4. Play Based Learning Flashcards
types of play
1.object play- sensorimotor exploration, using objeccts symbols
2.physical, locomotor, rough-and-tumble: develops motor skills, lingustic and social skills
3. sociodramric, pretend play and games: dress up, playing with other children, often involves scaffolding
Parten’s categories of social participation
- unoccupied play
- solitary play
- onlooker play
- parallel play
- associative play
- cooperative play
development of play
Attunement- parents responding to nonverbal cues
repetitive interaction games- enhance infants’ ability to solicit social simulation e.g peakaboo
physical play - (>1 year) after locomotor skills
pretend play and games- (>2 years) after improvement of symbolic and linguistic skills
some benefits of play
- reduces anxiety in children when starting preschool (barnett, 1984)
- one-to-one session playing shown to reduce cortisol (stress hormone) in children with disruptive behvaiour (hatfield and williford, 2017)
- randomised control trials, 7-9 years old showed that physical play improved executive funtion skills (hillman et al., 2014)
- children can ehance knowledge with pretend play (with more knowledgeable partners) (sutherland and friedman, 2013)
- positive parenting activities can lower parents’ stress levels and strengthen bond between them and child ( berkule et al., 2014)
playful learning vs direct instruction
direct instruction- controlling acttivity and constraining environment
playful learning: involves guided play and free play
guided play
3 elements- definded learning goal
childs agency and degree of choice
adults flexible guidence
two main forms -
1. adults create an evironment that emphasises learning with childs freedom to explore (e.g. museums)
2. adults observe childrens activities and offer comments, ask questions
guided play research
meta analysis (skene et al, 2022)
* main inclusions
* definition of guided play 1. child autonomt, adult guidence 3. leanring goal
* control conditions- free play
* age- 1-8
* design- randomised and non-randomised conrol trials
findings of meta analysis
- guided play has a more positive impact than direct intruction: on early maths skills, shape knowledge
- guided play has a more positive impact than free play on spatial vocab
- no significant differences were found for other areas of numeracy, EF, literayc and socialemotional
two main moderators
- sample size-
- type of comparator- guided play interventions generally have a greater positive effect on learning outcomes when compared to free play rather than direct instruction , however studies with free play as a comparator tend to have less than 50 ppts
limitations of the study
risk of bias: no blinding, no random allocation
small sample size:half of the studies had fewer than 50 participants
high heterogeneity: the effect sizes varied a lot
lack of information: gender-ethnicity, details of the intervention (e.g contact hours during the intervention)- diff to generalise
the decline of free play
children designed by natural selection, to play
rise of agricultre anf industrrial revolution free play diminished
1900-1950: the golden age of unstructured (free play) (chaudaoff, 2007)
from 1950, free play declined
decline of free play
research on decline of free play
Clements 2004: mothers compare their childrens play to their own play
* 85% of mothers agreed that their own children played outdoors less then they did
* “playing outside daily” mothers- 70%; children - 31%
* reasons: 85% of mothers cited television
* 81% of mothers cited computer
* 82% cited saftey concerns
schooling (new, dleiberate use of procedure to transmit skills) vs education (old, tranmission of knowledge)
hunter- gather children: 1. learn a lot 2. adults are not directive 3. educate themselves
free discovery play can lead to primary skills (e.g. fighting and social interaction), however a systematic approch can aid with secondary cultral skills (e.g. maths)
