Week 10 Flashcards
What is play?
Defining the distinctive nature of play has long been a controversial and challenging topic for researchers. Play is both ambiguous and complex, and if you consider the example of an infant using building blocks to create a ‘wall’ - how would we qualify this as ‘play’ as opposed to an infant just doing something? While there is no one definition of play, there are a number of agreed characteristics that describe play, as highlighted in this week’s essential reading by Meadows (2017, p. 277).
According to Meadows, play should:
be enjoyable and associated with positive affect be done for its own sake, rewarding in itself and not dependent on extrinsic motivation be spontaneous and voluntary require active involvement on the part of the 'player'.
However, some caution does apply in using such a narrow context to describe play, particularly as it may allude to a deeply fanciful notion that play is simply free, flexible and positive. As Sluckin (1981), who spent considerable time observing children in British schools, discovered, much of what goes on in the school playground is constrained and coerced by other children, therefore the idea of play being ‘free’ is something of a redundant concept in this instance.
Spurred by the need to fill this void, Burghardt (2011) engaged in a study of the many attempts to define and describe play, leading to the identification of a set of five criteria, that can be used to identify a behaviour as play.
Burghardt’s five criteria Criteria 1 Play is not fully functional in the form or context in which it is expressed.
Criteria 2 Play is spontaneous, voluntary, and/or pleasurable, and is likely done for its own sake.
Criteria 3 Play is incomplete, exaggerated, or precocious.
Criteria 4 Play is repeated but not in exactly the same way every time, as more serious behaviours are.
Criteria 5 Play is initiated when animals are well fed, healthy, and free from acute or chronic stressors.
While it should be noted that these criteria derive from Burghardt’s interest and expertise of non-human animal play, it can be said that the basic universal properties of ancient evolutionary processes transcend across species.
The purpose of play
Piaget (1962) played a critical role in the development of the view that play may be of crucial importance in a child’s cognitive development. He surmised that play was a way for a child to assimilate and make environmental stimuli match his or her own concepts, reflecting what the child has already learned. In a contrasting, yet somewhat parallel view connecting play to cognitive development, Soviet psychologist Vygotsky (1986) theorised play as a way of children not only practising what they already know, but also as a way of learning new things.
Meadows (2017, pp. 281–282) postulates the following as possible functions of play: arousal modulation, practising adult activities, allowing behavioural recombination and emotional social functions. You will explore this in more detail in this week’s essential reading.
Different forms of play
Burghardt (2011, p. 10) refers to a list of 12 types of play catalogued by Miller and Almon (2009) in kindergartens in the US. This list acts as a useful way of understanding the commonalities that underlie all play types: large-motor play, small-motor play, mastery play, rule-based play, construction play, make-believe play, symbolic play, language play, plating with the arts, sensory play, rough-and-tumble play and risk-taking play.
In the following video, highly credentialed child psychologist, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, explores different types of play and offers this compelling message: Letting tots learn through play is not only okay – it’s better than drilling academics. Please note this video is 64 minutes long.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D Einstein never used flashcards (2013)
- Chicago is at the forefront of child research
-As highlighted in the video with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, play cannot be discounted as useless. While further evidence is needed on cause and effect relationships between play and learning, research findings generally support the value of good quality play-based early years programs (Robertson, Morrisey & Rouse, 2018). It is believed these programs stimulate the development of socially competent learners who are equipped to face challenges and create solutions. It is often contended that learning and teaching through play is dependent upon the relationships that exist between children and with adults. The interactions that occur facilitate the exchange of ideas and thinking between children and adults. In play contexts, it drives children’s continued motivation and sustained interest in the experience and what they learn.
Play and learning
As highlighted in the video with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, play cannot be discounted as useless. While further evidence is needed on cause and effect relationships between play and learning, research findings generally support the value of good quality play-based early years programs (Robertson, Morrisey & Rouse, 2018). It is believed these programs stimulate the development of socially competent learners who are equipped to face challenges and create solutions. It is often contended that learning and teaching through play is dependent upon the relationships that exist between children and with adults. The interactions that occur facilitate the exchange of ideas and thinking between children and adults. In play contexts, it drives children’s continued motivation and sustained interest in the experience and what they learn.
In Chapter 11 Play (Links to an external site.) (Meadows, 2017, pp. 275–285) discusses the challenges associated with defining play, then delves into the theories of the causes and possible functions of play to provide you with an understanding of the development of play behaviours and the importance of play.
