Definition of Play
Play is a jumbo category, a big umbrella term. Since so many different
actions, expressions, movements and thoughts are called play, a singular definition
of the construct is not possible. Play is easier to describe or to indicate by example.
Any definition of play is not true or false but useful or not useful for a given situation
or purpose, such as found in a specific research study or early childhood program.
A popular approach in early childhood education (ECE) research, policymaking, and practice is to characterize play as mental or physical activity that
possesses certain attributes. Many scholars have pointed out that in ECE an overt
action or expression is more likely to be called play if the expression meets the
additive criteria of possessing accumulating attributes commonly accepted as
reflecting play qualities. These include the following: playful thoughts and playful
activities are (a) accompanied by positive affect; (b) freely chosen; (c) under the
primary control of the young child; (d) are motivated by the play itself; (e) ones for
which the meaning is primarily determined by the young child; (f) nonliteral and
dynamic; (g) in need of relaxed circumstances or a less stressed mental frame; and
(h) reciprocally related; that is, play actions and play thoughts build on one another.
How ECE defines play has been informed by philosophy and the scientific
study of play. For example, Roger Callios in Man, Play and Games (1961/1958)
identifies vertigo, competition, mimicry and chance; he discusses these play forms
and their combinations along a gradient from freer (paidia) to more
controlled(ludus) play. Play is uncertain, rule bound, fictive, unproductive, free, and
separated from reality. Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens points out that play activity is
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voluntary, not serious but very absorbing, without material gain, rule-bound,
conducive to social belongingness, and framed from reality.
Philosophical views now also incorporate seeing the postmodern world at
play; play is not so much an escape but a response to life. The experience of
uncertainty, diversity, and change is dominant today and affects ECE. Play’s
quirkiness and flux, its nonlinear back-and-forth quality (Spiel, the German word for
play, also means “to dance”) is a kind of binary code in the software programs for
imagination, creativity, and problem-solving so crucial to meeting present day
challenges and future unknown realities(Johnson,2011).
As an example from science, Gordon Burghardt’s(2005) The Genesis of
Animal Play states that play behavior occurs when (1) the organism is safe, relaxed,
and free from extreme wants; (2) play is autolectic (i.e.,spontaneous, voluntary,
intentional, and often pleasurable or rewarding); (3) often observable as repeated
behavior; (4) not purposeless but also not entirely functional in the context
expressed; and (5) often exaggerated in expression and incomplete as final
functional elements are dropped. Although coming from biology with animal play in
mind, these five attributes resemble ones on lists more commonly deemed useful in
ECE.
Play Concepts in Early Childhood Education
ECE theory and praxis is concerned with a rather narrow subset of the wide
range of known play manifestations. Children’s play with their bodies, objects,
symbols, and others are considered in schemes used by researchers and teachers to
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account for it. For example, in ECE play that is solitary, parallel, or socially
interactive is often nested with physical, functional, constructive, dramatics, or
games-with-rules play forms to track both the (a) sociality of play and its (b)
cognitive form. Block and puzzle play (constructive), simply using toys (functional),
or enactments with dolls, puppets, or in dress-up clothes (dramatic) can occur when
the young child is alone (solitary), near another child playing similarly (parallel), or
in social commerce (interactive which can be merely associating or, on a higher
level, cooperating with peers).
School-sanctioned, academic or educational play is defined as play that is
teacher- initiated, -controlled, -paced, -terminated and -assessed for its educational
merit. Educational play is a planned part of the curriculum joining deliberate
investigations and expository teaching/receptive learning as pathways to
developmental enrichment in the classroom. Play purists question whether
educational play is genuinely play since it is not intrinsically motivated behavior but
motivated by the relationship children have with their teacher.
In contrast, everyday play is recreational, outside teachers’ influence; such
‘real play’ or ordinary play is more likely to happen during free play, recess or on the
playground, or when the child is at home. Such ordinary play can be cooperative,
competitive, illicit, defiant, even mildly or moderately gross, foul or mean-spirited.
To remain play, however, there must be reciprocity and respect between or among
persons. Accordingly, bullying cannot be defined as play; but superhero and power
play can be viewed as play since the aggression is not real but only thematic. In ECE
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a primary concern is with educational play (e.g. documenting classroom play) and a
secondary concern is with recreational play (e.g. advocating).
Developmental or age-related play is a major concern and target in ECE
programming and teaching. To simplify, infants engage in a great deal of
exploratory play and imitative play with objects-- either solitarily, or socially with
peers, or with caring parents or teachers. Toddlers enjoy much the same as infants,
many face- to- face playing with objects, doing finger-plays, singing and the like.
However, they are growing up and are exploring a wider world and showing
increasing autonomy in their play behavior. During the preschool years the children
continue to develop and are seen often building with blocks, using icons and
numbers and letters in computer play, and performing social pretense or dramatic
play or imaginative play with objects, or simple games with rules.
Both Jean Piaget(1962) and Lev Vygotsky(1978) provide arguments for the
importance of play in ECE. Piaget views play as assimilation (i.e.,bending reality to
fit pre-existing cognitive schemata) in complement to accommodation (i.e.,
modifying cognitive schemata in response to incoming information). Both
processes work in tandem to achieve adaptation. Accommodation generates new
learning, while assimilation integrates and makes it more meaningful.
