By Fraser, Brown and Chris, Taylor ( eds ) Maidenhead : Open University Press , 2008 ISBN 9780335222919 , 344 pp, £19.99 (pb) Foundations of Playwork are for anyone interested in contemporary children’s play and open a window to the work of playwork professionals. It comes at a point when playwork appears to be at a crossroads, ‘fighting for survival’ while ‘children’s early play experiences at school … are being manipulated into a learning ethos with an emphasis on achievements’ (Stobart, p18). The good news, however, is that the play policy landscape is changing dramatically in the UK: various contributions demonstrate the dynamic if uneven commitment to play by the four nations’ governments. Foundations, therefore, arrives within a context offering tremendous scope for exploration, challenge – engagement both within the playwork sector, between theorists and practitioners, nationally and internationally and through interaction with the wider children’s workforce, parents and carers. Sporting no fewer than 56 bite-sized contributions in 10 Parts, this collection offers many pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. Piecing them together, we gain a fairly comprehensive snapshot about play and playwork in the UK in 2008. Plus a virtual Who’s Who? of UK play experts – heavyweights, ludocentrics and emerging. Proof of the mushrooming of interest in play in recent years comes in the form of almost 400 references cited – a useful reading list in itself. More than half of these have been published in the 21st century including announcements by the Health and Safety Executive and diverse government departments. The hugely influential role of earlier play theorists, practitioners and related professions, such as Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Freud, Piaget, Huizinga, Montessori, the Opies and Winnicott is well captured, while Sutton-Smith’s special feature describes his intellectual journey since 1978 based on a ‘bias that play was a kind of dialectical experience’ (p139). Foundations has a welcome focus on quality, ethics and inclusive practice, although many contributions might have benefited from interweaving gender, disability and ethnic minority issues throughout. Cole-Hamilton (pp234ff) helpfully outlines the relevance to playworkers of many children’s rights within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), in addition to Article 31. It would have been good to see an acknowledgement of the significant role of International Play Association: Promoting the Child’s Right to Play in the 1980s in ensuring that the right to play was included in this treaty. Many children’s workforce professionals struggle with giving expression to children’s right to participate. The implication of Article 12 UNCRC for playwork is that children ‘should be given the chance to be active participants in decisions about the play opportunities offered to them’ (Cole-Hamilton, p236). Yet, while several contributors touch on participation, this is an area that merits a fuller future exploration at both theoretical and practical levels. Be prepared to be taken out of your comfort zone. For example, try to locate and compare the different takes on adventure playgrounds. Or consider where you stand on Brown’s identification of gaps in and critique of No. 2 of the Playwork Principles and whether you agree on what is unique about playworkers that sets them apart from the rest of the children’s workforce (p 126). Or on the question of inclusion, which Wilson (p241) argues lies ‘at the core of our work’. She shatters some common sense (and therefore often wrong) assumptions about the play of disabled children, through an eye-opening story of a boy who ‘stops abruptly and begins rocking to-an-fro, eyes locked in the middle distance’. Staff and children notice this, mirror his poise and understand: ‘He has spotted a sunburst around a tree trunk –– broken shards of rainbow. Seeing this glory once was not enough. So he rocked back and forth to see it again and again. Now we could all see it too.’ And then there is the silent scream by Kapasi, whose challenging ‘If I was an anti-racist, I would notice that…’ poem (p238ff) must not fall on deaf ears. Curiously absent is a discussion of the global playground created by the internet, of how new technologies are beginning to transform some playgrounds and how children move between their online and offline play worlds. The editors take readers through a breathtaking landscape of perspectives on the foundations of playwork. Taylor (p47) ends appropriately with a story about Nicholson (1971), famous for his ‘theory of loose parts’. After sending his Open University students boxes of loose parts for their assignments, the last box in the course was empty, except for a note that said, ‘it’s up to you now’. This book invites you to reflect (see Palmer, p51). But above all, it is one that inspires action.
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Sep 30, 2015
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