designed Technology-Enabled Academic Learning (TEAL). By creating localized bite-size video lessons bundled with detailed lesson plans and assessments, TEAL makes standards-based content accessible to teachers and students.
“The Everyday Magic of Positive Education”
The Positive Education model is brought to life in the classroom through a series of activities and discussion sessions that are practical, impactful, and fun. Children learn how their brains work, with a focus on managing their feelings and developing successful learning strategies. Power poses to increase confidence before tests become part of the normal classroom routine. Children are guided toward understanding how savoring happy moments can increase the positive emotions they feel, as do expressing gratitude and carrying out acts of kindness.
“Physically Active Learning With Tagtiv8”
Physically Active Learning (PAL) is an alternative approach that seamlessly integrates movement with learning. Research has demonstrated that PAL can:
• Improve classroom behavior and activity engagement
• Significantly reduce sedentary periods of time
• Offer aggregated improvement in academic performance over time.
Tagtiv8 is a game that exemplifies PAL. Colorful tags (flags) are printed with letters, numbers, and math symbols and operations. They are used as building blocks for language and calculations.
“Opening the Door to Language and Digital Skills”
The innovative EdTech program, PLUS English, helps make English literacy education and digital learning more accessible for children in low-resource environments. In a world transformed by digital technologies and dominated in many ways by the English language, the program opens doors to economic opportunities and change and allows children in non-English speaking countries across the developing world to be better informed.
“Self-Designed Learning in Nooks: Exploring Alternatives to Mainstream Education”
To ensure self-directed learning does not become a matter of one’s socio-economic privilege, spaces for self-designed learning that provide free access to the learning web are necessary. This is precisely what Project DEFY (Design Education For Yourself), a non-governmental organization based in Bangalore, India, sets out to do by creating “Nooks,” self-designed learning centers for marginalized communities across South Asia and Africa.
“Play Is a Pathway to Science: STEAM Education in Early Childhood”
Researchers agree that science and scientific thinking need to be introduced to children in their early years. Early science education promotes children’s self-competence, motivation, and interest in furthering their scientific knowledge. Early science instruction yields better learning outcomes later in school, as children’s attitudes and motivation toward science are positively affected. However, not all types of early science instruction are effective for young children.
“Fuji Kindergarten: Architecture of Open Play and Learning”
Fuji Kindergarten in Tachikawa, Japan, is an innovative school design. The building itself, designed by Tezuka Architects, is a key part of the children’s education. Here, the architects describe how the project developed and their inspirations and goals for this unique education facility that places children at the center.
“Art in the Time of Corona: Transforming Learning for 4.7 Million Children”
Often, the benefits of exposure to and participation in the arts are not accessible to the children who need it the most. In the capital city of Delhi, children receive, on average, less than 20 hours of art or art-based learning per year and this number is significantly lower in more remote areas. The Arts for All initiative offers localized, need-sensitive, multilingual, and engaging at-home audio, video, text, and print resources for young learners who have limited internet access.
“An Alternative to Exclusionary Discipline”
If punitive, exclusionary disciplinary practices are being disproportionally applied to Black and Brown students, it stands to reason that practices that are not punitive and exclusionary are worthy of exploration. One such model—Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS)—offers promise along these lines.