Inclusive Play

Practical Strategies for Children from Birth to Eight

Theresa Casey

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781446243138
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación infantil

This extremely practical and child-focused book gives you the tools you need to make sure all the children in your care are included and involved in the play opportunities of your setting.

Inside the second edition, new content includes:

- consideration of the early years curricula across the whole of the UK

- a new chapter on risk and challenge in play

- new case studies

- international perspectives

- full coverage of the Birth to Eight age range

- consideration of inclusive play from a children?s rights perspective

A key book for those in practice, and underpinned by sound theory, this book will help you encourage and support inclusive play throughout your setting; it is packed with activities for you to try, ideas for small changes to make that can have a big impact and clear guidance on writing a play policy.

With a focus on appreciating children as individuals, this book is essential for all early years practitioners and those studying early years at any level.

Theresa Casey is a freelance consultant based in Scotland, and President of the International Play Association.

Specialising in play and children?s rights, inclusion and children?s environments, Theresa Casey Consultancy provides tailor-made services for organisations working for and with children.

1

Understanding inclusive play

The focus here is not solely on disabled children but on establishing an inclusive ethos to the benefit of everyone in the setting including staff, parents and members of the community of the setting. This chapter introduces some key ideas underpinning inclusive play, including:

• exploring children’s play rights
• what we mean by inclusive play
• the value of inclusive play
• the particular benefits of good early years play experience for disabled children and those children ‘on the margins’
• inclusive play and our youngest children
• making change: getting started
• a voice for children
• national play policies and strategies in the UK.

Exploring children’s play rights

A first step to forming our strategies for supporting inclusive play is to bring a sharp focus back on to our understanding of play itself. By coupling the words ‘inclusive’ and ‘play’, we have created a phrase open to interpretation and some unpicking of what we are aiming for is vital. A definition of play has long been elusive; it’s very ambiguity is a subject of study in itself (Sutton-Smith, 2001). Play’s resistance to definition remains a challenge with which academics, policy-makers and practitioners grapple.

On top of that, most of us work in teams which bring together people from a number of professional and cultural backgrounds which, with our individual values and beliefs, have a bearing on how we ‘read’ and respond to children’s play.

Since play was recognized in article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, our thinking on play has taken on new dimensions; this required a shift to acknowledging that every child has a right to play from viewing play as at best a need but commonly as a frivolous way to pass time, a luxury not afforded by every child.

The UNCRC articulates the rights of children and the standards to which all governments must aspire. The Convention is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history, ratified by the UK government in 1991 and at the time of writing by all but two countries in the world. By ratifying, governments have committed to protecting and promoting children’s rights and have agreed to be held accountable for this commitment before the international community.

Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

Article 31 contains the apparently similar words rest, leisure, play and recreation. In their discussion of implementation, Hodgkin and Newell suggest that play is ‘arguably the most interesting in terms of childhood, in that it includes activities of children which are not controlled by adults and which do not necessarily conform to any rules’ (2007: 469).

This quickly takes us to the heart of the challenge; if play is not controlled or directed by adults, in which ways can we support play to happen without by our very involvement distorting it? This problem finds many echoes.

A government review in the UK took play to mean ‘what children and young people do when they follow their own ideas, in their own way and for their own reasons’ (DCMS, 2004: 9). This attempted to capture the concept of self-direction in play but has also been described as representing a ‘significant field of tension’ (Lester and Russell, 2008: 16). While on paper policy statements may project a central message that control of play should remain with the child, in practice the extent of support for enabling or even permitting the broad spectrum of playtypes and behaviours that might emerge when play is ‘self-directed’ is open to question.

Practitioners of necessity navigate these tensions while working with children on a day-to-day basis reconciling, if they can, the premise of play being controlled by children with requirements for planned or purposeful play and early learning goals. (Two examples with a slightly different emphasis, the first from England and the second from Northern Ireland, are given below.) Can we unravel planning for play and planning play, in a way with which we are content? There is no easy answer to this.

All the areas (of Learning and Development) must be delivered through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities. (DCSF, 2008a: 11)

Children should have opportunities to experience much of their learning through well-planned and challenging play. Self-initiated play helps children to understand and learn about themselves and their surroundings. (Interboard, 2006: 6)

As a starting point, it would be fair to say that the guidance within this book is aimed firmly at supporting play that is ‘freely chosen, personally directed, intrinsically motivated behavior that actively engages the child’ (NPFA, 2000: 6), a description of play widely accepted by play practitioners if open to criticism that there are, inevitably, exceptions to the rule.

