Where do children go and what do they do outdoors? How do they evaluate their own environment? What are their likes and dislikes? What would they like to see added or changed? How can the outdoor environment support healthy child development? How is the impact of the environment affected by its social and physical characteristics? How can its developmental impact be strengthened through public policy?

These are some of the questions addressed by Childhood’s Domain, originally published in 1986, in which children, as ‘expert’ research collaborators, describe their...

Play is the child’s way of learning about, adapting to and integrating with his or her environment. In addition to adequate sports and recreation facilities children need a wide variety of opportunities, choices and raw materials that they can use as they see fit for free constructive creative play. Originally published in 1980, these essays, drawn from papers given at the International Playgrounds Association’s Seventh World Congress, focus on the social significance of play. However, both the Association and the book itself are not solely concerned with ‘playgrounds’ in the...

Children treat play as an end in itself while adults treat it as a means which may serve several developmental functions. Although traditional educational thinking had emphasised academic work rather than play as the important learning tool at the time, opinion was changing rapidly. Originally published in 1980, these essays drawn from papers given at the International Playground Association’s Seventh World Conference, concentrate on the planning and design of play programmes and play environments. The book reviews the historical approach to play, play in the home, play in institutional...

Originally published in 1979, this volume represented a unique attempt to connect the usually separated fields of infancy studies and studies of older children. In each chapter, eminent research workers attempt to cross the theoretical, empirical, and methodological barriers that had traditionally separated the study of preverbal infants from the study of verbal children and adults at the time. These completely new and original contributions traced the developmental links between birth and conversation within three major categories: perceptual, cognitive, and language development. Although...

Originally published in 1984, a major purpose of this book was to bring together in a single volume, work that reflects the wide range of interests that social and behavioural scientists have in play, development and the environment. The intent of the book was to refine and extend concepts and methodologies within and beyond one’s usual area of study. The idea was that this formula and direction would yield novel information and fresh insights. The volume encompasses a wealth of topics concerning structural, functional, and pragmatic aspects of play during early childhood and childhood,...

Are child-care centres good for children? How can we provide good day-care? Feminists have long argued for the provision of day-care facilities so that mothers may be free to work outside the home. The call had enjoyed little support from politicians and experts, however. Feminists had been seen to stand for women’s interests, and psychologists and pedagogues for children’s – as if the two were opposed. Only in the early 1990s had the opinions of politicians and experts begun to change. Yet, even so, a positive policy on day-care was still lacking.

Originally published in...

Originally published in 1993, this book presents an alternative approach to the study of the emergence of economic awareness during childhood: a new developmental economic psychology!

In the past, attempts to study the emergence of children’s economic consciousness have failed to take account of the practical nature of the "economic" in the history of western cultures. Economic socialisation has been seen as the acquisition of abstract knowledge about the institutions of adult economic culture. The child has been seen as a spectator, acquiring knowledge of that culture, but never...

John and Elizabeth Newson’s long-term investigation of child up-bringing attracted intense interest from its earliest beginnings: ‘pathbreaking’ and ‘seminal’ were adjectives that greeted their first report. The study is now established as one of the major projects of the seventies.

This third volume of the series catches some seven hundred Nottingham children at a critical stage of their development: in transition from infant to junior school, they are moving out of the protective family orbit and into the wider social world of street, playground and classroom, where...