Play and Learning in the Early Years

From Research to Practice

Pat Broadhead, Justine Howard, Elizabeth Wood, Pat Broadhead, Justine Howard, Elizabeth Wood

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781849200066, 9781849200059
• eBook ISBN: 9781446244333
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Providing high quality play experiences is an essential part of good early years education, but this can pose a challenge for practitioners who face pressure from a more didactic primary curriculum, and from parents worried that their children will fail to acquire essential skills and knowledge.

By helping the reader to develop their understanding of the complex relationships between play and learning, this book examines current theoretical perspectives on play, alongside examples of recent and innovative play research from a range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. With contributions from leading play scholars, it brings together theory, research, policy and practice in relation to play and learning in early years settings. The emphasis is on the relationship between play and learning, and play and pedagogy, and the need to understand these dimensions more substantially in order to teach with confidence.

Included are chapters on:

- the influence of play on thinking, problem-solving and creativity

- cooperative play and learning

- play, risk and outdoor learning

- learning to play in cultural context

There are chapter objectives, reflective points, reflective tasks and suggestions for further reading throughout, to facilitate critical thinking and encourage independent study. Suitable for early years practitioners, early childhood students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and all those who work with and care for young children, this is an exciting and thought-provoking book.

1

Developing Integrated
Pedagogical Approaches to
Play and Learning

Elizabeth Wood

The aims of this chapter are to:

• consider the tensions between different pedagogical frameworks for supporting play and learning, in theory and practice
• enable practitioners to look critically at pedagogies of play, and how these are influenced by policy, theory and research
• describe the intrinsic qualities, characteristics and purposes of play and playfulness, and how these can inform integrated pedagogies.

Current policy frameworks and policy-oriented research in England provide positive validations for play as a key characteristic of effective practice in early childhood education. Similar validations can be found in many countries, reflecting a wealth of research findings regarding the benefits of different forms of play to learning and development. These benefits have been identified in the subject areas of the curriculum, and more broadly in children’s social competence, well-being, positive orientations to learning and overall progression (Edwards and Brooker, 2010; Fromberg and Bergen, 2006; Kuschner, 2009). In addition, playful orientations to teaching and learning are characteristic of high-quality provision. Being playful can encompass personality traits and modes of interaction, flexible approaches to tasks and the ability to infuse different activities with the mood or spirit of play. Playful ways of interacting with others include humour, teasing, jokes, mimicry, riddles and rhymes, singing and chanting, and clapping games. Playful approaches to tasks include behavioural fluency, and using materials and resources in flexible and imaginative ways. Playful moods range from boisterous, wild and dizzy play to quiet, focused contemplation. So play and playfulness can be seen as integral to the ways in which humans learn, relate and interact across generations, cultures and contexts.

Although play scholars and practitioners endorse the many benefits of play, practitioners continue to struggle with their provision and, in particular, with their roles (Wood, 2009). Reflecting on my previous research which examined the continuities and discontinuities in teachers’ theories of play and their classroom practice (Bennett et al., 1997), I have come to see this not just as a rhetoric–reality problem (as described in the Introduction), but as a fundamental tension between different pedagogical orientations and traditions in early childhood education, ambiguous policy recommendations, and the ways in which policies are implemented in practice.

I have been researching play and working with teachers on initial and continuing professional development programmes for over 20 years. I know that there are different ways of organising and managing play, and different beliefs and practices, even amongst those who have strong commitments to good quality play provision. These variations are evident in the following quotations which were provided by PGCE students when I asked them to write short summaries of the play provision they had experienced during their placements:

Ellie: ‘My placement was in a reception/yr1/yr2 class. There was no scheduled free play for any of the children. They had a role play area, which was well equipped for their topic, but they were only allowed in there if they had finished their work (which was rare). With the recent bad weather we were very low on numbers and the reaction I got when I said we shouldn’t stick to the plans because of limited numbers was this: “but we can’t just let them play?” I felt like saying “why not?” The children were trying to sneak in at lunchtimes to play in the role play area’!!

Ruth: ‘Play, what play? Oh that thing they did for about 30 minutes on a Friday afternoon if they had finished everything else off, but they had to earn those minutes. No raised voices, and not too much stuff out and definitely no fun allowed. Five weeks in the military style classroom, oh what fun we did not have’.

