Child-initiated Play Research Articles

Playing with open-ended material as experiences of democracy: The Waldorf case

Using participatory observations accompanied by video and audio recordings, this article investigates how negotiations about play scripts evolve during play in two Waldorf kindergartens. In particular, this study aims to examine how child-initiated play can contribute to the development of basic democratic skills in early childhood. The concept of resistance proposed by Gert Biesta has been a theoretical starting point for analysis. Hence, this article investigates how and what kinds of resistance are offered through play negotiations with unprocessed, open-ended play materials typical of Waldorf kindergartens. The analysis reveals that resistance is offered by the play materials, previous play scripts, and play partners. In addition, open-ended play materials seemed to add more complexity to negotiations than industrially processed toys. Consequently, the risk of failure in such negotiations becomes more intrusive.

Barns lek som deltakelse i skolehverdagen

This study discusses children’s experiences with play in first grade in Norwegian school. Through interviews with children (Grades 1–3) they emphasized that the best thing about school was play and they associate it to three aspects: the opportunity to participate in a child community, to participate in child-initiated play and to participate in creating the place. They experienced that there was less time for play in school compared with kindergarten. The question is whether a school life focusing on teaching deprives children an important kind of participation.

Preschool aged child’s literacy experience through everyday play in the home: A creative pathway to early literacy learning.

Two major events have brought research on preschool aged children to the centre of educational research in Nigeria. First, Nigeria is a signatory to the United Nations Convention, which is leading a campaign for the adoption and ratification of the Rights of the child. Secondly, the introduction of early childhood education in tertiary teacher training programmes has pointed to the need for quality research in the diverse fields of early childhood studies. One area that is yet to receive enough research attention relates to doing early literacy research in the home, in particular, with preschool aged children in the context of play. Using the empirical context of a six-week study of a 4-year-old preschool child in her home in Jos Plateau State, this paper studies how the child’s engagement in play enriched her early literacy learning. The study adopts participant observation and interview methods to collect data from multiple sources in the child’s home. Theoretically, the study is framed on an eco-cultural approach on child-initiated play and learning with accessible literacy resources. The theoretical framework enabled the identification of the learning opportunities in the home and the child’s capacity to act independently. It was also useful for studying the parents’ ethnotheories and support for learning in the home. Using thematic analysis, the findings indicate the child was critically engaged with hybrid traditions of literacy- texts and representations. The paper has implications for policy on partnering with parents for children’s literacy development.

How an educational experiment creates motivating conditions for children to role-play a child-initiated PlayWorld

ABSTRACT Government guidelines are demanding greater educational outcomes and intentional teaching in Australian preschools. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study of how children incorporate concepts into child-initiated play. A cohort of 18 children (aged 3.0–5.8, mean age of 4.8) were digitally observed over seven weeks (153.3 hours' digital video observations). It was found that rather than formalising preschooling to increase cognitive outcomes, the leading activity of the preschool child to play can be preserved when children experience a PlayWorld where curriculum concepts act in service of the children’s play.

The Nexus of Play-based Learning and Early Childhood Education: A Western Australian Account

Human development theories identify child-initiated play as the primary source of early learning. Accordingly, the role of early childhood educators is to utilise the natural medium of play as a context for learning; an educational approach known as play-based learning. Recently, Western Australia (WA) has experienced an erosion of play-based learning opportunities across the early childhood education (ECE) spectrum, potentially violating children’s rights. This paper presents research evidence related to this concerning issue. A self-completion, electronic questionnaire was distributed to educators through via several WA early childhood advocacy organisations. Participants (n=204) shared their perceptions about the availability of play-based learning opportunities for young children. Results identified perceived barriers and enablers to providing play-based learning in WA early childhood education settings that impact on children’s wellbeing, development and learning. Assessment of play-based learning provision differed significantly between school-based and early education and care-based educators. Participants supported the implementation of a WA Play Strategy.

Utilizing Child-centered Approach in Occupational Therapy: Are Occupational Therapists Ready for It?

ABSTRACT There is limited information on the use of non-directive, child-initiated and child-directed play in occupational therapy. Play as an occupation characterized by internal control, intrinsic motivation, suspension from reality, and engaged in with focus on the process rather than the product necessitates child-centeredness with initiation and direction led by the child. This research aims to determine whether Filipino occupational therapists’ (OTs) attitudes, knowledge, and behavior are consistent with the principles of child-centered practice. A secondary analysis of a previous online survey was conducted. Purposive sampling and snow-balling techniques were used to select and recruit participants. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. A total of 91 OTs participated in the study. Results of the study indicate OTs generally are child-centered in their attitude & behavior. However, responses to certain items under attitude (children need to be given correct answers to questions and children tend to make right decisions) and behavior (abilities to facilitate decision making and responsibility in children and to facilitate spontaneity and creativity during play) indicate some reservations with the approach. The current attitude, knowledge and behavior of Filipino occupational therapists indicate alignment with child-centered principles but with reservations. This may affect how play is utilized in practice.

