The following study reflects and explores the dynamics of aesthetic experiences within drama improvisations. This arts-based research was carried out in Hong Kong with six Cantonese children who were aged 3–5 years. Data were collected from the video transcripts of five workshops and the researcher’s own research journal. Two significant milieus were observed: switching in-between roles and intuitive creativity is not talkback. I argue that because each of these two milieus provide the foreground for the complex – and at times contradictory – nature of children’s aesthetic experiences where Deleuzian power is at play, opportunities arise for both, challenging the traditional adult–child power relations, and in so doing, educators can be able to reconfigure and reconceptualise teaching goals and practices, both generally and specifically, within the context of early childhood education.

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Despite the prevalence of aesthetic education as one of the main developmental objectives in curricular worldwide, the mainstream philosophical discourse on its definition is predominately framed by western philosophy due to a paucity of cross-cultural studies on the subject. The article aims to achieve a contemporary understanding of aesthetic education from both the Chinese and Western aesthetic perspectives. Through the lens of postmodernism, the relationship between Daoist aesthetics and the western postmodern aesthetic perspectives, particularly the Deleuzian concept of rhizome, is identified. Both aesthetic perspectives concern de-authorship and promote self-consciousness/self-awareness. The study reconceptualises the functions of aesthetic education with the Chinese aesthetic philosophy that promotes the nurture of better people through benevolence.

Understanding of base-10 concept and its application: A cross-cultural comparison between Japan and SingaporeIt has become increasingly clear that the early use of decomposition for addition is associated with later mathematical achievement. This study examined how younger children execute a base-10 decomposition strategy to solve complex arithmetic (e.g., two-digit addition). 24 addition problems in two modalities (WA:Written Arithmetic; OA: Oral Arithmetic) with sums less than 100 were administered to 22 Japanese and 22 Singaporean 6-year-old kindergarteners. Our findings reveal that they were able to solve complex addition. For instance, Japanese kindergarteners tended to solve complex arithmetic using base-10 decomposition across the modality, whereas Singaporean kindergarteners used standard algorithms and basic counting to solve complex WA and OA problems, respectively. We speculate that Japanese kindergarteners might have a clearer understanding of the base-10 concept and were able to use this knowledge more readily than Singaporean kindergarteners. Mathematical experiences in kindergarten and number-naming systems have been put forward as two of the crucial contributors for such cross-cultural differences. This study also provides new directions for future research on the understanding of the base-10 concept and its application among young children.