Category: Primary (5-11)

Long-term follow-up of a randomised controlled trial of a brief home-based parenting intervention to reduce behavioural problems in young children
8 October 2025
The long-term findings of our Healthy Start, Happy Start study have been published in a paper for the Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry.

A scoping review of teacher training programs to promote learning through play in pre- and primary schools
1 October 2025
This paper was published by the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education in September 2025.

Play, access and opportunity: Game-changing action for children
17 July 2025
In this presentation from the PEDAL Conference 2025, Dr Julian Grenier, Senior Content and Engagement Manager for Early Years at the Education Endowment Foundation, draw on his experience of working in early education and care for more than three decades.

Leveraging alternative systems to support children’s development amid crisis
17 July 2025
Dr Nikhit D’Sa, a developmental psychologist and applied education researcher, share lessons from four years of research with communities in Haiti at the PEDAL Conference 2025.

AI, toys and the future
17 July 2025
These recordings formed the “AI, toys and the future” session, presented by Prof Rosie Flewitt and PEDAL’s Dr Emily Goodacre.

Children’s risky play: Thrilling experiences and developmental benefits
17 July 2025
Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, Professor at the Department of Physical Education and Health at Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education, Norway, attended the PEDAL Conference 2025 to give the David Whitebread Memorial Lecture.

Play: The future of learning and thriving
17 July 2025
Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Head of Educational Impact at LEGO Education, attended the PEDAL Conference 2025 to discuss how play can be more deeply integrated into education, work, and society.

Trusting play to be meaningful data: using sand tray as a play-based research method with an adapted interpretative phenomenological analysis
27 March 2025
PEDAL PhD student Sydney Conroy explores using play itself as data for the purpose of research.

Fostering the psychological wellbeing of children diagnosed with cancer: Multidisciplinary insights in paediatric oncology
18 February 2025
PEDAL PhD student Paulina Perez-Duarte Mendiola contributed to this paper which was published last month in the Psycho-oncology section of Frontiers in Psychology.

It’s a Pandemic in the Playborhood: An International Perspective of Play Therapists on the COVID-19 Pandemic
7 January 2025
The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns and beyond, impacted many professions and workplaces, including therapists and their therapy rooms.