By extension, the book is concerned with supporting children to reach the point where this is the way they are able to play if that is what they choose. For many children – including some disabled children – at least some of the time free play of this sort is unlikely to happen in a way that is satisfying to them without some additional support (direct or indirect) from peers or informed adults.

There is a strong link between article 31, the right to play, and article 23 of the UNCRC, the right of disabled children to ‘enjoy a full and decent life, in conditions which ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child’s active participation in the community’ (UNICEF, 1989). The General Comment on the rights of disabled children issued by the UN makes this link explicit.

The attainment of full inclusion of children with disabilities in the society is realized when children are given the opportunity, places, and time to play with each other (children with disabilities and no disabilities). (UNCRC, 2006: 19)

Play is so much a part of children’s day-to-day lived experience that it represents at a very fundamental level the extent to which they participate in their communities. Restricted opportunities for play can be seen as a form of discrimination (UNCRC, 2006: 5). Concern was expressed in the 2008 report to the UK government (UNCRC, 2008: 12) that disabled children continue to face barriers to enjoyment of their rights, highlighting access to leisure and play as a current and ongoing issue.

In the UK, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 amended the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to make unjustified discrimination by education providers against disabled pupils, students and adult learners unlawful. The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 took things further, giving most public authorities a positive duty to promote disability equality. And going back to the UNCRC again, article 29 lays out the agreement undertaken by governments that education should be directed to ‘the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential’.

At a practice level, putting rights into practice demands that we ask ourselves questions. What do we really mean when we say our settings are ‘inclusive’, that we are responding to ‘the right to play’ or the right to be included? What does it suggest about the direction of our practice and goals or the philosophy of the setting? Does it reflect the experience of the children who use the service or setting? Do they feel included?

The following short exercises can be used to explore what play and inclusion mean in our settings. They should involve as many different people as possible from the community of the setting and can be adapted to use with children as a way of exploring their experience of inclusion and play (suggestions are given below).

Activity

What we mean by inclusive play

‘Inclusive play’ is now a commonly used term but the meaning may be neither clear nor shared. This group activity aims to spark discussion and reflection. It is important that the facilitator of the activity sets a non-judgmental tone emphasizing that they are not looking for right or wrong answers, but rather some discussion of different points of view. The facilitator should be familiar with the thinking behind medical and social models of disability and about integration and inclusion. Information is given below which could also be used in handouts to support this activity. The discussion can be set up in one group – up to perhaps a dozen if people feel comfortable with that – or smaller groups of three or four.

• Copy the ‘Discussion starters’ below, or create your own (suggestions below) and cut into separate slips of paper. You may prefer to remove the sources so that these don’t influence the direction of discussion.
• Lay these slips face down. A member of the group should pick one at random and read it out. One member of the group can be designated as the reader if that is more appropriate to the group.
• This person begins the discussion by sharing any thoughts or questions it brings to mind and other members of the group are encouraged to join in the discussion.
• Use as many or as few of the discussion starters as seems appropriate.
• One person could be designated as a recorder to note common themes or key phrases and questions on large sheets of paper as they arise.

Discussion starters

• Memories of having a really good time together are a resource on which to draw – a history of being happy together.
• For inclusion to work, children should get one-to-one support to prepare and support them into mainstream. They do need lots of help and preparation first.
• I just want to be with who I want to be with, hanging out really.
• Inclusive play means enabling each child to play and express themselves in their own way and supporting them to play together when they wish to.
• I know that inclusion will probably never happen as everything gravitates towards what’s normal and what’s acceptable and what we can all relate to. People like to pigeon-hole other people and if they are different, they think ‘oh, they don’t fit in’.
• Disabled children are not just the responsibility of specialist disability services. All services need to ensure that disabled children can take part in everything they do. (The Inclusion Charter – source online: www.edcm.org.uk/inclusioncharter)
• Inclusion means a deep commitment and awareness that there is a very wide range of human behaviour and understanding of the world; that there is a respect for different perceptions of life.
• In a school setting, inclusion can mean that the total environment has meaning and is accessible to everybody: that it is safe; that it is clear what everything is for; that it is functional.
• If the children are all just absorbed in their own thing, I don’t think that is inclusion.
• True equality of opportunity is about making sure that everyone has the power to help shape the society they live in. (Source online: www.equalityhumanrights.com)

Note: all discussion starters without accompanying sources originate from the Play Inclusive (...