PLAY AND LITERACY LEARNING IN ONE URBAN
EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOM
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of
The Ohio State University
By
Kimberly Keller Miller, B.S., M.Ed.
*****
The Ohio State University
2007
Dissertation Committee
Approved by
Professor Brian W. Edmiston, Adviser
Professor Laurie Katz
Professor Christine Warner
________________________
Adviser
College of Education &
Human Ecology
Copyright
Kimberly Keller Miller
2007
ABSTRACT
This study explored how in the imagined spaces of pretend play,
children and adults together engaged in literacy practices. Specifically, this
study sought to find out:
1. When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities
for children to learn literacy practices?
2. When teachers play with children:
•
How can teachers mediate literacy learning?
•
How do children mediate their own literacy learning?
In order to collect data with breadth as well as depth an ethnographic
approach was employed where I attempted to gain a comprehensive view of
the social interactions, behaviors and beliefs of this primary classroom over a
period of ten months (Moss, 1992). Utilizing an ethnographic approach
meant that the results were not predetermined by a hypothesis, but rather
were uncovered through what actually happened in the classroom.
Participant observation and prolonged engagement were used to ensure
continual reflection and collaboration with teachers and children in the daily
life of the classroom. Multiple sources of data were gathered (e.g. field notes,
ii
audio taping, informal interviews and document analysis), and used to
triangulate the data and build trustworthiness. The research process was
systemic but used multiple, nonstandard and recursive methods. I engaged
in a recursive and cyclical process of research; selecting modes of inquiry and
questions, collecting and recording data, analyzing and interpreting data
continuously throughout the study.
Over the course of the study I identified that pretend play creates
zones of proximal development. During pretend play, children engage in the
following literacy practices
1. Children created/co-created artifacts for themselves and others that
were relevant in pretend play worlds and which were then
subsequently used in literacy events.
2. Children positioned themselves and each other in pretend play
stories as literacy users.
3. As they played, the children composed fictional stories that
included people from their lives, characters they encountered in
stories from books and other media, and characters they had
pretended to be as they played.
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4. Children retold stories about their experiences in play both orally
and in writing. The children orally retold stories during peer
conversations and during structured instructional time, such as
center work time and also during sharing time at morning meeting.
In addition, the children retold stories during both writer’s
workshop and journal writing.
When I played the children, we engaged in some of the same literacy
practices but we were able to extend those practices as we shifted from the
imagined space in an imagined authoring space. In an imagined authoring
space, with my assistance the children were able to use literacy beyond the
decontextualized skills of the everyday classroom.
iv
Dedicated
First to all of the children I have played with in the past, particularly the
children of Room 11,
Second to all those I will play with in the future
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Pursuing this degree has been a long, difficult, and sometime enjoyable
task. I could have never accomplished this project alone and there are many
people to thank who have helped me along the way. I hope that I remember
everyone.
First of all, I would like to sincerely thank my adviser, Dr. Brian
Edmiston. Brian, you have always been there with a kind word of support, a
piece of advice and a cup of tea. Your influence has helped me make meaning
of the world and our important role in the lives of children. Thanks for being
my teacher, colleague and most of all, my friend. I would also like to thank
Dr. Rebecca Kantor, Dr. Laurie Katz, and Dr. Christine Warner who helped
me throughout the doctoral process. Rebecca thanks for taking time to meet
with me when Brian was out of the country – meeting with you helped me in
so many ways. Laurie, I want to thank you for the time you took to read
those first awful chapters, give feedback and share your insight into the
scholarly process. Your guidance has been invaluable and made many of my
decisions easier. Cris, I couldn’t have made it through my general exams
without you. Meeting for breakfast or lunch and talking it through helped
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me in more ways than I can say. Additional thanks go to Dr. Cheri Williams
at the University of Cincinnati. Cheri, thank you for starting me on the path
to this degree. Special thanks goes to fellow graduate student Samara
Madrid who always encouraged me to keep on writing and living. The many
times we shared a cup of coffee or a glass of wine was just what I needed.
Samara, remember chapter 5!
I cannot thank Mrs. N. /Millie enough for sharing her classroom over
two school years. Your humor, wit, and intelligence made this study what it
is. Thanks for playing! I would also like to thank the children of room 11 at
Fairchild Elementary School. The children showed me that I have so much to
learn about the world. Their determination and love of learning made this
study so much easier and reminded me time and again why I am a teacher
and why I love to play.
I would like to thank friends and family who have supported me over
the last five years. To my best friend, Kelly, thanks for being at the other
end of the phone – laughing, crying and complaining with and to you helped
me make it through the day. Kimberly, thanks for sending me all those cards
you seemed to know just when I needed to get one. To my mom, who has
been my role model my entire life, she is the strongest woman I have ever
vii
known. Special thanks go to my children, John and Mara. I know all the
time I spent writing my dissertation up in my office was not much fun for
you. You both have been so helpful when I needed you to be. Well it’s done
now. Let’s have some fun!
Finally, a heartfelt thanks goes to my husband Rob, for all the
sacrifices he’s made to make this degree a reality. There’s no way I could
have done this without his constant encouragement and unwavering love.
This journey has been a part of our lives forever and I couldn’t have traveled
so far without you. We earned this degree together.
viii
VITA
Born…………………………April 25, 1960
1982…………………………B.S. Special Education, Ohio University
1983…………………………M.Ed. Special Education, University of Cincinnati
1983-1998………………….Teacher, Fairfield City Schools, Fairfield, Ohio
1998-1999………………… Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant,
University of Cincinnati
1999-2000………………….Teacher, Fairfield City Schools, Fairfield, Ohio
2001…………………………Teacher, Nisonger Center, OSU
2001-2002…………………..Teacher, Buckeye Valley Schools, Ashley, Ohio
2002-2005…………………..Graduate Teaching Assistant, OSU
2006-2007…………………..Adjunct Professor, OSU, Newark, Ohio
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Education
Studies in Drama as Inquiry, Emergent Literacy, and Sociocultural Theory
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract…………………………………………………………………
Dedication………………………………………………………………
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………
Vita………………………………………………………………………
List of Tables…………………………………………………………..
List of Figures………………………………………………………….
ii
v
vi
ix
xiii
xiv
Chapters
1. Introduction……………………………………………………….. 1
A Problematic Dialogue………………………………………..
Key Terms……………………………………………………
A New Framework………………………………………………
Guiding Questions………………………………………………
Research Design…………………………………………………
Why is this Study Significant…………………………………
Overview of the Study………………………………………….
3
10
16
23
24
25
26
2. Review of the Literature………………………………………… 29
Introduction.…………………………………………………….
Sociocultural Perspective: Literacy Practices and Literacy
Learning…………………………………………..………….
Sociocultural Perspective: Pretend Play and Literacy
Learning……………………………………………………………
Educational Drama: Pretend Play and Literacy Learning…
Poststructural Theory and Pretend Play…………….……….
Sociocultural and Poststructural Perspective: Adult as
mediator……………..…………………………………………...
Summary………………………..………………………………..
x
29
30
34
51
57
61
67
3. Research Methodology……………………………………….
70
Introduction …………………………………………………
Design of the study …………………………………………
Context of the Classroom………………………………….
School’s philosophy ………………………………………
Description of Setting/Participants ……………………
The children……………………………………………….
The focus children………………………………………..
The teacher………………………………………………..
Classroom schedule ………………………………………
My position as a participant-observer …………………
Researcher’s subjectivity………………..………………
Establishing Trustworthiness………………………….
Ethical Considerations…………………………………..
Data collection procedures …………………………………
Analysis of data……………………………………………...
Peer Debriefer……………………………………………..
Writing Dissertation Study……………………………..
70
71
74
74
74
76
76
79
81
82
85
85
85
88
93
96
96
4. FINDINGS I: Agency in Pretend Play …………………
Introduction…………………………………………………..
Focus children…………….……………………………….
Description of focus children……………………………
Literacy Practices in Pretend Play Events…………..
Engaging in literacy practice in pretend play……
A contradiction between the everyday space and
imagined spaces………………….……………………..
A leader in imagined spaces…………….…………..
The power of imagined spaces………………………
Writing about play………………………………………..
Using literacy in play with boys and to become a boy.
Resisting everyday positionings in imagined spaces.
Powerful female characters…………………………....
Playing before writing.…..…………………………….
Summary: How pretend play creates opportunities
for using literacy practices……………………………….
xi
98
98
100
102
105
107
109
111
112
115
119
120
122
123
129
5. FINDING II: Mediating Literacy Learning in Imagined
Spaces………………………………………………………………. 135
Introduction…………………………………………………….
My entries into play………………………………………..
Children and Adults Playing Together When Using
Drama…………………………………………………………..
Mediating Literacy Practices within the Zoo Drama…
The socially imagined space of the drama……………..
We begin to create an imagined zoo world……………
A negotiated imagined space……………………………
Adult moves of mediation……………………………….
The blueprints: a negotiated literacy practice……….
All four mediation moves together…………………….
Adult and children together making mediational
moves………………………………………………………
Children mediating their own learning………………
Unexpected leaders………………………………………
Summary: The Mediation of literacy Practices in Pretend
Play…………………………………………………………...
Relevant and Useful Artifact Created in Imagined
Spaces……………………………………………………..
Positioning the Children as Expert Users of Literacy……...
Literacy Texts: Non-fiction Reports………………….
Retelling Imagined Experiences……………………...
135
137
142
143
145
145
146
147
152
153
156
160
163
166
167
167
169
170
6. Conclusions and Implications
Introduction………………………………………………….
Discussion of Findings in Chapter 4…………………..
Discussion of Findings in Chapter 5…………………..
Implications……………………………………………….
Implications: Why children should have the
opportunity to play……………………………………
Adult-child play: Teaching implications…………..
Limitations……………………………………………….
Future research……………………………………………..
Conclusions………………………………………………
List of References…………………………………………………….
xii
172
174
178
180
181
182
185
186
190
195
LIST OF TABLES
Table
Page
3.1
Core Children and Play Partners…………………
78
3.2
Notetaking/Notemaking…………….…..…………
90
3.3
Timeline of the Study…..…..……………………
92
4.1
Focus children and play partners……………..
101
5.1
Mediation moves in pretend play……………..
148
xiii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
Page
2.1
Three sociocultural spaces of play…………………………… 56
4.1
Guy’s map…………………………………………………….
114
4.2
Guy’s story – The Witch’s Dream…………………………
116
4.3
Guy’s writing about a map………………………………….
117
4.4
Gloria piece about camping…………………………………
124
5.1
Revisiting three sociocultural spaces of play……………
137
5.2
Lions on a grassy plain…………………………………….
158
xiv
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This ethnographic study is written as documentation of my ten-month
journey with a group of 24 kindergarten/first grade children and their
classroom teacher, Millie or Mrs. N.1. Play and Literacy Learning in One
Urban Early Childhood Classroom circles around the connections between
pretend play2 and literacy learning. In this study, I show how pretend play
created pedagogical contexts for literacy learning as participants were
engaged in meaningful social and cultural interactions.
During the period of this study, the children played together in pretend
worlds and I often joined in to play alongside the children. On occasions, the
classroom teacher also joined in. In this study, I link pretend play with
literacy practices and literacy learning. I show how when playing the
children appropriated the subject positions of individuals using literacy
within imagined contexts. When playing, the children were able to create
situations in which they read and wrote in contexts that were meaningful to
them. Within these imagined contexts both children and adults were released
1
2
All of the names in this dissertation are pseudonyms.
I use the terms pretend play and play synonymously throughout this study
1
from the constraints of standardized benchmarks, the prescribed curriculum,
and the everyday requirements of their kindergarten/first grade classroom.
Play and its relationship to literacy development has been the focus of
several studies (Christie, 1990; Morrow & Rand, 1991; Neuman & Roskos,
1991; Kendrick, 2003). Recently research has also indicated that play
provides a context that encourages children to be active constructors of their
own development (Berk & Winsler, 1995). Little attention however has been
paid to how the literacy practices embedded within children’s pretend play is
socially situated literacy practice (Street, 1984). Further, there are only a
handful of studies that focus on adult participation and mediation in pretend
play and how that participation contributes to young children’s literacy
learning (Kelly-Byrne, 1989; Hall, 2000; Gallas, 2003; Kendrick, 2003;
Edmiston, 2008).
The major focus of this ethnographic study is how literacy as social
practice and literacy learning is embedded within children’s pretend play.
Given the educational, pedagogical, and critical importance assigned to
pretend play in this study, it is important to determine how adults who play
with children successfully mediate children’s literacy learning. In this study
I examine how adults could utilize opportunities in pretend play to initiate
classroom drama that could enhance and extend the children’s learning of
literacy practices.
2
Problematic Dialogue
I have had an interest in children’s play and its connections to literacy
learning for many years. Over those years, my beliefs about children’s play
and its relationship to literacy learning as a pedagogical context have
evolved. To set up the theoretical framework of this study I write about an
episode from early in my teaching career that illustrates my initial
pedagogical beliefs about the role of play in learning. Through my
interactions during this episode I demonstrate underlying assumptions that
frame my early beliefs about the relationship between play, literacy and
literacy learning. Later in the chapter I provide a glimpse from an episode
that occurred during this dissertation study to illustrate changes in my
pedagogical beliefs of the connections between play, literacy practices and
literacy learning.
To offset the narratives of my teaching and learning practices from the
past and the narratives of data throughout this study, I use italics as a
writing convention. This convention not only gives clarity to the teaching and
learning episodes that happened in the course of everyday classroom life but
the italics also denote the dynamic quality to my teaching beliefs and
practices. In using this writing convention I want to demonstrate how I
constantly engaged in interactions with others in a struggle to create
meaning.
3
I believe it is important to note that many of the pedagogical ideas I
held earlier in my teaching career are still prevalent in classrooms today.
Given this reality as I reflect back on my past practice, this introduction
serves to not only denote underlying theories influencing early childhood
classrooms but to emphasize the struggle I undertook as I attempted to
establish the theoretical framework for this dissertation.
The struggle begins
It’s late spring in 1991 and the first and second grade children that I
teach are returning to class after recess. Out on the playground I noticed a
group of five or six children pretending to be pirates where they were “walking
the plank, searching the shore for buried treasure and dueling with swords”.
A couple of the boys return to the classroom and grab some paper and string to
create “eye patches” to continue their adventure on the high seas. I say to the
boys, “Okay guys, you know it’s time to stop playing and get back to work.
We’re going to begin our writing lesson.”
Reflecting back on this episode it is clear I assumed that “pretending to
be pirates” was not an appropriate instructional activity due to many
assumptions I held surrounding the distinction between play and work. It is
clear from the episode above that I considered young children playing
“developmentally appropriate” (Neuman & Roskos, 2000). I considered play
the binary opposite of work. I viewed pretend play in terms of what it was
4
not - play was not serious, play was not important, play was not valid, and,
most importantly, play was not work, (Schwartzman, 1991).