The Views and Experiences of Teachers, Therapists and Integration Aides of Play-based Programs within Specialist School Settings

ABSTRACT In Australia, children with developmental delay and disability, who have an IQ less than 70, are eligible to attend a specialist school. These schools are called special schools or special developmental schools. Teachers, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists work in these schools together with integration aids. Children with developmental delay and disability require support when they enter school due to difficulties in play, language and social interaction. Play is important to a child’s functioning with pretend play strongly linked to language acquisition and social competence. In many specialist schools in Victoria Australia, occupational therapists have implemented play programs. This study aimed to explore staff experiences of play-based programs within specialist schools in order to inform occupational therapy practice for children with developmental delay and disability in a specialist school setting. There were 20 participants. Of these, 11 were teachers, 4 were therapists, 3 were integration aides, and two were assistant principals. Data were collected through focus groups. Thematic Analysis was used to analyze the qualitative (focus group) data. Five themes emerged from the data. These were: ‘We value play’, ‘Child led play is a challenge’, ‘Confidence to be a co-player with children with diverse play skills’, ‘We need parents to understand’ and ‘Barriers to play programs’. Staff valued play in the curriculum for these children, as staff understood play was a foundational ability. Staff described the challenges of play programs within a school in terms of a change in their role, being a co-player, balancing structure with child-initiated play, resources, and assessment of play. Schools that had access to an occupational therapist were more confident in play assessment, selection of play activities for the program, and encouraging self-initiated play. The findings of the study inform the role of occupational therapy in specialist schools.

Children’s ways-of-knowing. Learning through intent participation in the early years

ABSTRACT This paper reports a finding that emerged from a wider study into children’s engagement with literacy provision in child-initiated play. In this observation-based study 25 of the 42 children involved were observed engaging a particular form of participation, a learning modality that aligns with Rogoff’s et al.’s (2003) description of first-hand learning through Intent Participation. Based on these findings, the paper argues that, alongside other more established early years pedagogical practices, an understanding of this learning modality may need to be part of early years practitioners’ pedagogical repertoire. Recognition of this learning modality is, it is argued, particularly significant in two related contemporary contexts. Firstly, the ameliorating effect of early childhood education for children growing up in poverty, and, secondly, the strong drive to encourage language-based pedagogy to develop children’s spoken language and mediate their early learning.

Intentional or incidental? Learning through play according to Australian educators’ perspectives

ABSTRACT Recent early childhood education and care (ECEC) reforms across the globe are placing greater emphasis on the intentionality of educators’ pedagogy. In Australia, a National Quality Agenda (NQA) has significantly reformed ECEC through the country’s first national learning framework, which demands educators take a more intentional (active) role in teaching a play-based curriculum. Because educators’ capacity to confront these challenges will be reflected in their perspectives, a case study of educators’ perspectives on learning through play was conducted shortly after the new framework’s introduction to the field. A cultural-historical framing provided a contextualised, deductive analysis of educators’ practices and values. Findings indicated educators believe children’s learning from their play was associated with educators’ passive rather than active practices. Rather than intentional, it seemed to be merely coincidental that child-chosen play resulted in learning of curriculum content. Consistent with other countries where educators appear torn between curricular demands for adult-driven outcomes and a pedagogy of play, findings indicate educators were adept at justifying child-determined learning in relation to adult-determined curricular demands. However, the findings pinpoint exactly where and how educators lacked support to actively engage with and extend child-initiated play for learning.

What does the research tell us about how children best learn mathematics?

ABSTRACT Baroody, Lai & Mix [2006. The development of young childrens number and operation sense and its implications for early childhood education. In B. Spodek, & O. N. Saracho (Eds.), Handbook of research on the education of young children (2nd Ed., pp. 187–221). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.] differentiate between four different learning approaches: direct instruction, guided adult-initiated play, guided child-initiated play, and free play. The purpose of this article is to clarify which learning approach researchers in the field of mathematics recommend for mathematics learning in children younger than 6 years. We will do this by illustrating and comparing the theories of the four teaching approaches. The review of the theories shows that research supports a combination of guided adult-initiated and child-initiated approaches in mathematics learning, but that different approaches can have a positive effect in certain conditions.

