Abstract
ABSTRACTChildren’s interests are widely recognised as pivotal to meaningful learning and play in the early years. However, less is known about how children’s diverse interests may contribute to relationships and interactions within peer cultures. This article builds upon previous studies to argue that participation in sociocultural activity generates interests informed by funds of knowledge that children reconstruct in their play. It reports findings from an interpretive study that used filmed footage of children’s play as a provocation to explore the perspectives of children, parents and teachers. The article presents original insights regarding some ways in which mutually constituted funds of knowledge afford opportunities for children to co-construct meaning. The findings also indicate that interests arising from diverse funds of knowledge may contribute to the interplay of power, agency and status within peer cultures. This raises some issues regarding how matters of inclusion and exclusion are understood and responded to within early years settings. The article recommends that teachers and researchers engage critically with children’s individual and collective funds of knowledge in order to better understand the complexities of play cultures.
Highlights
The rhetoric of building a curriculum upon children’s play choices and interests is well established within early childhood education (Wood 2014a) and arises from a proposition that early learning experiences should have relevance and meaning for children (Carr et al 2010)
The findings indicate that interests arising from diverse funds of knowledge may contribute to the interplay of power, agency and status within peer cultures
Whilst acknowledging the small-scale and culturally specific context of this study, the insider perspectives of children and their parents reported in this article have provided original insights into some ways in which children’s play interests were mediated by participation in sociocultural activity
Summary
The rhetoric of building a curriculum upon children’s play choices and interests is well established within early childhood education (Wood 2014a) and arises from a proposition that early learning experiences should have relevance and meaning for children (Carr et al 2010). Dominant understandings of play within early childhood education are embedded within a theoretical framework of developmental psychology, which places emphasis upon ‘resource rich-environments and ample opportunities for children to explore as. The mantra of ‘learning through play’ that is widely accepted in Western early childhood education has sometimes created a romanticised notion of the choices and interests that children explore in their play (Grieshaber and McArdle 2010). This article makes a significant contribution to shifting the discourse of play to incorporate critical understandings of children’s interests and how they relate to the manifestation of power and inequality within the classrooms and peer cultures of early childhood (Sutton-Smith 1997; Wood 2014a)
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