I viewed pretend play as unimportant therefore literacy learning could
not occur within pretend play. Literacy learning could not happen unless a
teacher was teaching literacy skills and students were learning literacy
skills. Not only did I view pretend play as the binary opposite of work, I
believed teacher-directed literacy work had a higher status than that of any
literacy or literacy learning found in children’s pretend play. The underlying
assumptions central to my practice was that work was important and pretend
play was frivolous (Schwartzman, 1991).
Evident in the statement, “Okay guys, you know it’s time to stop
playing and get back to work.” I advocated an assumption germane to
maturation theory. According to maturation theory as children mature
(Gesell, 1925; Morrow, 1997) they no longer need time to play and pretend. I
believed children of six and seven would be mature enough to understand
that teachers need to teach in order for children to learn to read and write
(Hall, 1991).
The struggle continues
One of the boys, Billy protests, saying, “Mrs. Miller, we need the eye
patches so we can write as pirates!” I respond to him, “But we are not writing
as pirates today. Right now we are continuing our writing lesson from
5
yesterday, maybe later I will get out some of our math games.” He frowns and
quietly goes back to his seat.
The play/work dichotomy continued to be evident in my exchange with
Billy. In my statement: “But we are not writing as pirates today. Right now
we are continuing our writing lesson from yesterday. Maybe later I will get
out some of our math games.” I advocated the assumption that writing while
pretending, was a “not adult” activity that occurs only in the domain of
“childhood” (Edmiston, 2008, p. 10). I signaled to him and to all of the
children that while I valued play I really only valued the play considered
adult-like, productive and serious - the play that occurred in games with
rules. An assumption set in two related theories, developmental and
constructivist theory.
Developmentalists regard play as important when it is functional or
when play is seen as preparation for the work of adult life (Groos, 1922;
Erikson, 1958, Piaget, 1962). I perceived children writing as pirates not a
skill to prepare them for adulthood. As their teacher, I believed it was more
important for them to follow the prescribed curriculum and continue the
writing they began earlier that would lead to conventional literacy.
I uncritically accepted developmental theory. I believed that as
children played within their environment they developed cognitively,
physically, emotionally, morally and socially through a sequence of
predetermined developmental stages (Piaget, 1962; Smilansky, 1968).
6
Writing while pretending to be pirates did not fit into my understanding of
where these first and second grade children should be according to their
developmental stage. Children in first and second grade should be less
interested in pretending and writing as pirates and more interested in
playing games or organized sports.
Assumptions from constructivist theory, also, played a part in calling a
halt to play that day. Based on the theories and empirical research of Jean
Piaget (1962), constructivists like developmentalists believe that children go
through stages of development as they learn. While constructivists believe
children’s play has a major role in their development, they regard games with
rules a higher cognitive form of play than pretending.
The struggle intensifies
As Billy quietly went back to his seat, I explain to the class that
everyone needs to write a description of something. I ended the explanation
with the directions, “Remember all good writing has a beginning, middle and
end”. Kelly, a girl in the group of children pretending to be pirates on the
playground, raises her hand and says excitedly, “Mrs. Miller, why couldn’t
Billy write a description of the buried treasure or the pirate ship? It could
have a beginning, middle and end. I could help him. I know we could write it
together.” I respond to the whole class. “What a great idea maybe later you
and Billy can write about that during free writing. But right now I need
everyone to get back to work and write your own description of a favorite place.
7
Try describing your bedroom, your backyard or a place you have been many
times. Remember yesterday when we wrote the description of our school. Use
yesterday’s story as a model – it is up here on the chart paper.” Kelly sits
down and gets out a piece of paper to start her description.
As I continued and included other children in my instruction, I further
displayed my reliance upon constructivist theory. I believed that the
children’s writing needed to be about a concrete place or object from their
everyday world not something from their pretend or imagined world. Their
writing needed to be expressive of their thinking and match their “current”
stage of development. From my instruction it was obvious that I believed
that the children describing a “pretend” pirate ship or “imaginary” buried
treasure was overwhelming or perhaps difficult.
Piaget (1962) believed that children of six, seven, and eight think
concretely not abstractly. Writing as if they were pirates was appropriate for
free writing but not during valuable instructional time. Also, evident in my
response to Kelly’s request to write a description with Billy was the idea that
literacy learning should occur in individual children before it occurs among
children. Illustrating another tenet of constructivist theory that children
learn like “lone scientists” or in this case “lone writers” exploring their
environment (Piaget, 1975).
Not only did I have a constructivist view of play but also the above
teaching episode demonstrated that I viewed literacy as a neutral object to be
8
studied and mastered, a set of decontextualized skills that had little
semblance to literacy used for everyday purposes (Street, 2000). This was in
contradiction to the children who were attempting to use literacy practices
within an imagined world of pirates.
Hall (2000) argues that “children’s play, like everyday literacy
practices, draws meanings from being situated within cultural histories,
values and practices and thus generates engagement, involves networks, and
is consistently related to the everyday lives of people in their communities”
(p. 194). In other words, when children play they create parallel, pretend
worlds from stories they know, their personal histories, things they see in
their neighborhood, on television or hear in books. As children play, they
engage with, interact to and rely on one another. This is evident above when
Kelly and Billy attempt to use literacy to describe something from an
imaginary world of pirates.
The children’s use of literacy practices and my definition of literacy
skills did not correspond. I was attempting to teach from what Street (1984)
refers to as an autonomous model of literacy where literacy skills are
experienced through exercises that focus on narrow aspects of literacy and
are treated as ends in themselves. The children’s actions could be
interpreted as utilizing literacy practices from an ideological model of
literacy, literacy that occurs in everyday life.
9
Street (1984) characterizes the ideological model of literacy as literacy
that draws its meaning and use from being situated within cultural values
and practices. For children this means literacy was meaningful and useful
not only in the classroom but out on the playground and on buses, at home,
the library, stores and other places in the community. Children witness and
learn about literacy practices during everyday interactions with their
parents, caregivers, siblings and friends. Children learn that literacy
practices are important in their everyday lives and incorporate what they
know about literacy practices into their play worlds (Gregory, Long & Volk,
2005).
Finally, I gave the children little choice over the activities they could
do when I told them it was time to get back to work. I indicated to Kelly that
she had a great idea and it was okay to write as pirates during her free
writing time but it was not okay to use valuable instructional time to write as
pirates. Kelly and Billy accepted this and “took up” the position of compliant
students (Fernie, Davies, Kantor & McMurray, 1993), when they followed my
directions and began to do what I regarded as “work”.
Key Terms
I use key terms that are important to the theoretical framework of this
study.
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Play
For this study, I use the term play to mean pretend play or
make-believe play. I view play as enjoyable, pleasurable, and
spontaneously voluntary activities (Garvey, 1990). Play is active. Play
takes place whenever a child or an adult utters the phrase “Let’s
pretend” or asks “I wonder what would happen if…” and then enables
that imagined possibility.
Play is social. In this sense play is socio-dramatic play
(Smilansky, 1962). When we play, we imagine or pretend we are
different people, animals, and other sorts of creatures interacting in
different worlds. Play takes place in socially negotiated imagined
spaces. Play enables children to collaboratively imagine and actively
carry out activities that they could not do on their own. Play creates
contexts where children engage in events and practices that in
everyday life are usually reserved for adults or older children.
Bruner, et al. (1986) stressed that the, “main characteristic of
play – whether of child or adult – is not its content but its mode. Play
is an approach to action, not a form of activity” (p. v). In other words,
playing can be conceptualized as an attitude toward activities that
adults can adopt alongside of children.
My definition of play is also rooted in the socio-historicalcultural theories of Vygotsky (1966). For Vygotsky, play is imagination
11
in action and the converse is true, imagination is “play without action”
(p. 539). In other words, when a child or an adult imagines then he or
she is playing. When children play, imagination and the actions they
take are inseparable. When children wish, they carry out their wishes
and when they think of actions they act upon their thoughts (p. 550).
Vygotsky maintains that this playful attitude creates a “zone of
proximal development.” The zone of proximal development is the
space between what children can do on their own and what children
can do with support from a more capable other (Vygotsky, 1966; 1978).
For Vygotsky, all imaginative play involves following the social
rules of an imagined situation (Vygotsky, 1967) . When children play
part of the use of their imaginations is to follow social rules which are
sometimes explicit but often implicit. Rules are implicit because they
come directly from the imagined context. Rules also are not
formulated in advance, but stem from the imagined space. The
imagined space of play leads children to abide closely to everyday
rules, for instance what the imagined characters are able to do and not
able to do in relationship to other imagined characters during play.
Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain (1998) extend Vygotsky’s ideas
stating that “play, more than in other human activity, aspects of the
natural world, and by extension, of social world that have come to
seem natural are suspended and made subject to pretense” (p. 236). In
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other words, play defers to what may be unreachable or beyond a child
or children’s capabilities in the everyday world and becomes attainable
or possible in pretend worlds.
Literacy
For this study, literacy is defined as a set of socially situated
and culturally organized practices (Street 1984, 1995, 2003) where
people use and choose a culturally relevant symbol system in context
(Barton, 1994; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Barton, Hamilton & Ivanic,
2000). There are many forms of literacy all linked to different domains
or spaces of practice (Scribner & Cole, 1981). Literacy is not a neutral
skill. Literacy texts are composed or comprehended in literacy events
(Heath, 1983). Literacy practices can only be understood across the
context in which literacy is used. The context can be an imagined
situation as well as an everyday one. For example, when children play
they can create and use written texts such as maps, diagrams, lists,
cookbooks, written directions, etc as they pretend to be other people,
characters or creatures during imagined events or space for literacy
practices.
Everyday space
An everyday space is the social space where children and adults
interact and react to one another as they do in day-to-day contexts like
classrooms.
13
Imagined space
An imagined space is a space where children and adults interact
and react to one another as if they are other people, animals or other
sorts of creatures in imaginary contexts (Edmiston, 2008).
Literacy learning
Literacy learning occurs through adult-child or child-child
interactions (Vygotsky, 1978) where the children create and use
written texts to expand or explain the context of everyday or imagined
events (Gregory, Long and Volk, 2005). All people, including children,
learn literacy practices over time and across literacy events as they
read and write for particular purposes in particular social situations
while participating as members of communities that use literacy
(Wenger, 1998).
Drama
Drama is the use of pretend play for curricular ends that is
shaped to create some dramatic form (Edmiston, 2008). Drama can
refer to drama in education, educational drama, and process drama.
On occasion, the children in this study also took up expert positions as
they pretended to be experts (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995) in which the
experts used literacy practices.
14
Agency
Agency is having access to subject positions and choosing to
position oneself in different ways. Children use agency to make
choices, speak and be heard. Access to different subject positions
allows children to author multiple meanings in any given situation and
also allows a child to choose his or her actions among many
possibilities from whatever interests them by drawing on cultural
resources (Davies, 1991). For example, during play, children have
agency because they can choose to be whatever character they want to
be (Edmiston, 2008).
Subject positions
Subject positions are the positions people act from repeatedly;
for example, a young boy acts from the position of a boy as opposed to a
girl - from the position of a child as opposed to an adult, etc. When
people “take up” subject positions they accept, reject or negotiate
culturally determined narratives of, for example, what it means to be
“a girl” (Davies & Harre, 1990).
Positioning
As people interact they position themselves and one another.
Positioning is the discursive process whereby selves are located in
conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in
jointly produced narratives. (Davies & Harre, 1990). Children and
15
adults position each other s they interact in everyday spaces and
imagined spaces
Expert Positioning
When children and adults play they can position each other as if
they are experts.
A New Framework
This ethnographic study is grounded by a new direction in my
pedagogical and theoretical understanding. This new direction embraces
sociocultural 3(Vygotsky, 1966; 1978) and poststructural (Davies & Harre,
1990) perspectives to understand the literacy learning that took place in one
kindergarten/first grade classroom. This framework emphasizes a
sociocultural relationship between play and literacy learning and the
processes of social interaction rather than individuals’ cognitive development.
I learned over the course of the study how language use affected the
classroom community in terms of literacy use. The children’s uses of
language, both oral and written, in imagined spaces, along with my uses of
language in interaction with them shaped the children’ literacy practices..
The children’s literacy learning happened as part of their, and our,
pretend play interactions because learning during play could not be
separated from its social context. Their literacy knowledge was created as a
3. The terms sociocultural, socioconstructivist, social constructivist, cultural historical activity theory which
are all based in the theories of Vygotsky (1966, 1978) are broadly interchangeable terms. See for example,
Dyson, 1989,1993, 1997, 2003; Gallas, 2003; Kendrick, 2003.
16
social and collaborative process effort often with the support of an adult
(Vygotsky, 1978; Moll & Whitmore, 1993).
The children acquired socially situated literacy knowledge, skills and
attitudes through interactions with more capable and experienced persons
(Vygotsky, 1966; 1978). Interactions in both the everyday and the
imaginative spheres with more capable others created for children a zone of
proximal development (ZPD) in which they went beyond their current level of
understanding. Vygotsky (1978) defined the ZPD as “ the distance between
actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving
and the level of potential development as determined through problem
solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p.
86). In terms of literacy learning the children engaged in literacy practices
when they played that they could not or did not do when the classroom
teacher assigned tasks or tested skills.
Brostrom (1999) argued that during play activities, children often go
beyond the present context and not only appropriate the social surrounding
world but also make unexpected creative changes to it. Through these
activities he maintained children acquire new knowledge, skills and actions.
Engestrom (1987) called this kind of activity, learning by expanding. It’s as if
learning was a “voyage through the zone of proximal development” (p. 175).
In other words, playing children do not just learn information about the
current context but expand their knowledge about and beyond the context.
17
As I analyzed through a poststructural lens, I began to question the
children’s understanding of their social worlds, their place in those worlds
and how those worlds were discursively constructed and reconstructed
(Davies & Harre, 1990). Children discursively constructed and took up
subject positions. “A subject position incorporates both a conceptual
repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those
who use that repertoire” (p. 89).
Given the sociocultural and poststructural frameworks guiding this
study, I would invite readers to enter into a dialogue with me as I struggle
with questions about play and its importance in learning literacy. Most
importantly, I want to discuss pretend play’s significance as adults play with
and position children and how as fellow players, adults may mediate the
learning of literacy practices.
A new dialogue begins
I observe CJ and Abby playing in the loft play area, an area with
materials used in pretend play. The children are pretending to be medical
personnel using stethoscopes and syringes. I pretend to be a patient. I enter
the “hospital” and tell CJ and Abby that I am not feeling well. Both CJ and
Abby come over to me and CJ asks, “What’s wrong Kim?” Looking at me as I
pretend, Abby says, “Oh you’re playing with us.” I say as myself “That’s
right.” I then position myself as a “sick patient, “My head hurts and my heart
is beating fast.”
18
(Field notes – May 26, 2005)
My current theoretical framework about teaching and learning was
evident in this exchange. Because I now understand the importance of
adults playing with children I negotiated my entry into their play. Initially
the children did not realize that I was playing with them, which was evident
in CJ’s statement – “What’s wrong, Kim?” I did not even have to respond to
the question before Abby realized that I was playing with them and stated:
“Oh, you’re playing with us.” I simply confirmed her statement out of
character and continued to play.
