ABSTRACT The Historical-Cultural Perspective has defended the centrality of imagination for learning and child development. In this work, our objective was to understand the concepts, research methodologies, and teaching practices related to the processes of creative imagination in the context of early childhood education. To this end, a literature review about this topic was carried out between 2006 and 2021, in the Scielo and Scopus databases. We identified a scarce production about the topic in question, but advances regarding the importance of intentionally planned pedagogical actions to foster creative imagination in the school context of Early Childhood Education and the first year of Elementary School, given its implications for the learning and development process in early childhood, as well as the relevance of increasing the number of studies that consider children’s perception of their playful experiences in the interactive processes of daily school life.
Santos et al. (2025) studied this question.