Protecting and extending Froebelian principles in practice: Exploring the importance of learning through play

The current early years emphasis on ensuring young children achieve ‘school readiness’ has contributed to a context of academic pressure in early years settings in England. The debated term ‘school readiness’ is vaguely expressed in England’s early years curriculum as ‘Children reaching a good level of development in the prime areas of literacy and mathematics’. Opportunities for play, self-directed and adult initiated, are impacted by the academic pressures created by the English government’s demands for young children to achieve school readiness, which can dominate and determine the activities on offer in early years settings. The possibility to enact Froebelian approaches to learning, through child-initiated play, are further marginalized by the current early years policy agenda. A key issue relates to Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills), who judge settings primarily in relation to the quality of the academic environment provided and successful academic and developmental outcomes achieved by all children. In our recent research project, we sought to understand how much capacity early years practitioners perceived they had to enact Froebelian principles in their daily practice and the importance they attached to Froebel’s notion of learning through play. We interviewed 33 early years practitioners in six settings, working with preschool children aged between 2 and 4 years, about their understanding of Froebel’s concept of learning through play; the space, physical and temporal, they had to encourage and enable play; and the challenges of supporting children to learn through play. We explored the participants’ theoretical understandings of Froebel’s work and ideas in their education and training pathways. Our data highlight that many practitioners followed Froebel’s approach, but did not overtly name and identify their practice as Froebelian.

Engaging with literacy provision in the early years: Language use and emergent literacy in child-initiated play

Pre-school children’s engagement with activities in child-initiated play is taken to be an important mediating factor in their learning. The adult’s role in supporting and enhancing children’s play is an area of significant study. However, how children play when play is child-initiated, and how this maps to our assumptions and expectations about the potential of opportunities on offer, is less well understood. This study reports findings of detailed observation of young children’s engagement with literacy provision during child-initiated play. The study showed that, despite rich provision, engagement was extremely limited. Equally significant are the findings from a functional analysis of the children’s language use during child-initiated play, which showed that the children made almost no use of Mathetic language – the language Halliday argues is necessary for learning, most notably the linguistic demands of formal schooling. These findings contribute to the nascent understanding of children’s access to playful learning opportunities that are provided for them in pre-school settings. These initial findings are stark and thus warrant further study.

Modes of play in early childhood curricular documents in Brazil, New Zealand and Ontario

ABSTRACTEarly childhood policies internationally have been informed by evidence that participation in early childhood education makes a positive difference to children’s learning and development. Attempts to understand the purposes and value of play within early childhood policy frameworks have produced various curricular documents across international contexts. This paper employs text analysis linked to Wood’s [2014. The play-pedagogy interface in contemporary debates. In L. Brooker, M. Blaise, & S. Edwards (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of play and learning in early childhood (pp. 145–156). London: Sage.] three modes of play – child-initiated play, adult-guided play, and a technicist version of educational play – to identify where curricula in three different countries in diverse parts of the world currently sit within educational discourse. We provide a brief historical and contextual overview of curriculum policy influences in each country. We then analyse curricular documents in relation to Wood’s modes. We argue that shifts in policy frameworks are moving towards technicist and didactic uses of play. Furthermore, these uses are inconsistent with research that indicates what supports children to learn and thrive in contemporary contexts.

Fostering young children’s interest in numeracy through demonstration of its value: the Footsteps Study

Children’s early mathematical abilities are fundamental to their later academic achievement. An interest in mathematics in the early years is likely to establish a positive attitude to later mathematical learning, hopefully sustaining continued interest in mathematics and mathematical learning. Approaches to early mathematics teaching in the early years, however, are typically adult-initiated, which may fail to capture children’s interest. Given the importance of children’s motivation and sustained interest, the study described here strove to spark children’s interests in mathematical problems in everyday life. The study sought to determine if children would incorporate more numeracy-related concepts into their free play if exposed to adult demonstrations of age-appropriate numeracy activities such as patterning. For at least 15 min three times weekly, participating children’s parents and educators demonstrated numeracy problem-solving nearby, while children engaged in other activities. Demonstrations were thought to ascribe social value to the problem-solving activities. If children became interested in participating, adults told them to wait until the demonstrations finished, further indicating social value. Results show these children chose to play with numeracy-related activities in their free play time at preschool significantly more than children in a control group. These results suggest that seeking to foster children’s interest in mathematics through child-initiated play, rather than prescribing adult-initiated mathematics activities, may be an important means of laying the foundation for lifelong mathematics learning. Ascribing social value to numeracy applications is proposed as a new approach to teaching mathematics in the early years.

Tanzanian and Canadian children’s valued school experiences: a cross case comparison

ABSTRACTThis study investigates children’s multimodal perspectives on their school experiences in two diverse, international contexts. The research shares data from 45 Canadian and Tanzanian children, and focused on the children’s use of multimodal methods to share what mattered to them at school. The children’s significant interest in their outdoor school spaces was revealed, as well as culturally specific narratives linked to the participants’ local environments and families. In both settings, the majority of the children valued their outdoor experiences at school where they felt a strong sense of autonomy as they engaged in child-initiated play and collaborative games outdoors.