- children like many other young mammals spend a considerable amount of time and energy at play
- one view has been that although childrens play may be enjoyable to the participants and charming to fond parents observing it, it is essentially frivolous, a past time with no intrinsic consequences, which is grown out of without it having made much impact on development.
- at one extreme view was stiffened by a sterner judgement that frivolities should be discouraged in favour of useful activities, that children should play less and work or pray more.
- it seems to be common practice in our society to draw a distinction between work and play.
- the work/play distinction is conflated with the distinction between having to work and being free to do what one wished and play is seen as voluntary and not obligatory
- play is seen as free, absorbing, spontaneous, enjoyable, not serious and done for oneself, not for other people
Defining Play:
- dressing up in fancy clothes and pretending to be someone else is certainly play in the nursery classroom
- however there are certain characteristics which may see in prototype instances of play though more marginal instances may lack most of them
- it has been said to be free, outside ordinary life, not literal, not for profit, absorbing, spontaneous, voluntary, due to intrinsic motivation, refreshing, flexible, egilitarian, and showing positive affect.
- while a general tendency may be for instances of play to deserve these pleasant adjectives, to require them as constituents which must be present if something is to be called play is to pile up a very large number of problem instances.
- As Sluckin 1981 - has observed much of what goes on in the school playground is strongly constrained and coered by other children, ‘freedom’ is here, is a nebulous concept.
- play is not necessarily always functional either.
- Fagen 1981 - points out that animals take risks and incur injuries in play, this is all too evidenct in human beings.
- Sutton-Smith and Kelly-Byrne 1984 - give some rather shocking examples of their students ‘deep play’ to their examples of dangerous play arising from adolescentt bravado, one could easily add many other instances, including the statistics of injuries to young children from more innocent playgrround activities.
- a final characteristic found in many instances of play is the special quality or sstate of being which Csiksentmihalyi 1979 - calls flow. Flow involves a blissful involvement in what one is doing, a loss of self-consciouness, being carried away by the activity but simultaneously participating fully in it and not being out of control.
- an alternative to defining play by constructing lists of its essential characteristics, such as I have just discussed, is to construct taxonomics of different types of play behaviour.
- An early example is Piagets threefold scheme: practice play which involves repetition of actions with elaboration of means being more important than the ends served; symbolic play involving the manipulation of symbols; and games with rules
- Hutt 1979 distinguishes exploration and problem solving from play which is symbolic or rule-governer.
- rated play behaviour like other behaviour, on dimensions such as asocial participation; degree of childs involvment; number of operations, themes or skills involved; extent to which materils were used and apparent goals of the child, which did not reduce tidily to separate types of play.
- it should be noted, finally that play needs to be studied in the context of its ecological environment.
Theories of the causes of play:
- one strand of interest in theories of why play happens is the consideration of evolution and biological function
- class theories described play being for getting rid of surplus energy or for practising skills which will be needed later in life
- an early evolutionary theory of play, famous, pictureseuq, influential and total nonsense was G Stanley Halls recapitulation model
- Hall proposed that the successive stages of childrens play recapitulated the behaviour of their evolutionary ancestors. Babies enjoyed splashing about in the bath because their distant ancestors had been aquatic creatures splashing about the primeval slime. the preschool clid climbed, jumped, swung as monkey-like ancestors had done. the hide and seek games and gangs of older choldren recapitulated the hunter gatherer activiies of early man. team games recapitualted tribal conflicts, stamp collecting the ascendancy of capitalism. the model is historically crude, selective in the play it accounts for and strongly resembles Kiplings just so stories.
- Halls theory seems however to have rooted itself in common sense theories of play: adults general comments on childrens play and professionals evaluations of natural materials like same and water found in many preschool curricula often bear a recapitulartory resonance
- recapitulation theoies which identified a series of adults ancestral forms in the immature baby and child who develops beyond them, have been replaced by models which see human development as retarded, not as speeded up and extended.
- recent evolutionary accounts of play, use more sophisticated concepts of how evolutionary proecsses work together. They make the important point that the functions which play in young of a particular species now serves are not necessarily at all the same as the functions which similar behaviour served back in their evolutionary history.
Some possible functions of play:
Arousal Modulation:
- if there is not enough environmental stimulation to induce a moderate level of arousal in the child, they will play to increase arousal level. If the arousal level is high, if the child is anxious or over excited, play that stimulus seeking will cease and the child may turn to play which is calmibng and reduces arousal level
- obviously this theory of arousal is very general one which could apply to any sort of activity. the model is particularly appropriate for play however in so far as it is a largely voluntary activity.