Jo: ‘Absolutely amazing!!! Everything we’ve been learning about on the course was there for us to see. Great provision indoors and outdoors (including a small Forest School area) with free flow activities from about 10 am every day. We were able to plan activities that we were responsible for, like creative arts, cooking and small group time for the adult-led input. So we were able to do our intentional teaching. But we had a great time setting up the role play area with the children – their ideas were much better than ours and they made lots of the resources from scrap materials. It took us a while to learn how to be good players but we realised how much assessment we could do when we were with the children, being the patient or the bad robber who had to be locked up and punished (this seemed to occur quite a lot with the boys’!!).

What underlies the students’ experiences is not just contrasting beliefs and practices, but different orientations to education in general and to play in particular. Ellie and Ruth experienced the work–play dichotomy (as described by Howard in Chapter 9), where teacher-directed activities dominated provision, and play had little relevance. Jo experienced a more sophisticated approach, where adult- and child-initiated activities were integrated through curriculum planning, assessment and feedback. These orientations are defined here as the cultural transmission/directive approach, and the emergent/responsive approach. Whilst these orientations are not mutually exclusive, a critical consideration of their distinctions is used to examine why play provision remains such a challenge. I will argue that the focus on what play does for children, can be seen as an ‘outside-in’ perspective, which derives from the cultural transmission/directive approach, and privileges adults’ plans for play, and their interpretations of play and educational outcomes. In contrast, what play means for children can be seen as an ‘inside-out’ perspective, which derives from the emergent/responsive approach, and privileges children’s cultural practices, meanings and purposes. Both perspectives are important for understanding play in education settings, but problems arise when the former dominates the latter. I will argue that practitioners need to develop integrated pedagogies, which are informed by ‘inside-out’ perspectives: understanding the inherent qualities and characteristics of play, the importance of what play means for children and the complexity of adults’ roles.

The first section examines play, pedagogy and learning, focusing on the tensions between these two orientations, and their underpinning theories. The second section considers these two orientations in light of some of the ambiguous messages about play and pedagogy in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (DfES, 2007). The third section takes an ‘inside-out’ perspective, by looking at the intrinsic characteristics and qualities of play that are evident in much play research, but are often overlooked in policy discourses. The final section explores implications for developing integrated pedagogical approaches, so that provision is informed by knowledge about play, and not just by policy-centred versions of educational play.

Play, pedagogy and learning

---

The field of play scholarship draws on many contrasting disciplinary, theoretical and methodological perspectives, as evidenced in each of the chapters in this book. What play is, what play means and what play does for the players is conceptualised in different ways according to the particular lenses through which researchers view play (Fromberg and Bergen, 2006; Wood, 2009). However, making the journey from research to practice remains problematic for a number of reasons. First, as Howard argues in Chapter 9, it is difficult to isolate the benefits of play from the wider repertoire of children’s activities, because play activities enable children to make connections with many areas of learning and experience. Second, any benefits need to be seen within the wider dynamic processes that occur within play, because of the unique ways in which play creates imaginative, relational and interactive spaces, and enables children to develop and express their cultures and identities. Third, findings from research studies have been interpreted in different ways in policy guidance documents. Whilst many studies have been influential in identifying the benefits of play, making links between play and learning, and play and pedagogy, has always been problematic (Rogers and Evans, 2008; Wood and Attfield, 2005). What tends to happen, particularly in reception classes (for four- and five-year-old children in UK primary schools), is that practitioners either see play and work as a dichotomy (as in Ellie and Ruth’s accounts), or use mixed rather than integrated pedagogical approaches. In mixed approaches, adult-directed activities take centre stage in planning, assessment and feedback, and child-initiated activities, including play, are left at the margins of practice. In integrated approaches, adults are involved with children in planning for play and child-initiated activities, based on their observations and interactions. Planning and pedagogical decision-making are informed by children’s choices, interests, capabilities and knowledge, which feed forward into further curriculum planning. Teaching and learning, therefore, become co-constructive processes, where the focus is on dynamic interactions between the people, resources and activities in the setting, with the curriculum being used as a framework rather than a straitjacket. Of course, different pedagogical strategies are appropriate for different educational goals, and this is the point at which the cultural transmission/directive and the emergent/responsive approaches collide, firstly because they embody contrasting orientations to learning and teaching, and secondly because national policy frameworks in England give more status to the former against the latter.