Assessing children’s play: reality or illusion? The case of early years foundation stage in England

ABSTRACTSince the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England in 2008, assessment of children has taken a formal and standardized measurable approach. Such an approach goes against most findings of play-oriented research. Thus, the project reported here employed participatory action research with practitioners in order to identify elements of child-initiated play, strategies which allowed practitioners’ participation as partners and ways (if any) of assessing such an approach. It was found that practitioners should be concerned to explore meaningful possibilities of assessing children’s play as it is impossible to separate or to distinguish functions that appear in children’s initiated play for assessment purposes. Instead, practitioners’ concern should be on the creation of environments that encourage play and offer opportunities, experiences, expectations and motivation which empower children to make choices and decisions based on polyphony, interactions, commitment, confidence and expertise.

Too much too soon? An analysis of the discourses used by policy advocates in the debate over kindergarten

In recent years, a debate over kindergarten has ensued. We refer to the actors in this debate as developmentalists, on the one hand, and academic advocates, on the other. Developmentalists argue that kindergarten should be centered on child-initiated play and intentional teaching through play, art activities, and hands on activities. Academic advocates argue that young children are capable of learning academic content in kindergarten and that academic instruction is necessary to help some students “catch up” before formal schooling begins. In this paper, we identify the key policy organizations engaged in this debate and analyze the ways they construct their arguments and critique the positions of their opponents. We find that, when discussing their vision for kindergarten, developmentalists and academic advocates share similar goals and views. However, when we analyze the ways the two agendas discuss kindergarten as it is practiced today, clear divisions emerge. Specifically, the agendas use different types of causal narratives to describe the problems with kindergarten and how it got that way. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications and directions for future research.

Literacy-Related Play Activities and Preschool Staffs´Strategies to Support Children´s Concept Development

This study investigates language-promoting strategies and support of concept development displayed by preschoolstaffs´ when interacting with preschool children in literacy-related play activities. The data analysed consisted of 39minutes of video, selected systematically from a total of 11 hours of video material from six Swedish preschool units.The selected sequences were play situations where preschool staff and child/children were present and teachers usedstrategies for creating a high instructional climate. The results show that spontaneous play, dramatic play,adult-initiated play and child-initiated play, as well as access to objects or toys offer numerous opportunities inliteracy-related play activities to support children’s concept development. Results showed that during play activities,such events stimulated children’s language modelling and presented opportunities to increase the preschoolchildren’s concept development. However, more research is needed in this area, especially concerning how preschoolstaffs´ participation, timing and sensitivity help support children in literacy-related play activities.

A comparison of physical activity levels in childcare contexts among Finnish and Dutch three-year-olds

The aim of the current study was to determine Finnish and Dutch three-year-old preschool children’s physical activity (PA) levels and how levels vary across gender, location, time of day and social contexts in both countries. A modified version of the Observational System for Recording Physical Activity in Children-Preschool (OSRAC-P) was used to measure children’s PA levels and contextual variables (e.g. group composition, prompts) of children attending childcare centres in Finland and the Netherlands. In total, 90 Finnish children (46 boys and 44 girls) and 97 Dutch children (46 boys and 51 girls) were observed. Three-level linear regression analyses with cross level interactions were used to assess differences between the countries in the association between the context variables and PA. During the observations, the present sample of children was mostly sedentary in nature. Outdoor location and prompts (both positive and negative) were associated with higher levels of activity in both countries. Non-solitary playing was associated with higher activity levels in the Netherlands, but not in Finland, whereas child-initiated play was positively associated with Finnish but not Dutch children’s PA levels. Finnish children were more active in the morning compared to the afternoon, while in the Dutch children PA was unaffected by time. The present findings indicate that better understanding of the contextual factors and interactions in children’s PA behaviours across the two countries could help in planning childcare interventions to increase the PA levels of preschool children.

Taking play seriously in the pre-primary English classroom

Drawing on experience and the emerging results of a research project, this article examines the role of play, in particular child-initiated play, when learning languages in pre-primary settings. It begins by characterizing play and highlights the importance of a balanced relationship between adult-led and child-initiated play activities. It proposes that English learning areas might facilitate child-initiated play in the target language, and analyses the relationship between adult-led and child-initiated play, consequently outlining a possible format and its components: structure, role, and script. Analysis of a teacher-led activity with a group of children demonstrates how this format supports children in later child-initiated play. Excerpts from observations of children in English learning areas exemplify how teacher-led instruction can enable child-initiated play. The article concludes with a discussion around the implications for practice in pre-primary EFL settings.