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Education Sciences
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Exploring Digital Play and Learning from Early Childhood Across the...
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Exploring Digital Play and Learning from Early Childhood Across the Lifespan

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "STEM Education".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 2294

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Eva Brooks

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University, Kroghstræde 3, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark
Interests: computational play and STEAM in early childhood education; develop teachers’ professional digital competence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Camilla Finsterbach Kaup

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Culture and Learning, University College of Northern Denmark, Aalborg, Denmark
Interests: the intersection of the digitization of play and learning, particularly integrating computational thinking into mathematics and STEAM
Dr. Emma Edstrand

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Halmstad University, 301 18 Halmstad, Sweden
Interests: digitalisation; digital learning environments; VR environments for learning; digital/emerging technologies; teachers’ professional development
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in learners’ everyday lives, play and learning are being reshaped in ways that challenge traditional educational boundaries. This Special Issue explores digital play and learning as a dynamic and multifaceted domain spanning from early childhood to adolescence, and from informal to formal learning environments. We welcome contributions that critically engage with how digital tools, ranging from coding toys and apps to virtual worlds, creative platforms, and artificial intelligence, interact with learners’ play, meaning-making, and knowledge construction.

Moving beyond narrowly defined concepts of digital literacy or computational thinking, this Special Issue invites new theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on how digital technologies mediate play-based learning. Topics may include, but are not limited to, creative coding, digital storytelling, game-based learning, hybrid analogue–digital environments, AI in learners’ playful learning, and sociomaterial or sociocultural perspectives on digital engagement. We especially encourage submissions that foreground learners’ agency, creativity, and embodied participation in digital contexts.

By assembling diverse voices across disciplines, age groups, and educational settings, this Special Issue aims to reframe digital play and learning not as a distraction or add-on, but as a generative site for exploration, identity formation, and deeper learning.

Dr. Eva Brooks
Dr. Camilla Finsterbach Kaup
Dr. Emma Edstrand
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • creative coding
  • digital storytelling
  • game-based learning
  • hybrid analogue–digital environments
  • AI in learners’ playful learning
  • sociomaterial or sociocultural perspectives on digital engagement

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 251 KB  
Article
From Play to Performance: Cultural–Pedagogical Frictions in Transmedia Edutainment in Hong Kong Higher Education
by Tin-Yuet Ting and Ying Wang
Educ. Sci. 2026, 16(1), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16010072 - 5 Jan 2026
Viewed by 493
Abstract
Despite growing interest in transmedia edutainment, its limits—especially those experienced by students embedded in non-western educational cultural settings—remain underexamined. This article offers a theoretically grounded and empirically supported analysis of the cultural–pedagogical frictions shaping transmedia edutainment in Hong Kong higher education, focusing on [...] Read more.
Despite growing interest in transmedia edutainment, its limits—especially those experienced by students embedded in non-western educational cultural settings—remain underexamined. This article offers a theoretically grounded and empirically supported analysis of the cultural–pedagogical frictions shaping transmedia edutainment in Hong Kong higher education, focusing on students whose learning dispositions have been historically and institutionally formed by examination-oriented meritocracy and instrumentalist epistemologies. Using a mixed qualitative design combining focus-group interviews and classroom ethnographic observations, we show why implementation efforts frequently stalled and how they were ultimately absorbed by a prevailing neoliberal–Confucian educational culture that moralizes achievement and standardizes value recognition. Drawing on a Bourdieusian framework, we interrogate how students’ educational illusio—animated by content instrumentalism, grade-oriented compliance, and meritocratic time-discipline—recasted multimodal engagement as instrumentalized participation optimized for legibility, security, and risk minimization. Moving beyond prevailing emphases on technological access or digital divides, we foreground habitus–field incongruence as the mechanism structuring ambivalent participation and deculturation from the intended ethos of creativity, critical inquiry, and collaborative participation. We conclude by calling for culturally responsive pedagogical shifts necessary for cultivating more genuine participatory cultures in transmedia learning environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Digital Play and Learning from Early Childhood Across the Lifespan)
22 pages, 1663 KB  
Article
Computational Play in Early Childhood: Integrating Analog and Digital Tools to Support Mathematical Learning and Computational Thinking
by Eva Brooks, Camilla Finsterbach Kaup, Susanne Dau, Emma Edstrand, Francesca Granone and Elin Kirsti Lie Reikerås
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(12), 1601; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121601 - 27 Nov 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1367
Abstract
Although play naturally embeds computational thinking (CT) and mathematical learning in early childhood education, designing developmentally appropriate learning activities that purposefully nurture and extend these competencies remains a challenge. This study investigates how young children engage with foundational mathematical and computational concepts through [...] Read more.
Although play naturally embeds computational thinking (CT) and mathematical learning in early childhood education, designing developmentally appropriate learning activities that purposefully nurture and extend these competencies remains a challenge. This study investigates how young children engage with foundational mathematical and computational concepts through analog (DUPLO®) and digital (Blue-Bot) tools in a play-responsive early childhood education workshop setting. The study adopts a qualitative workshop format aimed at promoting playful exploration and active experimentation, involving eleven 4–5-year-old children and their two teachers. Based on a sociocultural perspective, the findings highlight that mathematics is a human activity embedded in everyday playful practices. In particular, unplugged analog activities, embedded within an open-ended narrative framework, guided and structured the process. Based on these findings, we suggest “computational play” as a framework for developmentally appropriate integration of computational thinking (CT) and mathematics. This framework offers implications for educators seeking to support early CT and mathematical learning in playful, exploratory early childhood education (ECE) environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Digital Play and Learning from Early Childhood Across the Lifespan)
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