The dialogue continues
CJ says, “Oh I see. Why don’t you lie down over here?” I respond, “Are
you going to take my temperature?” CJ directs me to some pillows and
pretends to put the thermometer in my mouth. Taking the thermometer back,
CJ says excitedly. “Wow! Your temperature is 103*!” I respond, “Is that
high? What are you going to do, Doctor? Oh and by the way, could you write
this information down so I can show my boss that I was sick when I go back to
work.” Hearing this Abby goes and gets a clipboard, paper and a pencil. She
walks back over to me, puts her hand on my forehead and says, “I want you to
try a medicine.” She “gives” me a shot and writes something down on the
paper. She rips the paper, hands it to me and says, “Here is a prescription for
the medicine.” CJ uses a stethoscope, listens to my heart and says, “It is
beating really fast. I’ll write that down.”
19
(Field notes – May 26, 2005)
As an adult I did not stand outside the children’s play and direct the
action, occasionally acknowledging the children’s playful literacy attempts by
commenting positively about them (Roskos & Neuman, 1993). Instead, where
possible, I imagined alongside the children in any pretend play context or
imagined space. For example, I joined as Abby and CJ pretended to be
doctors; I joined in as they played.
I positioned the children with more authority. Later in the study I,
positioned the children as if they were experts (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995),
for example by entering their play as a patient rather than as a fellow health
care provider. My interactions positioned the children as if they were
knowledgeable health care providers.
This positioning also encouraged the
children to explore possible literacy identities that Kendrick (2003) defined as
how people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship
is constructed across space and time, and how people understand their
possibilities for the future.
During this study I observed children’s literacy identities forming in
relationship to others as children were positioned in social interactions and
as they participated in various literacy practices. The children participated
in literacy practice in pretend play beyond what they were capable of in the
everyday classroom. For example, in an early conversation with Mrs. N, she
stated, “the children do some of their best work when they play and they stay
20
committed to tasks in play longer than they do when I have them do
something for me.” (Field notes, conversation with Mrs. N., December 1,
2005).
In an imagined space of doctors and patients, Abby and Craig knew
some of the literacy practices of doctors. This was evident in their contextual
and spontaneous responses to my requests and questions. Abby and Craig’s
knowledge about the subject position of doctor as they pretended to be doctors
determined how they were going to act and thus what literacy practices they
could or would use.
As I positioned the children as doctors I attempted to mediate their
literacy learning by requesting a written excuse for my job. Both children
who responded to this request did so by incorporating other literacy practices
that are inherent to being a doctor. Abby did not need me to ask for a
prescription – she knew that one literacy practice of a doctor is writing
prescriptions. CJ also knew that doctors write down information about their
patients to keep a record on them.
These interactions demonstrated my new pedagogical and theoretical
framework that values the social and cultural connections between pretend
play and learning literacy practices. I positioned Abby and Craig as if they
were doctors and they took up the positions of doctors to use the literacy and
social practices of doctors.
21
The above episode clearly demonstrates the different attitude and part
for adults in pretend play that this study purposes. When I participated in
the children’s play not only did I become a co-player (Roskos & Neuman,
1992) but I also indicated to the children both in character and out of
character that I viewed their play differently than most adults. Because I
entered the children’s play, the emphasis was on, as Bruner and others
(1986) contend, “not its content but its mode. Play was an approach to action,
not a form of activity” (p.v.) In my case I used a playful approach to literacy
practices and did not separate our different purposes of literacy in play
events.
Craig, Abby and I focused on the meaning of our imagined actions as if
we were doctors and I was their patient rather than on our actual actions as
children and adult. Our concern was not the concrete events of children
sitting in a loft but rather the activities of taking a patient’s temperature,
listening to the heartbeat and making sense of what this information meant
for this sick patient and the doctors taking care of her. This pretend play
episode demonstrated that “children think abstractly when they play because
they are always creating symbolic meaning rather than literal meaning”
(Edmiston, 2008, p. 14).
Finally, during this pretend play scenario, Abby extended my literacy
suggestion when she wrote a prescription for me. She exhibited literacy
knowledge when she wrote a prescription for me and improvised a literacy
22
practice when she told me, “I want you to try a medicine” and “Here is the
prescription for the medicine.” Through her actions, she demonstrated, what
Vygotsky (1933) refers to as being “a head taller”, by displaying knowledge of
the literacy practices health care providers perform. Abby participated in a
literacy practice because of her expert positioning as a doctor. The imagined
expert context of doctors and patients created a zone of proximal development
because during play “a child can operate at a higher level than is possible in
non-play activities” (Miller, 2002, p. 389).
Guiding Questions
My intention in this dissertation study was to gain more in-depth
insight into the educational and pedagogical importance of pretend play
particularly into how children use literacy practices in the imagined spaces of
play. I was also interested in how adults participating in pretend play might
affect children’s learning of literacy practices.
This study was guided by two related research questions:
3. When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities
for children to learn literacy practices?
4. When teachers play with children:
•
How can teachers mediate literacy learning?
•
How do children mediate their own literacy learning?
In a literacy rich society, children’s play is embedded with literacy
materials and opportunities in dynamic sociocultural contexts. According to
23
Emihovich and Lima (1995) due to these sociocultural contexts, literacy
learning does not and cannot occur in the individual child, nor does an
individual child go through achievable stages of literacy development.
Literacy learning like all learning, “… is in fact a complex, multifaceted form
of human action that involves, on the one hand, various aspects of social life
and, on the other, the development of higher psychological functions such as
imagination, perception, memory and language” (p. 448). In other words,
literacy learning is a complex process that occurs socially and through
imagination, perception, memory and language. Literacy learning cannot
and does not take place through a set of arbitrary tasks. Literacy learning
drives children’s literacy development in the sociocultural context of events
that may or may not be recognized as play (Vygotsky, 1978).
Research Design
To answer my research questions, I conducted a study in a
kindergarten/first grade classroom over a ten-month period utilizing an
ethnographic approach. The classroom was situated in an urban public
elementary school in a large mid-western city. This classroom afforded me
the opportunity to follow the same group of twenty-four children from the end
of their kindergarten year as well as the majority of their first grade year.
The study began in April of 2005 and concluded in April of 2006. Millie, Mrs.
N., a ten-year veteran at this school, was the children’s classroom teacher
over the course of the study.
24
The school, Fairchild Alternative Elementary School is organized
around the principles of informal education. According to the school’s
website, in an informal educational philosophy, “educators believe that
children enter school as active learners eager to continue the learning process
by working with staff, other children, parents and volunteers. Informal
educators further maintain that many hands-on opportunities are needed so
children can learn by doing and by interacting with their environment in a
social context. Strong positive teacher guidance is provided so that children
can take responsibility for their own learning. It is also acknowledged that
children express their knowledge and talents through a variety of visual art,
music and dance activities. Through all learning opportunities, adults and
children learn simultaneously.”
Why is this Study Significant?
This study is significant because those in the field of early childhood
education will gain more insight into the importance of pretend play. Early
childhood educators will understand the importance of imagined spaces in
pretend play and how children use literacy practices inherent to an imagined
space. Particularly when children are positioned or position themselves as
experts. Early childhood professionals should see the value of adults playing
with children because adults who play with children can mediate their
literacy learning.
25
Overview of the Dissertation
This study assumes that pretend play creates a social space for literacy
learning. The study employs two different but compatible theoretical
perspectives. I employ a poststructural perspective to examine how children
and adults can take up different subject positions and position one another in
imagined spaces of pretend play. I use a sociocultural perspective to
emphasize how pretend play and interactions with others creates a zone of
proximal development in particular in literacy development. I highlight the
importance of adults’ and children’s social interactions as they play and
imagine together. I also emphasize the importance of adult mediation as
children and adults play together.
In this study I describe and analyze young children making sense of
texts as they played in their early childhood classroom and on the school
playground. I also describe and analyze when adults mediated the children’s
pretend play to promote their literacy learning.
In chapter two I review the relevant literature. I examine the
literature about early literacy learning. How people, including children,
learn literacy through sociocultural interactions and practices. I describe the
sociocultural importance of pretend play in literacy learning and how pretend
play creates a zone of proximal development. I detail the sociocultural nature
of educational uses of drama, its connection to pretend play, and how
classroom drama can encourage literacy learning. I discuss poststructural
26
theory’s relationship to pretend play. I discuss how children take up positions
and position one another as they play. How as children play, they
demonstrate their active use of literacy practices within pretend play
contexts. In the final section I describe how an adult can mediate literacy
learning when they play with children. I refer to previous sociocultural
studies about adult roles during pretend play and how adults can mediate
literacy learning.
In chapter three, I discuss the research methodology. I describe
ethnographic research. I detail the context of the classroom including the
philosophy of school, the participants in the study and the daily schedule of
the classroom. I examine my role as a participant-observer including how
researcher subjectivity influenced data collection, analysis and
interpretation. I discuss the trustworthiness and ethical dilemmas of the
study. I look at the methods I used to collect data as well as the timeline for
the study. Finally, I explain the methods of data analysis through which I
grounded the interpretation of the data.
In chapter four, I present and analyze the data gathered to answer my
first question. I present five focus children as a collective case study (Stake,
2000). My analysis of data from the five children shows how pretend play
created the context and multiple opportunities for learning literacy practices.
My analysis across the data from the five focus children considers how agency
is important to learning literacy practices.
27
In chapter five I present and analyze data gathered to answer my
second research question. I examine the actions that I, and on occasions the
classroom teacher, took as we played with the children particularly as we
played together as if we were experts. I scrutinize the literacy practices that
were guided by the expert imaginary context as well as the practices
negotiated and constructed in the moment-to-moment actions and reactions
in the pretend play expert context.
In chapter six I discuss the conclusions and implications of literacy
practices occurring within children’s pretend play. This chapter also
emphasizes the importance of children and adults playing together,
negotiating their learning as well as transforming the ideas that are learned.
28
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
A wide range of scholarly work informs this study. I am inspired by
and hope to contribute to the work of early childhood educators who believe
that children learn when they play. In chapter 1 of this study, I stated that
my research questions emerged primarily as I watched children play in
imagined spaces and use literacy practices as they pretended. I noted that
the children’s pretend play created opportunities and provided contexts for
children to use and learn literacy practices. I also observed how children’s
literacy learning was affected when an adult participated in children’s play
and how with children, adults could create classroom drama experiences
where the children and adults used literacy practices to create meaning in
the imagined space. My observations and reflections led to me to formulate
the following research questions:
1. When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities
for children to learn literacy practices?
2. When teachers play with children:
•
How can teachers mediate literacy learning?
29
•
How do children mediate their own literacy learning?
I review five areas of literature. In the first section of this chapter, I
examine the literature about early literacy learning. How people including
children learn literacy through sociocultural interactions and practices. In
the second section I describe the sociocultural importance of pretend play in
literacy learning and how pretend play creates a zone of proximal
development. In the third section, I detail the sociocultural nature of
educational drama, its connection to pretend play and how classroom drama
encourages literacy learning. In the fourth section, I discuss how children
take up subject positions and socially position one another as they play. As
children play, they demonstrate their active use of literacy practices within
pretend play contexts. In the fifth and final section I describe how an adult
can act as a mediator during pretend play. I refer to previous sociocultural
studies about adult roles during pretend play and how adults can mediate
literacy learning while playing with young children.
Sociocultural Perspective: Literacy Practices and Literacy Learning
Literacy learning is both a social practice and a process (Gee, 1996;
Street, 1995, 2003, Gregory, Long & Volk, 2004). Literacy learning is much
more than a functional view of learning to read and write. In this study
literacy learning is not viewed as context independent but rather always
occurring in context dependent activities. Literacy learning is not viewed
30
from an autonomous model but rather from an ideological model (Street,
1984).
Scribner and Cole (1981) argued that that there is not just “literacy”,
but multiple literacies, all linked to domains of practice. Literacy should not
be viewed as a separate, thing-like object, in which people acquire a set of
decontextualized skills. Reading and writing should not be view as separate
independent skills, related to individual cognitive processes. Literacy should
be understood as how people use it. Literacy is ideological in nature,
grounded in how literacy is used and how it is linked to cultural and power
structures in society (Street, 2000). According to the New Literacy Studies
(Street, 1984; Gee, 1996; Barton & Hamilton, 1998), literacy is never neutral.
Those who argued that literacy is “infused by ideology” (Hull & Schulz,
2002) and those involved in the New Literacy Studies did not concern
themselves with the nature of early literacy learning. In the Syncretic
Literacy Studies - SLS (Gregory, Long & Volk, 2005), it is argued that young
children learn literacy practices as active members of different learning
communities.
Culture and cognition create each other. Children acquire language
and literacy knowledge through interactions with people in their
communities. Literacy learning occurs when children and teachers engage in
joint culture creation. Teachers should mediate learning rather than simply
impart information. Syncretic Literacy Studies maintains that it is a
31
teacher’s responsibility to give voice to those who would otherwise be
unheard. Teachers should celebrate all voices.
Until recently, the emergent literacy perspective has dominated the
field of early literacy learning. The emergent literacy perspective describes
how literacy knowledge grows over time when children are engaged in
purposeful literacy experiences with more experienced readers and writers
(Sulzby, 1986). The emergent literacy perspective promotes only the type of
literacy learning and literacy interactions that occur in most middle class
English speaking homes and schools.
The Syncretic Literacy Studies perspective encourages researchers to
examine homes where literacy is used extensively and expertly in a variety of
ways including sharing oral histories, reading the Bible, as well as reading
and writing letters. In SLS, studies found that the act of reading and
learning to read and write were social processes, children were active,
competent, and intentional participants in those processes, and that children
actively sought meaning as they constructed knowledge about literacy
through their interactions with one another and the literate world around
them.
A sociocultural perspective stresses the dynamic relationship between
contexts of classrooms and the literacies constructed across them (Miller,
2003). In the classroom each context’s activities, materials, purposes and
participation structure frames literacy use in distinctive ways. Miller’s
32
(2003) study draws the distinction between two cultures – school culture and
peer culture.
School culture was defined as students and teachers constructing a
common culture through their everyday language and literacy interactions.
In Miller’s (2003) study, the context of the school culture, collaboration and
community generated certain kinds of literate action. For example, children
used literacy to maintain their individual identity by labeling their artwork
with their names or to create community by socially constructing text to
accompany a group display.
Literacy was not only a subject to be learned in school but also a topic
to be learned in peer culture contexts. Peer culture is understood as being
produced and participated in among children; “these productions are
embedded in the web of experiences children weave with others throughout
their lives…. Thus, individual development is embedded in the collective
production of a series of peer cultures which in turn contribute to
reproduction and change in the wider adult society or culture” (Corsaro, 1997,
p. 26). In other words, literacy practices engaged in with peer cultures can
lead to changes in literacy practices in the children’s school culture.
In peer culture, children use literacy to signal friendship, as well as to
assert and communicate issues of hierarchy. Teachers can also offer print to
support children’s negotiation of peer culture dynamics. There is no one
path to becoming literate in this classroom. Literacy is multifaceted and
33
transformative and it “was something to learn about … in the doing” (Miller,
2003, p.160).
