Practice-based Research in Children's Play

Abstract

This book presents a collection of research projects carried out by experienced practitioners in the play sector in the UK and US who were also students, graduates and staff on the University of Gloucestershire’s postgraduate programme in children’s play. It offers a range of approaches to researching children’s play and adults’ roles in supporting it, including some that move beyond traditional qualitative approaches to explore what more might be said through post-qualitative methodologies. It also offers multi- and trans-disciplinary perspectives on children’s play and adults’ relationships with it, presenting students and practitioners alike with diverse perspectives to complement the dominant orthodoxy of developmental psychology. The book shares reflections on the research process; explores issues concerning researching children’s play and adults working to support it; showcases a diversity of contexts and sites of investigation into children’s play; and draws on diverse disciplinary perspectives on children’s play and adults’ relationships with it. Topics include adults’ memories of their own childhood play; adults’ role in the co-production of spaces where children can play, including adventure playgrounds, out of school clubs, children’s zoos, children’s museums and public space; perspectives on the nature and value of adventure playgrounds and playwork; therapeutic approaches to playwork; playwork and wellbeing; supporting the play of severely disabled children and young people; play and contemporary art practice; children’s use of technology in a playground; and children’s play in public spaces. Research methodologies include ethnography, auto-ethnography, oral histories, participatory action research, case study; performative, narrative and non-representational approaches.