American children's freewheeling play once took place in rural fields and city streets, using equipment largely of their own making. Today, play is increasingly confined to backyards, basements, playrooms and bedrooms, and derives much of its content from video games, television dramas and Saturday morning cartoons. Modern children spend an ...

The average 18-year-old in the USA has already watched about eighteen thousand hours of television. This exposure (more than the total time spent in school) must be of enormous influence on morals, on emotions, on the imagination, on breadth and depth of knowledge, on aesthetic judgement, and on language. Tracing ...

Philip, a fourth former in a Wellington high school, was not very keen on writing. He thought little of his own writing ability, tended to write very slowly and was of the view that his difficulties with spelling prevented him from writing down good ideas. For Philip, writing was indeed ...

During 1979-80 we were invited to work in three middle schools (with 8- to 13-year-olds) to clarify what counts as progress in writing. We decided to select, with the teachers, three or four children from each year group. Each child was chosen as a typical representative of a fairly large ...

The great man was awesome but inspiring. His work sprang from a European tradition somewhat foreign to ours but nonetheIess stimulating. A revealing review of his work. (From set: Research Information for Teachers, 1983, No. 1)

Child's play – is it a needless luxury in an educational programme or does it provide long-term benefits to society? Kathy Sylva examines the results of three research projects which challenge both critics and advocates alike. (From Early Childhood Development and Care Journal, 1984, Vol. 15, pp. 171–183.)

Young people behave and talk very differently at home and at school. This research report shows that our assumption about potential can be quite wrong. (From New Society, Sept. 1984, pp. 270–272, (reprinted set: Research Information for Teachers ,1985, No. 2))

Three recent books, two from the United Kingdom and one from New Zealand, are based on three research projects. The results and lessons for us are examined. (From set: Research Information for Teachers, 1984, No. 1)

Perhaps girls miss out on pre-school experiences with equipment which would help them find mathematics much more natural at school. Action was taken in four kindergartens to help and the results are here. (From set: Research Information for Teachers, 1985, No. 2)

From her research into what makes some children difficult and what teachers do about it, Adrienne Rossiter makes practical and tested suggestions about how to arrange help for the child and the teacher. (From set: Research Information for Teachers, 1983, No. 2)