The Syncretic Literacy Studies as well as Corsaro and Miller’s work
were all relevant to my study. Key concepts in SLS permeated my study.
The literacy practices and literacy learning that took place during pretend
play was context specific. When an adult played with children, they jointly
created cultural knowledge. In peer cultures during pretend play, the
children used literacy practices relevant to the imagined spaces of pretend
play.
Sociocultural Perspective: Pretend Play and Literacy Learning
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theories about learning and play are central to
this study. Vygotsky maintains that all higher learning functions are social
and cultural. For children to learn beyond rote learning they must interact
with others. Vygotsky also argues that such learning takes place in a zone of
proximal development. The zone of proximal development is the space
between the children’s actual developmental level determined by independent
problem solving and the level of potential development through problem
solving with adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers
(Vygotsky, 1978)
Play creates a “source of development and creates the zone of proximal
development. Action in the imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation,
the creation of voluntary intentions and the formation of real-life plans and
34
volitional motives – all appear in play” (Vygotsky, 1966, p. 16). , What is
significant for this study is that during the interactions, the activities, and
the contexts of pretend play children may use and learn literacy practices.
Pretend play should be facilitated and promoted in school, because
children’s literacy uses when they play share many of the characteristics of
literacy practices in everyday life. Nigel Hall (2000) claims that literacy
during play has characteristics that are similar to those noted in the
ideological model of literacy (Street, 2000). “Thus, children’s play, like
everyday literacy practices, draws meaning from being situated within
cultural histories, values, and practices and thus generates engagement,
involves networks and is consistently related to the everyday lives of people
in their communities” (Hall, 2000, p. 194). In other words, the literacy
practices children engage in during their play are situated in their collective
cultural history, values and practices and are related to children’s everyday
lives.
The sociocultural/cultural-historical activity theoretical understanding
of play activities (Vygotsky, 1978; Leont’ev, 1981; Engestrom, 1987) along
with research from the field of anthropology (Bateson, 1955; King, 1979) has
contributed to the sociocultural literature about the connections between play
and literacy learning. Sociocultural studies emphasize pretend play’s
importance and how, according to Vygotsky, play is an activity that creates a
“source of development and creates the zone of proximal development. Action
35
in the imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of
voluntary intentions and the formation of real-life plans and volitional
motives – all appear in play” (Vygotsky, 1966, p. 16). In other words, it is
pretend play and its contexts that encourage children’s use of literacy
practices.
Vygotsky (1978) theorizes that children develop as they make meaning
using symbols. Young children make meaning in pretend play when the
everyday meaning of objects is suspended and new meanings are assigned.
Children’s mental or psychological tools are culturally formed collectively
developed signs. All people, including children, enter imagined spaces
through the use of a “pivot”, a mediating sign that people use symbolically
not only to organize a particular response but also to shift into “as if” worlds.
People, including children, then use signs as psychological tools to mediate
the making of meaning in activities. Reading and writing are the primary
semiotic systems humans use to make meaning of the actual marks or images
on a page. In doing so, they think and may act differently. Children can use
written language in the imaginary spaces of play to enhance or extend any
meaning they make in any pretend play scenario.
Numerous studies report the relationship between play and children’s
development of story (Branscombe & Taylor, 2000; Paley 1990). Most of the
knowledge that children bring to play is organized in narratives (Bruner,
1990). Additionally, stories the children tell following their play are
36
collaboratively constructed and socialized as children act and react to each
other (Bloome, Champion, Katz, Morton, Muldrow, 2001).
While play and stories seem to be complimentary, they also appear to
be the precursors for imaginative endeavors that occur in children’s later
lives (Paley, 1997). During pretend play children who were called on to use
their storying skills to develop their sense of self used stories in play “to mark
their affiliation with others, to disassociate themselves from others, and to
negotiate with others across societal divisions” (Dyson, 1997, pp. 115-116).
Branscombe and Taylor (2000) investigated whether children acquired
a use of story in a literate sense through play. They found that children
began to use if-then constructions, reflection and perspective taking through
improvisation in their stories and in their play. This confirmed the assertion
that play was story in action, just as the stories children tell was their play
laid out in narrative form (Paley, 1990). Play and stories appeared to be
unconditionally linked.
During children’s play, children used opportunities to write and draw.
In play, they also participated in early storytelling, acting, dancing and
sculpturing. Children’s play included meaningful attempts to reenact stories
from their lives, the lives of others and literature. The children played as
actors and directors who interpreted stories. “The purpose of their play
became the making of relationships that were coordinated with the
conventions of the existing culture’s stories…. Stories became the shared
37
knowledge of that culture” (Branscombe & Taylor, 2000, p. 187). In other
words, when children played, their play became the shared stories of the
group.
Children connect the meaning they make as books are read to them
with the meaning they make in their pretend play. The ethnographic work of
Rowe (1994, 2000) concluded that children made many connections between
book-related dramatic play and their emerging literacy abilities. The
patterns she noticed were as follows:
Children connect books physically with toys and props
Children response personally to books through dramatic
enactments of feelings and actions
Children insert dramatic play within read –alouds – they ask and
answer question during book discussions while pretending to be an
imaginary character from the book being read
Children play out their favorite parts of a story to enjoy a multisensory dimension of the story
Children play and replay stories from books to sort out the author’s
meaning
Children play in role as certain characters to understand the
character
“Children use books as springboards for exploring their own
questions about the world” (Rowe, 2000, p. 15).
38
The works of educator and author Vivian Paley (1984, 1986, 1990,
2004), found that children build stories as they play. They build their stories
out of their life experiences, drawing on popular culture, and fairy tales, as
well as adding to one another’s play or story (Dyson, 1989 & 2003). Every
child in a sense was a story. As children played, they were able to tell that
story.
In her latest work, Paley (2004) draws attention to the sociocultural
nature of children’s learning through play. She cites an example of two-yearold Brian. As Brian’s mother plays with him and she suggests that they
stretch a scarf across two stools. Brian crawls under the “tunnel”, as Brian’s
mother called it. Brian gets his tricycle and rides under it, saying it’s a car
wash. Brian’s mother states that Brian used play to go way beyond where
she was. She write down what he was pretending, ‘Brian goes to the car
wash.’ Brian requests that his mother read this sentence over and over
again as he rides under the scarf. Brian’s mother points out a concrete
example of what decades earlier Vygotsky (1966) maintained about play;
“that in play a child is always above his average age, above his daily
behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself” (p. 16).
In Anne Haas Dyson’s research, children used written language to play
with others in multiple worlds. They learned to join together to construct an
imagined world by transforming their actual one. Children’s play became
reciprocal as it led to further literacy knowledge for children (Dyson, 1989).
39
Dyson’s research (1989) further highlighted the developmental tensions that
existed when children began to write. Children discovered how written
language could be used as a symbolic and social tool. In play, children’s
ways of writing changed as children began to sense new functional
possibilities in the activity; writing became the ends that were previously
fulfilled through other means.
Writing also became a way of interacting with others; children’s social,
intellectual, and artistic lives were surrounded and mediated by written text.
Writing while playing allowed children to begin to develop different
perspectives. Children’s unofficial use of diverse cultural materials provided
substance for official reflection, critical resistance and thoughtful negotiation.
Play also allowed children inside text worlds and the writing and discussions
borne out of play permitted children to jointly consider, reconsider and reimagine possible worlds (Dyson, 1991).
As children played in pretend play worlds, the act of playing made the
boundaries of written language “permeable” (Dyson, 1993). Play permitted
written words in a partial way to become the mediators of social action,
where “it is inextricably tied to social activity and cultural meaning” (p. 217).
Playing children, also, according to Dyson (1993), created a sort of
“interactive space to compose relationships with others – mediated by texts –
that make sense from their own point of view, they also need guidance so that
40
they can enter new kinds of conversations, new sorts of dialogues with the
world” (p. 221).
In a recent study Dyson (2003) discussed once again the importance of
play to children’s writing. She examined the imagined worlds that children
create within their play. “Playing children can rename the mundane and
organize their behavior according to a pretend situation that they have willed
into existence” (p. 169). In other words, children take what they hear and
experience in the everyday world and shape these experiences into writing
about the imagined world. Leaning on Bakhtin (1981), Dyson (2003) refers to
this writing as hybrid text. Hybrid texts appropriate the utterances of others
in order to express different attitudes and make the stories one’s own
(Bakhtin, 1981)
The children documented their play within their official writing.
Popular cultural also influenced the children’s play with words both spoken
and written. The children interacted socially with print. Because of these
findings, Dyson called for more attention to literacy practices that involved
translating and transforming meaning across text mediums and genres. She
invited teachers to allow children to stretch their communicative practices,
accessing inclusive cultural arts practice for literacy learning, in ways that
were many times closed to them.
Karen Gallas (2003) studied the connections between imagination and
authoring. She examined her own classroom and found that as children
41
played over time they developed an identity as a reader and writer. As
children played imaginatively they came in contact with the language, tools,
text and forms of inquiry specific to the role they were taking within their
imaginative play. Gallas’ study implicated the need for imagining a different
world that includes sociocultural literacy. Gallas defined sociocultural
literacy as a space where all children can encounter new texts, ideas,
ideologies, languages and forms of expressions. She determined that it is
important to build a community of learners where children have an
opportunity to explore, on a daily basis, what it means to be human in the
midst of diversity. Using sociocultural literacy, children created texts about
themselves in relationship to others while debating and contesting those
texts.
In literate communities, literacy routines find their way into children’s
play. Literacy routines occur as children exhibit repeated performances with
literacy materials. As children display reading and writing in literacy
routines they show their literacy stances. As part of their literacy stances
children demonstrate the purposes and technicalities of written language
(Dyson, 1996; Kendrick, 2003).
In Maureen Kendrick’s (2003) ethnographic case study with Leticia, a
five-year-old girl, who was a Chinese immigrant to Canada, Kendrick caught
a glimpse into the hidden intricacies of Leticia’s early literacy development
and the personal stories of her identity while they played together. The
42
medium of play also exposed literacy stances, use of storytelling as cultural
practice and the process of composing play. Leticia’s literacy stance revealed
her understanding of the forms and functions of written language. Her
literacy stance also demonstrated the hidden attitudes and feelings towards
literacy in both Leticia’s home and classroom.
Playing with Leticia also brought to light the literacy practices of home
and school. When Kendrick and Leticia “played house,” the actions they took
reflected how Leticia’s family members used reading and writing as well as
how literacy practices were used as a tool for maintaining family life. When
the two “played school” this revealed Leticia’s understanding of how one
“does school”. Leticia’s perceptions of school literacy were that reading and
writing was a means of maintaining and enforcing classroom routines.
As Leticia constructed her literacy stance she was confronted with
conflicting views of the expectations of “correctness” in literacy development.
Leticia’s parents had an expectation of accuracy and precision while her
teacher took an emergent literacy perspective. Leticia’s play allowed her to
grapple with and explore these contradictions and she created a context
where these conflicting expectations could co-exist. Make-believe play
became a space where Leticia safely created, defined, and interpreted her
own reality and identity. As Leticia and Kendrick played, Kendrick noted
that what Leticia dramatized within her play far exceeded her ability to
articulate as an understanding of the world around her. “Indeed, what
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Leticia revealed in her play narratives was not visible in other venues of her
life” (p. 171).
As Leticia played with Kendrick, she revealed her understanding of
the ‘culture of power’ underlying the area of school literacy. In taking the
role of a teacher, Leticia positioned herself as more powerful as well as
someone willing to take risks with her learning. Additionally she explored
various forms and functions of literacy. When she depicted a student in
school role-play she was less willing to engage in reading and writing tasks.
Leticia also commented on her understanding of her possible future life
as a female member in her family and community. As she used language in
her play, she came to understand how to “position” herself as a gendered
being. She learned how to be a girl, woman, sister, mother and grandmother
partly due to the stories she heard, observed and played. Leticia played with
romantic storylines, which included her having children and a family. In
composing her play narratives, Leticia reflected on and consciously chose
symbols that helped her organize and articulate her inner thoughts. Play
narratives were spaces for Leticia to learn to author stories.
In Leticia’s school where play and work were regarded as binary
opposites, it was the teacher not the children who had the power to define
and interpret what counted as useful or not useful play. Kendrick argued
that teachers should adopt more sensitive ways to engage and extend
children’s play. For example, teachers should encourage peer play in mixed
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gendered groups to help young girls move their play narratives beyond
romantic storylines.
While the relationship between play and writing had been explored in
past studies; Kendrick maintained that Leticia’s stories in play contributed to
her understanding of writing because of the creation of stories in the here
and now. Kendrick argued that some of Leticia’s play narratives at the end
of the study resembled the revision process of writing, in that as Leticia
composed play narratives, she continually edited and revised an original play
text.
The importance of environment
Many past researchers who studied play and literacy from a
sociocultural perspective tended to analyze features of the physical
environment that encouraged or hampered children’s opportunities to utilize
literacy during play (Christie, 2000). They not only held that one should
consider the physical surroundings but also take into consideration the social
relationships that determined how often and in what situations children
engaged in using cultural tools of literacy (Neuman & Roskos, 1992).
Teachers in early childhood classrooms who provided time for play
provided literacy materials in the pretend play areas of the classroom. For
example, a doctor’s office play center was stocked with clipboards with sign in
sheets, pads of paper, pencils and magazines in the waiting room. Neuman &
Roskos (1992) found that literacy enriched play areas such as these resulted
45
in increased amounts of reading and writing during playtime. Children’s
declarative, procedural, and strategic literacy knowledge increased when
these types of literacy material were placed in pretend play areas (Neuman &
Roskos, 1997).
Morrow (1990) explored if voluntary literacy behaviors of children
increased in type and quantity by including literacy materials in dramatic
play areas. Her study analyzed 13 preschool classrooms with an average
enrollment of 12 children in each class. The classrooms selected for the study
had to have free-play periods of 20 – 30 minutes scheduled daily.
Additionally, the teacher had to have made no environmental provisions or
suggestions for literacy activities during play before the start of the study.
The 13 classrooms were randomly distributed among one control condition (N
= 3 classes), and three experimental conditions. The three different
experimental conditions were one group of classrooms (N = 3 classes) utilized
thematic play with literacy materials and was guided by the teacher, one
group of classrooms (N = 4 classes) utilized thematic play with literacy
materials without teacher guidance and the third group of classrooms (N = 3)
was supplied books, pencils and paper in an un-themed dramatic play area
with teacher guidance.
In all three experimental groups of classrooms, the children
participated in more literacy behaviors during play than the children in the
control group of classrooms. In the two groups of classrooms that had teacher
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guidance, the children used the literacy materials more and in varied ways
than did the groups of children who were not provided teacher guidance.
Thematic pretend play areas also encouraged role-playing. For
instance, pretend play areas set up as veterinarians’ office encouraged
children to pretend to be the vet nurse or the veterinarian who passed out
forms and clipboards to the patients’ owners. The literacy activity focused
around the theme and was based on meaning and function according to the
theme.
