The importance of play

Author(s):  
Tina Bruce

The importance of play demonstrates the challenges of pinning down the umbrella word ‘play’ against a backcloth of terminology that leads to fragmentation of the word. In the educational context an emphasis on the lighter side has developed, such as playfulness, which leaves the more serious side shaded with consequent underemphasis of the self-healing nature of early childhood play. To address these challenges, the focus of the chapter is on the importance of 12 features of play, which bring some solidarity and unity to the study and practice of play without forcing conformity of view. The influence of philosophy, theories, and the sustained impact of Froebelian approaches to play on government documents in the UK provides navigational tools for practitioners, supported by research evidence, giving status and articulating the importance of play.

AIP Advances ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 075018
Author(s):  
Xi Wang ◽  
Hao Qiao ◽  
Ziwei Zhang ◽  
Shiying Tang ◽  
Shengjun Liu ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Wei Yue ◽  
Marc Cowling

It is well documented that the self-employed experience higher levels of happiness than waged employees even when their incomes are lower. Given the UK government’s asymmetric treatment of waged workers and the self-employed, we use a unique Covid-19 period data set which covers the months leading up to the March lockdown and the months just after to assess three aspects of the Covid-19 crisis on the self-employed: hours of work reductions, the associated income reductions and the effects of both on subjective well-being. Our findings show the large and disproportionate reductions in hours and income for the self-employed directly contributed to a deterioration in their levels of subjective well-being compared to waged workers. It appears that their resilience was broken when faced with the reality of dealing with rare events, particularly when the UK welfare support response was asymmetric and favouring waged employees.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 700
Author(s):  
Irene A. Kanellopoulou ◽  
Ioannis A. Kartsonakis ◽  
Costas A. Charitidis

Cementitious structures have prevailed worldwide and are expected to exhibit further growth in the future. Nevertheless, cement cracking is an issue that needs to be addressed in order to enhance structure durability and sustainability especially when exposed to aggressive environments. The purpose of this work was to examine the impact of the Superabsorbent Polymers (SAPs) incorporation into cementitious composite materials (mortars) with respect to their structure (hybrid structure consisting of organic core—inorganic shell) and evaluate the microstructure and self-healing properties of the obtained mortars. The applied SAPs were tailored to maintain their functionality in the cementitious environment. Control and mortar/SAPs specimens with two different SAPs concentrations (1 and 2% bwoc) were molded and their mechanical properties were determined according to EN 196-1, while their microstructure and self-healing behavior were evaluated via microCT. Compressive strength, a key property for mortars, which often degrades with SAPs incorporation, in this work, practically remained intact for all specimens. This is coherent with the porosity reduction and the narrower range of pore size distribution for the mortar/SAPs specimens as determined via microCT. Moreover, the self-healing behavior of mortar-SAPs specimens was enhanced up to 60% compared to control specimens. Conclusively, the overall SAPs functionality in cementitious-based materials was optimized.


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