In ECE when the child is imitating or exploring he or she is engaged more in
accommodative behavior than in assimilative behaviors. Imitating or exploring is
more stimulus-oriented, while playing is more response-oriented. In the former the
child is asking, “what is this?” but the playing child is asking “what can I do with
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this?” Often these behaviors form a pattern as the child examines, re-examines, and
transforms objects. Some ECE authorities refer to this as epistemic play
(investigative behaviors) and ludic play (pretense). Play is a dynamic state and
seldom are children exclusively playing for an extended period of time; there are
admixtures of play and non-play and play-like behaviors, such as imitation or
investigation or ‘work’, happening within a typical play period or episode.
Play and work can co-occur in a complementary and dynamic way. Play can
become work, and work can become play. But play is not the work of children
according to this line of reasoning. Play can be better viewed an occupation of
childhood, just as loving and feeling loved are important ways of the young child
being in the world. In addition, the opposite of play is not work; negation of the play
spirit produces or is caused by psychological depression. Depression is the opposite
of play.
Vygotsky views play as a way of self-scaffolding in the zone of proximal
development, enabling the child to perform ahead of oneself, which propels learning
and development. The teacher or an older or another child ‘play expert’ can also
scaffold a child’s play. To do this effectively the teacher or expert needs to recognize
the difference between the play frame and the play script, or the context (frame) and
the text (script) of play. What children do within the play frame is play enactment;
what they do outside the play frame often is play negotiations. While the former are
the actual play actions, the latter are discussions about the play, deciding which
roles each child will have, what props or substitute objects will be employed, and
where and when pretend or real actions will occur. Play facilitation strategies or
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interventions designed to enrich and extend complex social role play, for example,
demand recognition of the invisible boundary surrounding play, the magic circle of
play as it is sometimes called, from the actions and words that are taking place
outside this boundary; or play context affects the play text. Without the auxiliary
concepts of play frame and script, context and text, and play episode, an ECE teacher
or researcher cannot adequately observe, interpret and analyze children’s behaviors
to discern the meaning of children’s actions. These play concepts and terms are also
indispensible for description and commentary in play assessment and
documentation.
Play is potentially influential in the development of early symbolization, selfregulation, and social competence and in meeting mastery and control needs which
the young child cannot satisfy in reality. Some benefits are not a given but are a
function of the quality of the behavior. One major type of quality play is mature
role-play, which is a leading activity according to the theories of Vygotsky. To
explain, close emotional communications is the most consequential or leading
activity for the infant and toddler’s psychological development; after six years
mastering the disciplines of academic subjects is the leading activity for mental
development. The leading activity for preschoolers up to six years old is mature role
play since it is invaluable for constructing an understanding of the social world.
Mature role play is high level play in contrast to low level ‘immature role
play” marked by children’s quarrels over toys, restricted speech, over-reliance on
realistic toys, and short and erratic play episodes. Mature role play makes the child
appear a head taller than herself or himself. The following attributes are present:
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(a) there is an imagined situation; (b) the pretend situation follows implicit rules
from cultural scripts( e.g., enacting ‘grandma’ requires knowing and following social
norms about the role of grandma); (c) explicit roles, such as overt enactments of
self- and other- person transformations(e.g.,” I am Batman, and you be Robin”); (d)
object and situational transformations, as in the use of real objects or substitute or
invented or imagined objects or props for make-believe play, and use of language to
transform time and space ( e.g., “Let’s pretend it is in the middle of the night and we
are lost in the forest”); and (e) sustained play over time and even days in the same
play theme.
Here role-play is privileged as the leading activity from three- to six- years.
But one can extract from quality role play key features such as elaboration,
persistence, concentration, verbal interaction, social reciprocity and judge whether
they are present in other quality play, such as game play or constructive play. What
is important to take from this is that in ECE quality play is the aim, not just play.
Although defining quality play is difficult, such play usually reveals some planning,
social cooperation, and verbal elaboration.
Conclusion
Distinguishing play and play-like behaviors from other behaviors, and being
able to judge more mature or developed play from less developed or immature play,
are important skills to possess for accountability in ECE practices and policies.
Since play defies any simple straightforward definition, the field grapples with the
notion of play by delineating its attributes, types, development trajectories,
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potential benefits, and criteria for quality play. By having within one’s professional
working vocabulary a clear understanding of the play concept, and its auxiliary
concepts (e.g. frame, episode, negotiation, enactment, exploration, imitation, etc.),
the ECE practitioner can more effectively engage in intelligent conversations about
play with colleagues, administrators, policy-makers, and parents. Play advocacy,
play assessment, and play documentation also requires a good dictionary as a
conceptual base-- all of which can help restore and sustain play’s importance in the
field.
FURTHER READINGS
Burghardt, G. (2005). The genesis of animal play: Testing the limits.
Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play, and games. New York: The Free Press(original
work published in 1958)
Huizinga, J. (1955). Humo Ludens: A study of the play-element in civilization.
Boston: Beacon. (Original work published in 1938).
Johnson, J. (2011). Play and creativity: A spiritual matter. Play, policy, &
practice CONNECTION 13(1), 6-9.
Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: W.W.
Norton. (original work published in 1951 entitled The formation of the symbol in
children: Imitation, play, dreams, images, and representations).
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
James E. Johnson, The Pennsylvania State University
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