Teachers who provided well-designed environments were able to
facilitate literacy behaviors and enhance cognitive development (Morrow &
Rand, 1991). In a 1991 study, Morrow and Rand also found that teachers
who provided guidance by introducing literacy materials as well as making
frequent suggestions for the material’s use had children participating in more
literacy activities in greater variety. They further uncovered that teachers
who provided a social context for the literacy materials had children
performing at a higher level. In this study, the teacher introduced and made
suggestions for the literacy materials and then stepped back to allow the
children the opportunity to explore, experiment and practice what was
learned.
There were qualitative changes in the functions of literacy in play
when teachers modified the environment and enriched existing play centers
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in classrooms (Neuman & Roskos, 1997). There were four kinds of physical
environmental changes:
All the play centers were more dramatically carved away from one
another and clearly defined by using semifixed features such as
cupboards, screens, tables, and written signs. Mobiles with the
play center’s name at children’s eye level – these labels were used
as references for the writing of specific letters and words.
Labeling of items in the environment was increased
Four distinct play centers in each preschool classroom – a post
office, a library, an office and a kitchen. These were chosen because
they were directly linked to common literacy-oriented real-life
activities outside of preschool.
The physical space in the classroom was rearranged. For instance,
the post office and the classroom library were adjacent to one
another on one side of the room while the office and the kitchen
were on the other side of the room. This allowed movement
between the centers and encouraged the development of sustained
play themes.
In addition to the physical changes to the classrooms the teachers and
the researchers included literacy props in each of the centers. The props
were appropriate to the setting, authentic for each physical space, and judged
as useful or not. “Props associated with literacy-related routines, common in
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the community were also selected for inclusion in these centers – checking
out a book, making a grocery list, reading and copying a recipe, and writing a
telephone message” (Neuman & Roskos, 1997, p. 175).
In Neuman and Roskos’ (1997) study there were important indicators
of change that emerged from analysis of literacy demonstrations by the
children before and after the interventions. First, literacy in play became
more useful. For example, children before the intervention moved from
literacy activity to literacy activity during free play. After the intervention,
the themed areas caused the children’s literacy engagement in those areas to
increase. The utility of writing became relevant in play. Second, literacy in
play became more situation-based. This was obvious as the children took on
roles of a letter carrier, a librarian, or an office worker. Next, literacy in play
became more unified and sustained. In literacy-enriched settings,
demonstrations became connected and more integral to the play itself.
Fourth, literacy in play became more interactive. It was found that before
the intervention, more than half of the literacy demonstrations involved
children in solitary play. After the interventions, considerably more
interactions between children occurred in the literacy enriched centers.
Finally, literacy in play became more role-defined. The addition of literacy
materials in the pretend play areas caused the children to enact in role and
include reading and writing within those roles.
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The above researchers, who studied the physical and contextual
environments with a literacy element added to the play spaces, argued that
young children first use objects and settings they already know to construct
meaning from their experiences in play. With this in mind, a calculated
approach should be taken when designing literacy enriched play areas
(Neuman & Roskos, 1992). Parents and teachers should work together to
rework play centers to include familiar literacy objects and routines. Parents
should be surveyed to establish what kinds of literacy activities and
situations are familiar to children outside of school. This means that play
settings and literacy objects will be different from school to school and
possibly classroom to classroom. For instances, a travel agency and
restaurant may work best in one classroom while an office and grocery store
will work better in another.
Early childhood sociocultural researchers also have investigated the
social influences of the environment. Peer collaboration during play seemed
to lead to joint construction of knowledge about literacy (Stone & Christie,
1996; Christie & Stone, 1999). In a 1996 study, Stone and Christie explored
children’s literacy behavior in a literacy enriched sociodramatic play area in a
multi-age (K-2) classroom. Findings indicated substantial cross-age literacybased collaboration, with half of the interactions involving older children
helping younger children. When these cross-age collaborations occurred the
younger children appeared to engage in more reading and writing behaviors.
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This suggested to the researchers that literacy-enriched play environments
combined with mixed-age learners provided a social context that facilitated
both more advanced literacy behaviors and collaboration.
Educational Drama, Pretend Play and Literacy Learning
Nigel Hall (1994, 2000) researched pretend play and everyday literacy
learning. He suggested that literacy in pretend play is much like that in
everyday literacy. Literacy in pretend play was almost always highly
meaningful to children’s lives, was both initiated by users and responded to
by users, was used to make things happen, was located in the social past and
future, was used for a wide variety of purposes, was highly social, and was
often enjoyable. He saw school literacy, on the other hand, had different
characteristics; it was seldom meaningful and relevant, was almost always
imposed upon children, was seldom used to make things happen, was not
related to past or future uses, was usually an individual practice, and was
narrowly defined which governs interpretation, choices, types of practice and
assessment.
Hall (2000) furthered the argument that everyday literacy was
connected to pretend play when he described a classroom of 5- to 6- year old
children who incorporated literacy into a pretend play area. This imaginary
experience does not distance the children from the literacy in the pretend
play context rather the pretend play context was centered on a school wide
transportation theme. After visiting a real garage, the teacher of this
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classroom decided that her sociodramatic play area would be turned into a
garage and the children would build the garage. The garage would have two
main areas, an office and a workshop.
Hall described three literacy events that took place within the pretend
play context of building and operating a garage. First, the children and the
teacher had a discussion about the fact that people could not simply build
whatever they wanted. People needed to get permission to build a garage
and the building permit should come from the Town Hall Planning
Department.
Obtaining permission revolved around literacy for this activity. The
function of the literacy event was “getting permission”. This step involved
the children writing a letter to the Planning Department to request a
Planning Application Form. They received the Planning Application Form
and filled it out.
After a short period of time the children were given permission to build
a garage. As the garage was nearing completion and the children wanted to
play in it the teacher shaped the play. The teacher said that to work in the
garage the students needed to apply for a job. Before someone could apply for
the job to work in the garage, there needed to be an advertisement with a job
description. The trip to an actual garage aided the children in figuring out
the types of jobs they needed to put in the advertisement, which contributed
to their pretend play in the garage area. “It was not that the children had to
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follow a predetermined script when they went to play in the area, but they
were better informed about some of the possibilities… Thus, reciprocity was
established. The sociodramatic play motivated engagement in the events
occurring outside of play, and these external events informed and sustained
play within the area” (p. 198). In other words, the children were not playing
and imagining all the time but play led to the children pursuing further
literacy practices in everyday classroom that enhanced the imagined context.
Finally, the children took on the task of repairing a nursery school
bicycle. They were asked by the nursery school teacher to give an estimate
on the cost of repairing it. This became a negotiation task as well as a
literacy task because the nursery school teachers upon receiving the estimate
attempted to negotiate a lower price. After children spoke to the
owner/mechanic of the garage they had visited earlier and the mechanic told
them that when he writes up an estimate he has to take into consideration
the cost of running his garage. The children were able to respond to the
nursery school teachers’ request for a lower price from an informed position.
All of the correspondence about the repair of the nursery school bicycle was in
writing. The children created and refined the literacy as mechanics in a
community of practice (Wenger, 1998).
According to Hall, all of the literacy practices that occurred in this
pretend play situation were highly meaningful to the play activity. The
children used literacy as if they were mechanics. Literacy was initiated by
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the players and responded to by the players. Literacy was used to make
things happen (Hall, 2000).
Hall’s work parallels the use of drama in education even though he
never refers to educational drama in his research. The garage pretend play
episode closely resembles a particular use of drama in situations where
children are positioned as experts. When using drama the adult often
pretends alongside the children so that all participants may assume expert
roles, such as scientists, archeologist etc., to solve fictional problems
(Heathcote and Bolton, 1995). Heathcote and Bolton (1995) stress that this
use of drama is about making significant meaning with your students. They
argue that drama operates best when the whole class is involved in making
meaning. They emphasize that it is the teacher’s responsibility to share
power with his or her students and facilitate learning in roles within the
drama. Heathcote states further that such a use of drama is “an approach to
the whole curriculum, not a matter of isolating just one theme. Any one
thing… must become meshed within broad curriculum knowledge and skills”
(p. 16). In other words, using drama to position children as experts does not
teach skills in isolation. Rather, when children act as if they are the experts
it is assumed that they would do all of the contextualized tasks, required of
those experts. In Hall’s example above, children acting as if they are
mechanics are expected not only to write the estimate but also repair the
bike. They perform all of the tasks associated with being mechanics.
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Tim Taylor in his work with Luke Abbott and Brian Edmiston showed
the value of using of an expert approach with young children. In his
classroom of first, and second graders, Taylor used drama to position the
children as experts. He found that an expert approach creates conditions for
the “children to learn as people in their everyday lives – from and with others
in tasks, activities, and practices that draw on, and extend, their existing
expertise” (Taylor & Edmiston, 2005, p. 42). He found that it became a way
of working that made learning very real. His class used drama to work
through problems. Drama also worked across the curriculum subjects as the
children took the lead in their learning. In expert positions the children’s
imaginative thinking skills, speaking and listening skills increased. He
emphasized that it is a pedagogical method that puts learners at the center of
their education.
The power of drama to promote literacy learning has been well
documented (for example, Wagner, 1998; Wolf, Edmiston, and Enciso, 1997;
Edmiston & Enciso, 2002; Edmiston, 2007). Drama opens up playful spaces
where control of the classroom and expertise in the classroom shifts among
participants (Edmiston, 2007). Young children view themselves and are
viewed by adults as capable literacy users as they shape literacy identities
within imagined activities. Students’ literacy learning is extended when
participating in activities that included literacy events and practices as
adults participate alongside the students.
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Edmiston (2008) argues that pretend play can be conceptualized as
taking place in three socio-cultural spaces: everyday spaces, socially imagined
pretend play spaces, and authoring spaces. He notes that children and
adults live their lives in everyday spaces. Children play and imagine in
socially imagined spaces. When adults play with children in imagined
spaces, they make or author meaning in the overlap between everyday and
imagined play space because imagined play spaces are built from the cultural
resources of the everyday world. Likewise, everyday spaces are enhanced as
cultural resources are shaped by the imagined space if adults share power
with children. (See Figure 2.1 below)
Figure 2.1 Three socio-cultural spaces of play
Educational drama scholars argue that the experiences in drama do
not necessarily make children any more knowledgeable in terms of content
knowledge. Rather, fictional contexts activate knowledge, skills and
understandings that the children may already have and can motivate them to
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develop new facets of knowledge and understanding (Edmiston, 2005).
Drama creates spaces where all children can use their strengths as the
people they are and the people they want to become in imagination, including
people who use literacy. Teachers using drama can affect children’s
developing literacy identities, going beyond what occurs when children play
without adults.
Poststructural Theory and Pretend Play
Central to poststructural theory is the issue of self and identity
formation. Poststructural theorists believe in a nonunitary self and an
ongoing process of self-formation (Davies, 1989, 1993). Children learn who
they are, forming their identities, through discursive practices in which they
are continuously socially positioned. Discursive practices including literacy
practices are the complex social processes through which meanings are
gradually and dynamically created (Davies & Harre, 1990). Children
participate in discursive practices when they play just as they do in everyday
life.
In imagined spaces of pretend play children have extended agency
because they have access to many more subject positions during play than
they do in everyday life (Edmiston, 2008). In pretend play children can take
up any subject positions they want. During play, a child’s sense of oneself
can go beyond the given meaning of any imagined context and forge
something new, “through a combination of previously unrelated discourses,
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through the invention of words and concepts that capture a shift in
consciousness that is beginning to occur, or through imagining not what is,
but what might be” (Davies, 1991). In other words if we refer back to the
example of the children imagining as if they were auto mechanics, from Hall’s
(2000) example, we see children acting with the agency of mechanics as they
deny the nursery school teachers request for a lower rate to repair the bike.
Agency has the following characteristics:
•
It is contextual
•
It is active
•
It is relational
•
It is negotiated
•
It is intentional
A core dimension of agency is social positioning. A poststructural
perspective contends that children act as active agents in the acquisition of
an understanding of self (McMurray-Schwarz, 2000). Through their active
agency in pretend play, children can learn literacy practices across imagined
spaces as they play, interact with, and react to others. During play, children
form ideas, understandings and knowledge that are based upon the imagined
context. Over time this includes the development of a literacy identity
(Kendrick, 2003).
When children play or imagine they position themselves in subject
positions that may be unavailable to them in the everyday world (Fernie,
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Davies, Kantor, & McMurray, 1993). As children play, they conceptualize
and re-conceptualize the subject positions made available through various
discursive practices. It is in the imaginary spaces of pretend play that
individuals can accept or reject or negotiate how they are positioned because
as Vygotsky (1978) contends play is always voluntary and intentional.
Subject positions are defined as the positions people act from
repeatedly. For example, a young boy acts from the position of a boy as
opposed to a girl or from the position of a child as opposed to an adult, etc.
Subject positions become the defining contribution to personhood (Davies &
Harre, 1990). Davies and Harre emphasize that:
An individual emerges through the processes of social interaction,
not as a relatively fixed end product, but as one who is constituted
and reconstituted through the various discursive practices in
which he or she participates. Accordingly, who one is is always an
open question with a shifting answer depending upon the positions
made available within one’s own and others’ discursive practices
and within those practices, the stories through which we make
sense of our own and others’ lives (p. 89).
When children play they can take up temporary subject positions in
relationship to the storylines that are familiar to the participants in context,
both everyday and imagined. Temporary subject positions necessitate that
individuals act from a variety of discourses or the social worlds they inhabit
(Davies & Harre, 1990). After children and adults take up a distinct position,
they view the world from the vantage point of that position particularly in
terms of the images, metaphors, story lines and concepts including literacy
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and literacy practices that are relevant within the discursive practices of that
particular position (Davies & Harre, 1990).
In pretend play, subject positions become visible in imagined spaces.
Expanding Hall’s (2000) example , as the children pretended to be mechanics
they wrote and presented an estimate to repair the nursery school bike and
“took up the position” of mechanics or garage owners who were concerned
about asking and receiving a “fair price” to repair the broken bike. The
nursery school teachers attempted to negotiate with the children, positioning
them, as mechanics, by writing to them and requesting a lower price. The
children, after researching reasons why they should ask for the higher price,
once again responded from the position of a mechanic stating the reasons for
their estimate.
Others also position children continuously in everyday and pretend
worlds. In both worlds, children can (1) take up the various positions made
available to them as their own or (2) they can resist or reject the positions
they do not want. In the imagined spaces of pretend play, children can either
readily accept positionings and stretch situational boundaries to accomplish
tasks through concerted social action and shared events (Fernie, Davies,
Kantor & McMurray, 1993). Or they can reject or resist positions they
dislike by abandoning the play situation or reshaping the position into one
they find acceptable. Additionally, children can negotiate with adults new
positions (Edmiston, 2008).
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How children respond to how they are positioned can be demonstrated
once again using Hall’s mechanics example. When the nursery school
teachers attempt to negotiate a lower price for the bike repair, the children,
from the subject position of mechanics, did not automatically accept the lower
estimate but investigated by asking an actual mechanic what they should
charge for the bike repair. The context of the imagined situation allowed the
children to resist the attempt by the nursery school teachers to pay a lower
price and shaped their response to the nursery school teachers in an
acceptable and a manner socially appropriate for car mechanics negotiating
with a customer.