The cultural transmission/directive approach

---

Contemporary policy frameworks in England (and in many other countries) focus on what play does for children. This is conceptualised here as an ‘outside-in’ perspective, which can be linked to the cultural transmission/directive approach in which education is seen as a process of enculturation. The dominant cultural values, beliefs and aspirations of society determine what education is, what education is good for, and how education should be carried out. These positions are expressed through socially approved forms of knowledge that are organised sequentially and hierarchically in national curriculum policies (such as the six areas of learning in the EYFS). The role of educators is to transmit the knowledge, skills and understanding that are deemed valuable to children in the immediate and long terms. In relation to play, the main emphasis is on play as educational practice – a means of learning, progress and achievement, including preparatory skills training (for example, playing with manipulative materials improves fine-motor skills and leads to the coordination needed for pencil control and writing). In terms of power relationships, practitioners control what forms of play are allowed, and how much ownership and control children have, but with limitations on time, resources and space. This approach privileges adults’ provision for and interpretations of play in line with defined educational outcomes, because they have to provide evidence of the benefits of play for the purposes of assessment, evaluation and accountability. Children are expected to acquire ways of being a pupil, and to learn in specific ways.

Drawing on the metaphors for learning used by Sfard (1998) and James and Pollard (2008), the cultural transmission/directive approach incorporates learning as acquisition, because learning is seen as the individual’s gradual accumulation of knowledge and understanding, which become increasingly refined and organised into coherent conceptual structures. The contexts for learning are more likely to be controlled by practitioners, with specific aims and intentions that reflect socially approved goals and outcomes. Cultural transmission can also happen in subtle ways, for example through the types of play that are allowed or banned, the rules and culture of the setting, and the judgements that adults make about the value of child-initiated activities. This approach tends to homogenise and normalise children to the extent that difference and diversity may be seen as deviations from desirable norms and trajectories, rather than expressions of children’s cultures, identities and life experiences. This is not to argue simplistically against the cultural transmission/directive approach, because in home and community settings, play is used to transmit important cultural information (Genishi and Goodwin, 2008; Pramling-Samuelson and Fleer, 2009). There is evidence to support the view that adults can have creative and flexible roles in designing play/learning environments, acting as co-players, and inspiring play for children who need assistance (Wood and Attfield, 2005). However, where practitioners create a dichotomy between work and play, it is more likely that adult-initiated activities will dominate provision, or that play activities will reflects adults’ plans and purposes.

The emergent/responsive approach

---

The emergent/responsive approach is more closely associated with play provision, because the focus is on practitioners responding to children’s choices and interests and to their emerging knowledge, skills and understanding. This approach takes an ‘inside-out’ perspective on what play means for children, which derives from children’s socio-cultural practices. The contrasting metaphor is learning as participation (James and Pollard, 2008; Sfard, 1998). Knowledge is co-constructed with others as children participate in their social and cultural worlds as active agents who play decisive roles in determining the dynamics of social life and in shaping individual activities (Sfard and Prusak, 2005). Ways of knowing and participating emerge in different socio-cultural practices, which embody the beliefs, rules, patterns of behaviour, language and interaction, routines and expectations within communities. For example, children do not just learn isolated skills (such as decoding words, practising handwriting or recognising numerals); they become, for example, readers, writers, communicators and mathematicians through sustained engagement in repertoires of practice, which can be adult- or child-initiated.

Socio-cultural theories have shifted the focus from individual development to the social characteristics of play, and have provoked critical consideration of the sub-texts of agency, power and control in adult-and child-initiated activities (Edwards and Brooker, 2010). Agency, power and control have different meanin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the editors and contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction Elizabeth Wood, Pat Broadhead and Justine Howard
• 1 Developing integrated pedagogical approaches to play and learning Elizabeth Wood
• 2 Learning to play in a cultural context Liz Brooker
• 3 Cooperative play and learning from nursery to year one Pat Broadhead
• 4 ‘Born to play’: the biocultural roots of rough and tumble play, and its impact upon young children’s learning and development Pam Jarvis
• 5 Playing on the edge: perceptions of risk and danger in outdoor play Helen Tovey
• 6 Identity and young children’s drawings: power, agency, control and transformation Emese Hall
• 7 Supporting a playful approach to drawing Kathy Ring
• 8 Play is a complex landscape: imagination and symbolic meanings Maulfry Worthington
• 9 Making the most of play in the early years: the importance of children’s perceptions Justine Howard
• 10 Play, metacognition and self-regulation David Whitebread
• Conclusion: Understanding playful learning and playful pedagogies – towards a new research agenda Pat Broadhead, Elizabeth Wood and Justine Howard
• Index