- the getting over excited in play to which children often succumb is perhaps the concerse of this function of play - arousal must not get too far off balance if what Csiksentmihalyi calls flow to pbe preserved.
Practising Adult Activities:
- little girls play at making tea, washing up, putting their dolls to bed.
- play is said to be for developing behaviours and rehearsing roles which wiill be necessary for individual success for the survival and propagation of the species
- is this an explanation and function true - yes and no - human beings even more than other mammals have to learn complex sequences and patterns of behaviour which are not genetically programmed.
- the existence of play does serve the development of immensely complicated adult skills such as food gathering, keeping with the her and parenting, but play is not for these things.
- children are very subject to adult pressures, both implicit and explicit to play, properly and it is these that shape the content of their play, not an evolutionary plan.
Allowing Behavioural Recombination:
- play activities tend to occur most in the early stages of the behaviour systems invovled. They serve the mastery of complex behavious into the other systems and knowledge.
- behavioural and conceptual re-combinations may be sought deliberatlely and non playfully as in language games or certain teaching programmes for cognitive development.
Emotional and Social Functions of Play:
- a variety of emotional functions have been propsed for play, notably by Freud and his followers. they include wish fulfilment, anxiety reduction and mastering a traumatic event.
- whether play does reduce anxiety or induce catharsis has been hard to assess and no conclusions are possible on present evidence.
- play is often engaged with other poepl
- play can be engaged in unsuccessfully with less loss of face than engaging and failing tahn in a serious activity. even very young children seek social interaction and play with other children and those who lack play and social experience as children tend o have social difficulties as adults.
The development of Play behaviours:
- the development of the child is certainly involved in the changing patterns of play which we can observe from infancy to adulthood
- Garvey 1977 - describes how new skills, experience and knowldge become the resource or materials for play
- infants play with motion and in interaction with their caretakers, play with objects develps then play with language with social materials and peers and eventially play with rules.
- As Piaget 1962 - infants play with the movements they can make and the results of these movements
- traditional rhymes provide not only opportunities for contrasting movement but also linguistic and social information as in the rhyme dating back several hundred years
- infants come to play with objects in a more and more complex fashion.
- from the latter part of the first year onwards, play with objects becomes more liekly to involved the use of more than one object to show response to the charactistics and the normal function of the objects and to begin to involve pretence, for example that a doll can drink from an empty c.
- given the opportunity children enjoy with materials that allow them to make constructions
- they can also fit into indeed be done in order to serve, social and pretend play.
- if it is culturally acceptable, parents often get recruited to act as partners for young childrens play, enacting play versions of familiar routines or stories.
- early play with peers is very much dependent on the ability of at least one participant and preferable all to sustain a sequence of internaction, language skills and particpants theory of mind may contribute to this, be facilitated by it or both.
- scripts of playing house or superhero also provide a supporting structure for young childrens social play. much of such play is excruciatingly banal and stereotyped to the adult eye and ear and many commentators have been worried by it sexist and aggressive components but it seems to be very resistant to adult attempts to induce a new role of egalitarian sweettness and light.
- enthusiams for dressing up and play activites derived from superman or haryy potter would be an example.
- play with rules where the play depends on an externally fixed set of regualtions is usually seen as a late emergence in the development of childrens play though it could be related to the structured social routines of adult infant play.
- Piaget - play with rules centers on cooperating in order to compete rather than cooperating in order to assume.
- ther are marked variations between children in ways that they play, individual differences in termperament and perhaps intelligence are one source of variation; theecology of the play setting is another
On the importance of play:
- little conclusive evidence for the case that play is of unique importance.
- Lillard 2015 - do not show for certain that more play causes better problem solving, language, imagination or social adjustment. Children deprived of play who show impaired development have almost always been deprived of other things as well indeed trather severe deprivation is needed to stop play.
- play cannot be written off as useless, it is a source of enjoyment and pleasure and may hence make a positive contribution to the child emotional well-being. play provides opportunities for trying out skills and investigating the world. it may also be used to assess the childs development and through some therapies to enhance it.
Read Chapter 2 Defining and recognizing play (PDF 1.2 MB) Download Chapter 2 Defining and recognizing play (PDF 1.2 MB) (Burghardt, 2011, pp. 1–18) attempts to offer conceptual clarity around the notion of play by describing five criteria that can be used to identify behaviour as play and the functional levels as which play operates.