Imagined spaces of play may become spaces where children can engage
in social literacy practices since play is where the imagination becomes
embodied (Holland et al., 1998). Returning to the example above (Hall,
2000), the children used literacy practices as if they were mechanics, garage
owners and garage office workers.
Sociocultural and Poststructural Perspective: Adult as Mediator
When children and supportive adults play together, adults can
contribute to children’s agency when using literacy practices. Adults can help
children form literacy discourses and identities within imagined spaces.
Through adult-child play, adults position children as highly knowledgeable
and literacy-using individuals (Kendrick, 2003; Edmiston, 2007; 2008).
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Past studies have examined how teachers and children interact
socially in print-rich play settings. For example, in a 1993 study, Roskos and
Neuman found that teachers take on well-defined characteristics and roles
supportive of literacy in play. They found three distinctive types of literacyassisting roles that teachers assumed during play: those of onlooker, player
and leader.
The onlooker role was defined as the quintessential “appreciative
audience”. The teacher in this role remained outside the play space
and his or her participation was confined to overseer of the
children’s play; occasionally acknowledging children’s playful
literacy attempts by nodding in approval or verbally commenting
positively about them.
The player role was distinctly different. The teacher became
directly involved in the children’s literacy-related play, doing as the
other players and talking to them about play matters. Assisting in
literacy was not the teacher’s main focus but rather the goal was
“playing along”, which may have signaled to the children to persist
at their literacy-related play.
In the leader role, the teacher took steps to structure the children’s
play. The teacher introduced specific literacy props into the play
and arranged the environment to induce a particular literacyoriented play theme. The teacher positioned his/herself centrally
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within the play space, offered literacy objects, deliberately modeled
literacy behaviors and made literacy-related suggestions.
When observing the teachers, Roskos and Neuman (1993) noted a
dynamic quality to the use of the roles. The teachers actively switched
among the roles, which was facilitated by the play situation. Periodically the
teacher led literacy in play endeavors, then withdrew gradually by just
“playing with” the children and/or watching them as the play topic ran its
course, followed by leading them again when it seemed necessary.
In the spring of 2004, Olivia Saracho conducted an additional study on
the roles teachers take in assisting young children’s literacy-related play.
She found that teachers assume six roles during literacy- related play. The
roles were:
Constituent of Children’s Learning – In this role, the teachers were
equal members of the group. The teachers sat with the children
and participated in the writing activity in some way.
Promoter of Children’s Learning – The teachers provided materials
that promoted children’s learning. The teachers selected materials
that were attractive and appropriate for the play context,
introduced the materials (props, equipment, toys), and discuss the
purposes of the materials.
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Monitor of Children’s Learning – In this role, teachers made sure
that the children were learning the appropriate concepts and
responding correctly to the task at hand.
Storyteller of Children’s learning – Teachers read or told a story
while the children listened and made appropriate responses to the
teachers’ inquiries. They motivated the children in the prediction of
events of the story and in taking part in the readings or telling of
the story.
Group Discussion Leader of Children’s Learning – In this role
teachers led children in a group discussion to introduce new
concepts or/and review familiar ones.
Instructional Guide of Children’s Learning – For this role, teachers
encouraged children’s learning by assisting them to become aware
of objects in the setting and pictures that correspond to the context.
The teachers planned appropriate experiences, made adjustments
to the learning environment and presented materials that
facilitated the children’s learning. In this role the teacher
reinforced correct responses from the children and queried their
incorrect responses until they got the correct answer.
Implications from this study maintained the need for teachers to
design literacy programs that develop children’s literacy learning in the
context of play, provide quality interactions, and cultivate spontaneous and
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flexible literacy behaviors in young children. Children’s expectation of
success can stimulate them to explore written language further on their own
and lead them into mastering the prerequisites for formal reading
instruction.
Literacy Learning and Communities of Practice
Literacy learning does not only happen through adult-child
interactions. Wenger (1998) argues that people learn in communities of
practice. Children, like adults, belong to several different communities of
practices at once. They belong to communities of practice at home, at school,
and during play. Communities of practice can be evident when children
participate in imaginary worlds. “Communities of practice are so informal
and so pervasive that they rarely come into explicit focus, but for the same
reason they are also quite familiar” (Pahl & Roswell, 2005, p. 75).
Participants in communities of practice create and refine practices through
shared experience.
Adult as mediator
How children learn literacy practices in communities of practice has
been the concern of many researchers. A case study, presented by Moll and
Whitmore (1993), categorizes levels of adult or teacher involvement in
classroom community interactions. In their case study they depict a
classroom characterized by complex coordinated sets of practices. Adult-child
interactions create Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development or ZPD and
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adult-child interactions can create and extend the ZPD. The mediation that
occurs in the classroom is not only social mediation, but semiotic mediation
as well. Since all social and literacy practices involve psychological tools or
signs used as part of semiotic systems. A semiotic emphasis brings a focus on
meaning making through the ZPD as central to human activity. This
semiotic emphasis also relies on a transactional view of the ZPD as, “one that
focused on the co-construction of meaning as facilitated by the various
activities that make up classroom life” (Moll & Whitmore, 1993, p. 39).
Thus, children and adults co-create meaning in communities of practice as
they interact in a sequence of activities.
Moll and Whitmore categorize adult-child interactions that create or
extend a ZPD as follows:
As a guide and supporter, the teacher is crucial for helping children
take risks, focus their questions, and ideas, and translate them into
manageable activities, ensuring that each child finds academic
success.
As active participant in the learning, the teacher researches theme
topics along with the children, combining her own content questions
with demonstration of the research process.
As an evaluator of the children’s individual and collective
development the teacher monitors progress of the individual
children as well as the group.
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As a facilitator, the teacher or adult consciously plans activities and
provides appropriate to the activities.
The teacher or adult has a mediating role in literacy learning during
pretend play (Gregory, Long & Volk, 2005). A mediator in play can do the
following:
Create opportunities for children to help shape their own learning
and to co-construct it with others, both children and adults.
Weave literacies from children’s interests, families, communities
and popular culture.
Nurture learning communities in the classroom and across
classrooms.
Nurture the expertise of peer teachers and learners.
Look for and supports a variety of learning relationships within
children’s zones of proximal development.
Summary
1. Children learn to be literate across multiple settings, experiences, and
activities. As children interact with, react to, and play with others in a
literacy rich environment, they engage in literacy practices and
understand more of their abilities as literacy users.
2. During play, children’s attention is focused on the meaning of their
actions in imagined spaces rather than on actual objects and
movements in everyday spaces. Play creates spaces where children
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can appropriate and use sociocultural material from their cultures
including themes, stories and roles from their everyday lives and
experiences
3. Literacy practices are embedded in play and children learn those
practices in the doing. Children, who read and write while they play,
do so as they interact with others. The context of play sets up the
opportunity for children to read and write for everyday purposes.
Children who write as they play create texts where they appropriate
the utterances of others and begin to develop an understanding of
others’ perspectives (Dyson, 1993).
4. During all interactions, children and adults take up positions and
socially position one another. This study investigates how children
position themselves and each other during pretend play and how adult
positioning affects the children’s literacy learning.
5. Children playing in imagined spaces co-author meaning in a zone of
proximal development. Vygotsky’s ideas about mediation creating
ZPDs during child-adult interactions are central to this study. When
adults play and imagine with children, adults can help mediate
children’s meaning making that does not displace the direction and
control children give to tasks and activities. Mediated assistance
during pretend play has the possibility of making children more aware
of how they can use print and other written texts in collaboration with
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other children as they use literacy, apply their literacy knowledge, and
expand their abilities to make meaning in literacy practices.
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CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
Two research questions guided this study.
1. When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities
for children to learn literacy practices?
2. When teachers play with children:
•
How can teachers mediate literacy learning?
•
How do children mediate their own literacy learning?
To investigate these two questions, I collected data over a ten-month
period in a kindergarten/first grade classroom using ethnographic methods.
I used two complimentary theoretical perspectives – a sociocultural
and a poststructural view of literacy learning in order to explore how children
learned literacy within the social and cultural contexts of the
kindergarten/first grade classroom. I was interested in the literacy practices
the children learned as they played in imagined spaces.
This chapter is divided into five sections. First, I describe the design of
the research study. Second, I describe the context of the classroom including
the philosophy of school, the participants in the study and the daily schedule
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of the classroom. Third, I examine my role as a participant-observer including
how researcher subjectivity influenced data collection, analysis and
interpretation. I discuss the trustworthiness and ethical dilemmas of the
study. Fourth, I look at the methods I used to collect data as well as the
timeline for the study. Finally, I explain the methods of data analysis
through which I grounded the interpretation of the data.
Design of the Research Study
Since I used ethnographic qualitative methods I studied the children
as they used literacy within their pretend play in a naturalistic setting. In
order effectively to gather data with breadth as well as depth, my aim was to
gain a comprehensive view of the social interactions, behaviors, and beliefs of
this primary classroom over a period of ten months in relation to literacy
learning in imagined contexts (Moss, 1992).
During the ten months of the study, I was in the classroom three to
four days a week. For each visit I stayed the entire day – arriving with the
children first thing in the morning at 9:00 am and leaving with them at 3:30
pm. This prolonged period of interaction established an “orienting theory…a
way of looking at things” (Kantor & Fernie, 2003, p. 6). In other words, I
wanted to understand and participate in the culture of this classroom, which,
like the culture of any classroom, developed over time as the children, and I
interacted and played with one another.
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Ethnography is an ongoing attempt to place specific encounters, events
and understandings into a fuller, more meaningful context (Tedlock, 2000).
“Ethnography as a methodology provided ways of revealing a group’s
patterned life and the processes through which such life is socially
constructed by it participants” (Fernie & Kantor, 2003, p.7). In other words, I
chose ethnographic methodology to uncover the literacy practices the children
were participating in during their play.
According to Hymes (1972) there are three modes of ethnographic
inquiry: comprehensive-oriented ethnography, topic-oriented ethnography,
and hypothesis-oriented ethnography. Comprehensive-oriented ethnography
seeks to describe the life of a community in as much complexity as possible.
Topic-oriented ethnography narrows the research focus down to one or more
aspects of community life. Both comprehensive-oriented and topic-oriented
ethnography may lead to hypothesis –oriented ethnography, which can be
done when an ethnographer has a great deal of ethnographic knowledge
about a community and formulates a hypothesis about the community. For
example I could have formulated a hypothesis that the children would
pretend on the playground and during free choice time (Moss, 1992).
This ethnography is topic-oriented because it provides a description
and an analysis of kindergarteners/first graders’ literacy use in the everyday
classroom, within their pretend play, and during an extended use of drama.
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My research interests resided primarily in the imaginary spaces created
when the children played and when we used drama.
This ethnography provided a “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) of how
the children used literacy and learned literacy practices while playing with
one another and with me. During November and December of the children’s
first grade year, the children pretended to be zoo designers. I imagined and
played alongside of the children. During November and December of the
children’s first grade year, the children played at different times of the day.
This ethnography includes the following characteristics (EganRobertson & Willett, 1998, p. 5):
It is holistic, contextualized, and comparative. The observed events
are presented and interpreted within a situated context.
It adheres to a recursive and cyclical process of research. The data
collection, analysis and interpretation occur continuously
throughout the study.
The children’s perspective of literacy learning within imagined
spaces is highlighted.
Because the social worlds of the classroom and of our imagined spaces
were brought into being by our social interactions they were always in
process and the lives of the children and my own life shifted and changed
overtime. These reported events take this dynamic process into consideration
and describes the connections between the everyday life and the imagined
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space of the classroom (Charmaz, 2000). Through careful and systemic
observations as well as descriptions of everyday action in this classroom
where meaning was enacted, I make interpretations about the literacy that
was important in these children’s play lives (Egan-Robertson & Willett,
1998).
Classroom Context
School’s philosophy
The elementary school where this study took place is identified as an
alternative school in a large urban school district. The alternative program is
driven by an informal philosophy. In an informal philosophy according to the
school’s website, informal educators believe that children enter school as
active learners eager to continue the learning process by working with staff,
other children, parents and volunteers. They further maintain that many
opportunities need to be provided for children to learn by doing and by
interacting with their environment in a social context. Strong positive
teacher guidance provides children with the opportunity to take
responsibility for their own learning. It is also acknowledged that children
express their knowledge and talents through visual art, music and dance.
Through all learning opportunities, adults and children learn simultaneously.
Description of Setting
In this study I examined children’s literacy learning during pretend
play and an extended use of drama in a kindergarten (2004/2005) and first
74
grade (2005/2006) classroom. I followed the same group of children and their
classroom teacher during the kindergarten and first grade year. During the
kindergarten year I spent the months of April, May and two weeks of June in
the classroom. During the first grade year I was in the classroom from the
last week in August 2005 through the second week of May 2006. I was in the
classroom at least two to three day a week for the ten months of the study.
The classroom was located in K-5 elementary school situated in a large
urban school district in a mid-western city where a major university is
located. The elementary school was within walking of the university in a
congested urban area affording the class the possibility of using many of the
university’s arts, cultural, and educational resources. The school building
was built in the early 1900’s. The grounds of the school included a large
parking lot in the back with a small playground and a grassy play area. The
school had limited outdoor space.
The children
There were twenty-four children in the class. All twenty-four of the
kindergarten children moved into first grade together. Their teacher was the
same for both the kindergarten 2004/2005 school year and the first grade
2005/2006 school year. During both years there were twelve girls and twelve
boys in the class. There were seven African-American children and
seventeen European-American children in the class. The African-American
children included four boys and three girls, while the European-American
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children include eight boys and nine girls. All of the children and the teacher
in the kindergartenand first grade class participated in the study.
Selection of the focus children
Since I wanted to focus my attention intially on children’s play and I
could only play with a few children at a time I had to make some choices as to
whom I was going to play with out on the playground and during free choice
time. At the beginning of the study, I decided to choose certain children that
I would focus on over the course of the study. Originally, I based my selection
of those children who played together, who used literacy as they played, and
who invited or welcomed me into the worlds of their play.
After the first month in the classroom I narrowed my focus to eight
children (four boys and four girls). In the second month of the study I became
overwhelmed with the large amount of data I had collected so I narrowed my
focus further to five children. Because I wanted the focus children to reflect
classroom demographics the five focus children included an African-American
boy and girl as well as a European-American boy and two girls. Test scores
were not a criteria for selection.
Description of the focus children
The first child I chose for the study was Guy, a European-American
boy I knew before the study. I met Guy when Guy’s mother and I presented
together at a national conference the autumn before I began this study.
During the first couple of weeks of the study, Guy greeted me in the morning,
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invited me to sit beside him during instructional time. Guy was one of the
first children to invite me to play with him during free choice time.
As indicated in Table 3.1 below, Guy played with many children. I
selected CJ as the other boy for four reasons. First and foremost, he was a
frequent playmate of Guy’s. CJ and Guy also included many literacy practices
in their pretend play. CJ was one of two African-American boys who played
with Guy. CJ also invited me to play with him.
I selected three girls to be focus children. Gloria and Iris were selected
because they invited me to play with them out on the playground. Gloria and
Iris played together frequently. During the initial weeks of data collection
the girls were noted together consistently in my fieldnotes. I could not include
one without referring to the other.
Since both Gloria and Iris were European-Americans and I wanted the
study to reflect the demographics of the classroom I decided to include Sally,
an African American girl. Of the three African American girls in the
classroom, I observed Sally playing with Guy and CJ frequently. Sally also
invited me to play with her.
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Biographical information on the focus core children is as follows:
Name
Core Children
Sex
Race/Ethnicity
CJ
Boy
African American
Sally
Girl
African American
Iris
Girl
Gloria
Girl
Guy
Boy
European
American
European
American
European
American
Table 3.1 Core Children and Play Partners
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Who the focus
children were
observed playing
with most often
from most
frequent to least
frequent
Guy
Sally
Abby
Alex
Alex
CJ
Guy
Carrie
Gloria
Abby
Iris
Abby
CJ
Sally
Alex
Rick
Michael
Carrie
Abby
Eric
Jarrod
Faith
Luke
Eric
Description of the teacher - Millie (Mrs. N)
Millie (Mrs. N.), who was born in Wales, was a teacher with ten years
experience. Before coming to the United States, she had a career in Wales
working for the local government. After coming to the United States, Millie
began teaching after her own children were in school. Millie spoke with a
Welsh accent, which the children appeared to enjoy whenever she read or told
a story.
I learned of Millie through Dr. Brian Edmiston, my advisor at Ohio
State. Knowing of my interest in children’s play and its connection to literacy
and literacy learning, Dr. Edmiston recommended I contact Millie to see if
she was interested in participating in my study because he had previously
conducted research in her classroom in the past.
Researcher’s notebook
Sunday, February 6, 2005
7:00 am
I am excited to meet with Mrs. N. Dr. Edmiston seemed to like the work
he did with her – something about Giants and Jack and Beanstalk. I just love
her accent – talking to her on the phone sounds like I am talking to Mary
Poppins. I hope she agrees to participate in the study – I guess I need to let
her know that I am interested in play, drama and how it affects the children’s
literacy development.
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1:30 pm
Mrs. N.’s first response to my study was, “You know we know longer
play in kindergarten!” Boy, was I disappointed. But right after saying that
she went on to describe a pretend play/drama project that she and the
children had just completed pertaining to the tsunami that had occurred in
Indonesia. I said to her after she described the drama –(the children created
an adoption agency for the animals affected by the storm), “What you did
sounds like play to me!”
She and I agreed to let me conduct research in her class. It sounds
ideal the children are in kindergarten now and the class all continues to first
grade together with Mrs. N. as their teacher. She also told me the classroom
schedule and it sounds like there will be plenty of opportunity to observe the
children playing and to play with the children
Even though Mrs. N. sometimes took part when we used drama, this
study was not focused on the classroom teacher actions or interactions. Mrs.
N. was a participant in the study but this study was not about her teaching
techniques. While Mrs. N. invited me into her classroom, Mrs. N. concerned
herself with the planning, instruction, and assessment of the children. She
only took part and pretended with the children when the entire class
participated in the extended use of drama during the months of November
and December of the children’s first grade year. I noted her concerns and
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questions during the study particularly during the classroom drama in my
field notes and during informal conversations.
Classroom Schedule
Following the school philosophy, the classroom schedule allowed for
the children and parents to begin the school day together. The kindergarten
year of the study, eighteen of the twenty-four children were dropped off in the
morning by their parents. The first grade year of the study, one more of the
children were dropped off by a parent. The parents, who brought their
children to school, could assist their children and other children in the room
to begin their school day. The first activities upon entering the room involved
teacher’s record keeping and children’s reading and writing.
Kindergarten Year
8:45 – 9:20 Record keeping (lunch count, attendance etc), reading morning
message, morning problem solving question, and journal writing
9:20 – 9:35 Journal sharing, reading morning message, listening to read
aloud
9:35 – 10:15 Writer’s workshop
10:15 – 11:00 Centers - work on science, language arts (word work,
research) or social studies in small groups
11:00 – 11:15 Recess
11:20 – 11:30 Read Aloud
11:30 – 12:00 Math or Science
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch and Recess
1:00 – 2:00 Calendar/Guided Reading/Reading Boxes
2:05 – 2:40 Music/Art/Dance Physical Movement
2:45 – 3:30 Free Choice time
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First Grade Year
8:45 – 9:20 Record keeping (lunch count, attendance etc), reading morning
message, morning problem solving and journal writing
9:20 – 9:35 Journal sharing, reading morning message, read aloud
9:35 – 10:15 Writer’s workshop
10:15 – 11:00 Music/Art/Dance Physical Movement
11:00 – 11:15 Recess
11:20 – 11:30 Read Aloud
11:30 – 12:00 Center time – work on science, language arts (word work,
spelling, writing assignments) or social studies in small groups
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch and Recess
1:00 – 1:15 Town meeting – meeting about successes and problems as a
community
1:15 – 1:45 Reading
1:45 – 2:15 Math
2:15 – 2:20 Snack
2:20 – 3:05 Free choice time
3:05 – 3:25 Read Aloud from a chapter book
3:25 – 3:30 Get ready to go home
My Position as Participant – Observer
Ethnography is both a process and a product. The position of an
ethnographer is viewed as the “lived experience” - of being there (ChiseriStrater, 1991). Ethnographers enter group settings with the expectation that
each group constructs culture, a patterned way of conducting life, together.
Ethnographers in classrooms have an interest in revealing those cultural
patterns (Fernie & Kantor, 2003). I wanted to uncover the literacy practices
the children used as a part of their play as a member of their classroom
community. So I intentionally adopted the orientation of an insider adopting
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an “emic” view in the classroom (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994). I adopted
this viewpoint especially in relation to the children’s play.
My position as a participant – observer took place over a prolonged
period of time. A ten-month period was necessary because I needed to
become relatively unobtrusive and unintrusive to the setting so I could gain
an emic perspective of the literacy practices occurring within the children’s
pretend play. I wanted to make sense of the complex and dynamic nature of
their classroom learning (Fernie & Kantor, 2003). I also wanted the children
to get to know me and play with me on the playground and during free choice
time. I wanted them to start thinking of me as a playmate, one with whom
they could play and have fun.
My position of participant-observer was fluid and dynamic. My position
changed as I moved as subtly as I could through the fourfold typology
described by Atkinson & Hammersley (1994). I moved from initially being a
complete observer, to then being observer as participant. Gradually I became
a participant as observer, and finally a complete participant. Over most of
the study I found myself in the middle positions: I was usually either an
observer as participant or a participant as observer.
In the beginning of the study I took the position of observer as
participant and I stressed my position as an observer because I was
interested in the literacy practices the children initiated within their pretend
play on their own. This position supported my focus on the first question of
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the study: When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities
for children to learn literacy practices?
I took the position of observer as participant during free choice time
and during recess. I adopted a “reactive” entry strategy (Corsaro, 2003, p.
10). I used this strategy by continually making myself available during the
children’s free time waiting for the children to react to me. I did this by
standing or sitting near small groups of children as they played in the
classroom or out on the playground. Over time the children began to invite
me to play with them. If the children invited me to play with them I would
observe the theme of the play and take part in the on going pretend play
theme or situation.
As the children and I began to play, I could shift my position as a
participant-observer to become more of a participant than an observer. Even
though I took a more active role within the children’s pretend play I still
maintained the stance that I would attempt to follow what the children were
doing. I followed their lead and took up a position in the pretend play that
was complimentary to what they were doing. I might ask for their
assistance, or I allow the children to position me.
If I saw an opportunity to engage the children in literacy practices that
were inherent to a pretend play context I would offer attempt to do so. I did
so because of the second research question of this study: When teachers play
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with children, how can adults mediate literacy learning and how do children
mediate their own literacy learning?
I became more of participant in the children’s play. I imagined
alongside the children and I would interact with and react to them as if I was
someone else. I also participated with all of the children during an extended
use of drama for three weeks in the month of November and December of the
children’s first grade year.
Researcher’s Subjectivity
Both the data collection and analysis in ethnography is subjective and
interpretive due to the subjective nature of the data that is focused on and
shared in ethnographies. With the subjective nature of ethnography in mind
I always tried to be aware of how my subjectivity blurred what I was seeing.
This study necessitated that I try to see what I was not seeing and to
reflectively map my subjectivity (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). This required me
to constantly question and reevaluate my perspective and positions through
reflection, introspection, and self-monitoring. I needed to find somewhere to
stand “that is supposed to be one and the same time -- an intimate view and a
cool assessment” (Geertz, 1982, p. 10). In other words, I considered it
necessary to detail and assess all that was happening around me.
Establishing Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness was established through several strategies. First, the
data was drawn from several sources (field notes, observations, audiotapes,
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and the collection of artifacts) to ensure the triangulation of the data.
Second, I had informal interviews with the teacher, children, and parents to
check if my tentative interpretations of what I was seeing in the children’s
play was consistent with what they observed or experienced in the play
situations. Finally, I had a colleague do peer debriefings both to ensure that
the coding was logical, and to comment on the findings.
Ethical Considerations
Moss (1992) suggested that ethnographers be concerned with how their
previous roles and their new roles (that of researcher) will affect their
perceptions of the community they are investigating. She stressed that it is
important for an ethnographer to make the familiar strange. The major
ethical consideration I encountered occurred at the beginning of this study.
It entailed how I positioned myself in the classroom.
I believed when I began the study that I would be studying a classroom
not unlike my own from the past. This belief caused me problems that I did
not anticipate when I negotiated my way into the classroom. Since I wanted
to investigate children’s literacy learning within pretend play, at times I
needed to rein in my natural tendencies as a past teacher to help children.
While I had no problem passing out papers or collecting materials from the
children as a teacher would, I decided to not participate in some teacher-like
actions such as leading the class in from recess or giving permission to
children on the playground to get a drink or use the bathroom. If a child
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would approach me on the playground asking for a pass into the building, I
would respond to them, by saying, “I’m not a teacher. I’m just out here
playing.” Likewise in the classroom, I helped children if they requested my
assistance with things like reading the morning message or tying their shoes
but if a child would ask me to read them a book during free choice time, I
would respond to them that I really wanted to play and if they wanted me to
play with them I would. I also did not directly teach any lessons in a
traditional sense.
There were ethical considerations in doing qualitative research with
young children. I was always cognizant of my roles in the classroom as an
adult but also as a potential friend. Since I was attempting to befriend the
children I worked to not correct children or redirect children if they were
misbehaving according to classroom rules. For example, if I was sitting next
to a child during instructional time and they were not doing assigned work I
would simply observe them and not redirect them. I attempted to act as if I
was just in the classroom to play with them. The only time I positioned
myself as a teacher during play was when or if a child was being unsafe
physically or emotionally. I would stop children who were doing something
dangerous or if a child was ridiculing another child.
At the beginning of the study I explained the purpose of the study to
the parents. I sought their permission to play with and observe their
children. I gained permission from all the parents of the children in the
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classroom. Only one modification was made from the original research
proposal and that was due to an objection from some parents to video tape
the class.
Finally, the type of qualitative study I undertook required me to
constantly check with the children to make certain that I was “getting it
right”. At the beginning of the study I informed the children that I was
interested in their play and that I wanted to play with them. Throughout the
study, I checked and rechecked with the children to make sure that my
analysis and interpretations of the pretend play events corresponded with
their interpretations. I would do this in informal conversations as the
children were lining up to go inside from the playground or during a
transition time in the classroom. During the extended use of drama, every
other day I would pull a group of children together and member check the
analysis and interpretation of the literacy practices taking place in the
imagined space.
Data Collection Procedures
The purpose of data collection was threefold. First, to gain an
understanding of the literacy practices in the children’s play and how the
learning of those practices took place in pretend play. Second, to identify how
teachers mediated literacy learning when playing or using drama with
children. Finally, to examine how the children mediated their own literacy
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practices as they interacted when they played and participated when we used
drama.
I used an ethnographic method of taking field notes.
“Notetaking/Notemaking” (Frank, 1999) was used as a tool to separate the
field notes into two parts. Notetaking was my observations of action and
Notemaking was my interpretation of those actions (See Table 3.1). During
the day I wrote down what I observed while I interacted with the children. I
would then go back to the observation notes later in the day to elaborate on
my observations and note any questions I would have about the observations.
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Notetaking
Notemaking
All of the children were required to
It is amazing that none of the
come to the rug. Mrs. N. gave 5
children as they explained how they
different children the opportunity to
got their answer - copied another’s
share the way they worked out the
answer. This I believe shows the
problem of the day. The problem of
children attempting to inquire about
the day was 10-3 =.
various subjects and make their own
All five of the children shared how
attempt to figure things out.
they not only got the correct answer
Mrs. N. didn’t say one way of getting
of 7 but how they worked the problem the answer was better than the other.
out. All five children worked the
I appreciated that – so do the
problem out differently. Erin –
children? The children seem to
counted on fingers backwards.
understand that it is okay to inquire
Rick: I counted in my head. I started
anyway that they feel comfortable
in my head with ten and went back 3.
doing so.
Josh: I took 3 away from 10.
Funny how CJ and Sally did the
Other two children were CJ and
problem together. Sally once again
Sally.
told CJ what to do.
Sally and CJ did the problem
together. CJ: “We used the counting
bears.” Sally: “Yea, we laid out 10
bears – I took 3 and hide em behind
my back and told CJ to count the
bears left. We got 7 that way.”
Table 3.2 Notetaking/Notemaking -- Example from field notes
I also audio recorded various play episodes throughout the study. I
audio recorded many of the focus children’s conversations as they played.
Much of the classroom drama that occurred in November and December was
audio recorded. I also interviewed the children and audio recorded informal
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conversations about the drama, outside of the drama. All of the audio
recordings were transcribed verbatim.
I was the major instrument of data collection due to the
participant/observer nature of the study. A qualitative researcher, as the
main instrument of data collection, mediates the information through his or
her observations, field notes, impressions and feelings (Creswell, 1994). I
used a researcher’s notebook or journal separate from my notebook of field
notes and observations. This notebook is where I captured many of my
impressions and feelings during the study and during the writing of the
dissertation. I took photographs of the children’s actions and the literacy
products created during pretend play and the drama. There was no
videotaping due to some objections from the parents.
Since I wanted to have an emic, or insider’s, view of this primary
classroom, I attended and participated in the classroom two to three days a
week for five to six hours a day. If I was not in the classroom on a particular
day and the teacher noted the children including literacy practices during
their pretend play, she would email me her anecdotal notes. During the
classroom drama that occurred during the months of November and
December, the teacher and I emailed one another frequently to communicate
about past and future events.
I collected written artifacts created during pretend play from the focus
children. I also collected all of the written artifacts created during the
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classroom drama. All data collected contributed to the triangulation of the
data.