- in almost all fields of science there have been struggles with conceptualising the phemonmena that are or shoudl be studied
- generally a field settles sown to some rather agreed upon content but ther are always gray areas, borderlines or possible mislabeling
- those charged with teaching often have a limited undersanding of what play is and how it workds. no doubt partially due to deficits in their education as childhood educators and the play averse culture of many school systems around the world.
- the lay view that play is not serious and this not important to real education, is still all too common.
- but problem is deeper than this, there are problems with recognising behaviour as play if one applied limited or restrictive criteria to what is allowed as play.
- Pellegrini 2009 - oftern in the child development literature so much is considered play that the labbel loses meaning and this sciencific value
- in schools, turning memorising multiplication tables into a flash card game is usually not viewed as play by students.
- Miller and Almon 2009 - 12 types of play - large motor play, small motor play, mastery play, rule based play, construction play, make believe play, symbolic plya, language play, playing with the arts, sensory play, rough and tumble play and risk taking play.
- they are not mutually exclusive
- animal play is 3 categories - solitary locomoto/rotational play, object play, social play.
- Piagets assimilation vs accomodation distinction is the basis of his view, it seems but such a restriction on the realm of play does not accommodate rough and tumble play, climbing trees and other large motor play.
- Panksepp - joyous enthusiasm to engage playfully with others is most necessary means for the active construction of the social brain.
- Homeyer and Tomlinson - play is symbolic expression of their world
- Sorama nd Clements 2009 - important cognitive building blocks for inculcaring mathematical theinking
Bergen 2009 - goes farther and sees play as the building blacks for incipient scientist, engineers and maths, must be fun. - Lisa Barnett for play - cognitive, physical, social spontaneity, manifest, joy oand sense of humaor.
- Sattelmair and Ratty 2009 - physical exercise including vigorous play as potentially important to increase cognitive performance as well as reduce obesity. - self chosen and self directed, intrinsically motivated, strucuted by mental rules, imaginative, produced in an active alert but unstressed frame of mind.
Issues recognising play:
- positive effect is certainly easier to guage in humans
- non-literality is also problematics and seems more appropriate for make believe pla than sensory.
- Huizinga - play was voluntary, distinct from ordinary life, disinterested, and dependent on societal features or rules as well as transgression of the latter.
Indentification of 5 criteria for regonising play:
- the performance of the behaviour is not fully functional in the form or context in which it is expressed that is, it includes elements or is directed toward stimuli that do not contribute to current survival.
- recognising play that the behaviour is spntaneous, voluntary, intentional, pleasurable, rewarding, reinforceing or autotelic
- it differs from strictly functional expressions or behaviour structurally or temporarilly in at least one respect; incomplete, exaggerated, awkward, precocious or involves behaviour pattersn with modified form, sequencing or targeting
- that the behaviour is performed repeatedly in a similar but not rigidly stereotyped form during at least a portion of the animals onotgeny
- the behaviour is initiaed when an animal is adequatlely fed, clothes, ehalthy, and not under stress or intense competing systems.
- What does playful learning (Hirsh-Pasek, 2013) involve? (D)
A. Free play only
B. Pretend play only
C. Guided play only
D. Free play and guided play
- How many criteria of Burghardt’s have to be met for an activity to be labelled as “play”? (B)
A. 3
B. 5
C. 6
D. 8
- Which of the following is not play? (A)
A. A baby seeking for his bottle when he’s hungry.
B. A little girl having fun pretending to walk in high heels.
C. A rugby player playing for the sake of playing.
D. A toddler drawing long lines on the newly painted wall of his parents’ bedroom with muddy fingers.
- Which of the following is not suggested by the results of the study of Uhls et al. (2014)? (C)
A. The time the participants spent engaging with other children and adults face-to-face without any
reliance on screen-based devise seemed to make an important difference in nonverbal communication
skills.
B. Digital screen time, even when used for social interaction, could reduce time spent developing skills
in reading nonverbal cues of human emotion.
C. Preteens are the best time in development to learn nonverbal cues.
D. Nature activities could have caused the improvement in reading emotions communicated through
nonverbal cues.
DB
Free Play
Advantages Disadvantages
Increases the chance of open ended play Can become unsafe
Promotes children to play and interact with each other May not have any learning or developmental aspect to it
Allows children to have complete creative impact on their play Does not promote any language or cognitive development
Guided Play
Advantages Disadvantages
Due to the prepared environment, play will be influenced towards learning e.g. colours or numbers Closes off the idea to open ended play
Ensures that the set up/experience is safe Closes off the idea for children to become creative in their own way
Enhances children’s learning through meaningful play Experiences could become overwhelming for some children