Timeline of Study
Dates
April 2005 – June 2005
Amount of Time in
the Classroom
Number of days in
week/hours in day
In kindergarten
classroom - 3 days a
week – 6 hours each day
June-July 2005
Summer break for
children
August 2005-October
2005
In first grade classroom
– 3 days a week – 6
hours each day
November-December
2005
In classroom 2 to 4 days
a week – 6 hours each
day
Research Activities
Began initial data
collection/analysis and
negotiated entry into
the classroom.
Began ongoing
conversations or
informal interviews
with the teacher and
children
Continued data analysis
and coded initial data
and analyzed for
recurring patterns.
Continued recursive
data collection/analysis.
Conducted initial
informal interviews of
parents. Continued
ongoing conversations
or informal interviews
with teacher and
children
Entire class
participated in drama
work.
Continued data
collection and analysis;
ongoing conversations
or informal interviews
with teacher and
children.
Continued
Table 3.3 Timeline of the Study
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Table 3.3 Continued
January 2006 – April
2006
In classroom 2-3 days a
week – 4 to 6 hours each
day. Phased out of the
classroom
May 2006 – May 2007
Continued data
collection and analysis;
ongoing conversations
or informal interviews
with teacher and
children as well as
possible follow up
interview with parents
Continued data analysis
and wrote dissertation
Analysis of Data
Data came from multiple sources, including classroom and playground
observations, informal interviews/conversations, and dialogue from pretend
play interactions. The corpus of the data consisted of the following:
audiotapes of informal interviews/conversations and dialogue from pretend
play, Notetaking/Notemaking field notes, researcher’s journal, email
exchanged between the teacher and myself, play and drama artifacts,
photographs, and child-created written texts.
Initial Coding
Throughout the research I aimed to understand the literacy events and
practices that took place during the children’s pretend play. As I analyzed
the data, I viewed analysis as an ongoing process that was inseparable and
reciprocal with data collection. I collected and analyzed the data in context.
I endeavored to interpret emergent themes in context as I collected the data
(Charmaz, 2000).
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Additionally, data analysis was on going with data collection due to the
recursive nature of this study. Data analysis done simultaneously with the
data collection enabled me to refocus and reshape the study continuously
(Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). According to Miles and Huberman (1994), “Coding
is analysis” (p. 56). In other words, coding is a constant interpretive process
of searching the data for patterns, themes and regularities.
Relying on grounded theory (Glasser & Straus, 1967; Straus & Corbin,
1990) I read and reread the data – generating codes by making comparisons.
I used two aspects of the constant comparative method of grounded theory.
The first aspect I used in conjunction with my first research question: When
and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities for children to
learn literacy practices? For this question I compared data “from the same
individuals with themselves at different points in time” (Charmaz, 2000, p.
515). In other words I would compare data from individual focus children
over and across the days that I observed them.
The second aspect of comparison, “comparing incident with incident”
(Charmaz, 2000, p. 515) I used in conjunction with both research questions.
My second research question was as follows: When teachers play with
children, how can teachers mediate literacy learning and how do children
mediate their own literacy learning? In analyzing both questions, I compared
the individual children’s interactions in the pretend play and drama
activities with those in school-related tasks.
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In November and December 2006 of the children’s first grade year I
developed another set of codes based on the classroom drama that the entire
class took part in. I based these codes on the drama activity, the ways the
children were positioned as experts, and the adult mediational moves within
the drama.
As I read through the data, I identified recurring or similar phrases,
patterns, themes, and common sequences and I marked large segments of
data with descriptive words or category names to signify that particular
segment. Coding helped me gain a new perspective on the data and directed
further data collection. During this phase of the data collection/analysis I
developed codes surrounding the literacy events and practices that were
embedded within the children’s pretend play or the classroom drama. I also
developed codes involving the positions that the children took up as they
engaged in the literacy events and practices during pretend play or classroom
drama. Finally, I developed codes revolving around the adult-child
interactions and reactions during pretend play and drama.
As the study continued, I began to look for relationships between the
codes. As a unit of analysis, I chose to include long passages of data in order
to preserve meaning and contextual information.
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Peer Debriefer
During the study, I shared the emerging coding system with a peer
debriefer. The peer debriefer was a graduate student colleague at the
university who was in the beginning stages of a qualitative research study of
young children. She had general knowledge about the focus of my study and
was well aware of the common dilemmas of ethnographic research. She was
also an appropriate choice for a peer debriefer because she could offer a
critical and divergent perspective since she was not directly involved with the
children, teacher or my project. I continued to use the peer debriefer
throughout all stages of analysis and writing, relying on her to help me
rethink and refine my ideas and interpretations.
Writing the Dissertation Study
Merriam (1998) defined data analysis as a process through which the
researcher makes sense out of the data. In the case of this study, writing up
the dissertation was the cumulative process I undertook in an attempt to
understand the literacy practices embedded in children’s pretend play and
the classroom drama. Writing also involved me constantly rethinking my
understanding of mediation.
As I wrote this dissertation, it was not a separate or discrete aspect of
my methodology. Writing functioned as an integral part of the analysis and
interpretation for me. Writing was a way of knowing through discovery and
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analysis (Richardson, 1994). As I wrote this dissertation I considered this
endeavor an opportunity for me to glimpse into children’s pretend play lives.
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CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS I: AGENCY IN PRETEND PLAY
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I present findings from data of five focus children as
they interact and/or play with one another and with adults. I place
particular emphasis on the literacy practices that are evident when the
children play. I present findings of when and how the five focus children use
literacy practices during pretend play concentrating on those that the
children incorporated into their play.
The following research question guided data analysis in this chapter:
1. When and how does children’s pretend play create
opportunities for children to learn literacy practices?
The children in room 11 at Fairchild Alternative Elementary School
loved to play. While the schedule called for the children to learn literacy
throughout the day, there were two specific times of the day when the
children could choose their own activities and when all children in the
classroom engaged in some form of play They could choose activities at the
end of the day during free choice time and during two recesses. The first
recess was in the morning and the second recess was after lunch
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Before beginning this study, neither the classroom teacher nor the
adults in the classroom had participated with the children as they played
during recess or free choice time. Mrs. N. used this time to assess children or
to catch up on her paperwork. The only time she interacted with the children
during recess or free choice time was if the children were getting too loud, if
the children were having a disagreement, or if a child’s safety was at-risk.
I observed and often played with children during free choice time and
recess. As I explained in Chapter 3, the position I took during pretend play
was more as an interested observer than a participant. When I entered the
children’s play I adopted a “reactive” entry strategy (Corsaro, 2003, p. 10) I
strategically made myself available during free choice time and recess and I
waited for the children to react to me. I did this by standing or sitting near
small groups of children as they played in the classroom or out on the
playground.
If I stood by the children, many times they would invite me to play
with them. When I was invited to play, I would observe and then maintain
the theme of the play as I took take part. . Occasionally, I would explicitly
suggest that the children add literacy to their play. For example, I would
suggest that they write a message or directions down. Many times I would
suggest the addition of literacy implicitly. For example, I would ask a
question about the play context like, “How do you let the customers know
how much something cost? Or I would ask, “Do you have a map that you are
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following?” This was a helpful strategy for exploring my first research
question because I was interested in what literacy the children decided to
include in their play on their own.
Additionally, it is important to note that while I present data about
one or two of the children to illustrate that pretend play is an appropriate
space for children to utilize literacy practices, this does not mean other
children did not use some of the same or similar literacy practices. I describe
the literacy practices of those children that I focused on particular days.
The Focus Children
As I noted in chapter three, I focused on five of the children in the
classroom (two boys and three girls). Two of the focus children were AfricanAmerican (a boy and a girl) and three of the children were EuropeanAmerican (two girls and a boy). Each of the five focus children provided
insight into how the pretend play events created opportunities for using
literacy practices. There were other peripheral children, who occasionally
played with the focal children but not on a consistent basis.
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Biographical information on the focus core children is as follows:
Name
Core Children
Sex
Race/Ethnicity
CJ
Boy
African American
Sally
Girl
African American
Iris
Girl
Gloria
Girl
Guy
Boy
European
American
European
American
European
American
Table 4.1 Focus Children and Play Partners
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Who the focus
children were
observed playing
with most often *
The list is from
most frequent to
least frequent
Guy
Sally
Abby
Alex
Alex
CJ
Guy
Carrie
Gloria
Abby
Iris
Abby
CJ
Sally
Alex
Rick
Michael
Carrie
Abby
Eric
Jarrod
Faith
Luke
Eric
Description of Focus Children
CJ
CJ was a quiet, thin, friendly African-American six-year-old boy, who,
during free choice time, enjoyed playing in the pretend play area, an area
with a loft, table and chairs, toy refrigerator, stove and sink, dresses up
clothes. CJ loved to listen to Mrs. N. read or tell stories. While CJ
cooperated and followed the routine of the classroom well, he liked to finish
teacher assigned work quickly. Frequently, CJ’s father brought him to school
in the morning and helped him get started with the routines of the day.
Some days CJ was dropped off at school and no adult accompanied him into
the classroom. CJ and Guy played together frequently.
Guy
Guy was a small, but solidly built, blonde-haired European-American
six-year-old boy who began to wear glasses in the beginning of first grade.
Guy loved to pretend to be different characters both fictional characters such
as Batman or Peter Pan and common everyday people such as a police officer
or a waiter. Guy was observed playing with many children during the study,
Though CJ was Guy’s most frequent playmate.
Guy’s mother, Cathy, was a teacher at the school. At the time of my
study, Cathy taught part-time in the afternoon, sharing her job with another
teacher. I was familiar with Guy before I decided to do the study. I had met
Guy earlier when his mother and I presented at a conference the autumn
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before I began my study. Guy’s mother brought him to school every morning
and helped him begin the routines of the day.
Guy struggled with teacher-assigned work. He had difficulty with the
fine motor task of writing so journal writing and writer’s workshop was
difficult for him. Guy used teacher-created yellow highlighted paper to write
in his journal and during writer’s workshop. Guy categorized as having a
learning disability in the middle of first grade.
Sally
Sally was a skinny, petite African American six-year-old girl who
seemed to always have a smile on her face. She greeted most visitors to the
classroom in a loud booming voice. For example, Sally loudly greeted me
most mornings, calling out, “Helllooo Kim Possible”, a cartoon character on
television. Sally played with a wide variety of children but mostly she played
with boys. During free choice time in the pretend play area Sally liked to
pretend most often to be male characters she’d seen on television or in
movies. Sally rode the bus to school and she ate breakfast at school. Sally
loved to talk and spend time with friends.
Gloria and Iris
Gloria and Iris were best friends. Over the two academic years of my
study, the two were always together unless one or the other was absent from
school. Not only did Gloria and Iris spend all of their time together at school,
they spent a great deal of time together outside of school playing at parent-
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arranged play dates and in extra-curricular activities such as Camp Fire girls
and gymnastics. At school the two played together everyday and Mrs. N.
assigned them to the same work group. They anticipated each other’s arrival
at school and during the day if I was scheduled to observe one I inevitably
would also focus on the other. How their friendship was is reflected in the
following fieldnotes:
When I arrived today the children were out on the playground. Gloria and
Iris are playing together again. Today they are dressed alike – flowery flowing
skirts, colorful shirts, knitted or crocheted ponchos and socks (only difference Gloria has on two different colored socks).
(Field notes - 10-26-05)
Iris was reading chapter books in the middle of first grade while Gloria
was just beginning to read. They played and worked together in the
classroom. Many times Gloria and Iris wrote stories together.
Gloria was a thin, pale, dark haired, European-American six-year-old
girl. Iris was a blue eyed and blonde haired European-American seven-yearold girl. Gloria wore dresses or skirts to school everyday and Iris began to do
the same in the fall of 2005. Both of the girls were brought to school by one of
their parents.
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Literacy Practices in Pretend Play Events
I discovered when analyzing the data that all five of the children used
literacy practices as they played in socially imagined spaces. Socially
imagined spaces are spaces where people interact as if they are other people,
animals, or other sorts of creatures. Every time the children used literacy
practices during play, it was meaningful to the context of an imagined space.
In other words, the children only used literacy and participated in literacy
practices if the literacy practices were relevant to the pretend play situation.
Michael, Guy and Alex were using the chain links to make police officer
“costumes”. The costumes were around their waists and across their chests.
The boys were walking around the room and up to people attempting to
“arrest” them and put chain link handcuffs on others. Michael approached me
and said, I’m going to arrest you. He came up to me and attempted to put
“handcuffs” on me. I said: “What did I do and who are you – you don’t have a
badge.” Michael went and got some paper, a pencil, and some tape and made
a badge and taped it to his chest. He came back over to me and said: “See
here” – pointing to the badge.
Observing Michael make his badge, the two other boys went over and
got paper, pencils and clipboards to begin writing tickets. Alex and Guy (with
my help) made ticket books. They proceeded to pass out tickets and to arrest
people. I was arrested and I went along quietly after I saw the ticket for my
arrest.
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(Field notes – free choice time 3 – 7- 06)
In the above example, Michael did not need to be instructed to make a
badge. He knew that a badge would identify him as a police officer and he
willingly participated in the literacy practices of police officers. Alex and Guy
also participated in those literacy practices. They began the literacy practice
of writing tickets when they began to arrest people. The writing of tickets
expanded the previous pretend play context as the children included literacy
practices required of actual police officers.
In socially imagined spaces, the focus children willingly and readily
engaged in literacy practices during play. The literacy practices were
inherent to the socially imagined contexts to achieve goals intrinsic to the
imagined context rather than for any preset goals established by the district
or the teacher (Davies, 1991). The socially imagined play context encouraged
the children to take up subject positions, position one another, and engage in
literacy practices.
During pretend play events, all five of the children initiated literacy
events. None of children resisted reading or writing if the task was
appropriate to the fictional context. All five frequently engaged in literacy
practices over extended periods of time.
During pretend play events, all of five of the children willingly took up
many different fictional subject positions. As they did so they revealed their
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positions through their actions/inactions, expressions, postures, voices, and
through the artifacts they created or used.
The children used literacy in their play not only because literacy
practices were relevant to the fictional world but also because literacy
practices had become part of their play culture. Across many different play
events the children participated in different social contexts in which they
read and wrote in ways that were socially and culturally appropriate to
contexts beyond those available to them in everyday classroom spaces.
Engaging in Literacy Practices in Pretend Play Contexts
CJ and Guy played together frequently. In the following episode, CJ
pretended to be a king and Guy pretended to be a knight. CJ was a friendly,
thin, quiet African-American boy. Guy was a small, solidly built, blondehaired European-American six-year-old boy who wore glasses. CJ and Guy
frequently liked to pretend to be fictional characters that had action-packed
adventures.
CJ is playing with Guy in the pretend play area. He puts on an apron
backwards and begins marching around carrying a pointer. Standing tall at
the top of the loft (there is a wooden loft in the pretend area) and talking in a
deep voice, CJ says, “I’m king of the world. My commands need to be
followed.”
As I walk over, Guy says to me, “He is the king! The dragon king.” I say to CJ,
“You should write a royal proclamation.” CJ responds in a deep booming
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voice, “I did - it’s up here. Let me read it to you.” CJ reads the proclamation
loudly. It says: “I am an important king! I tamed the dragon. The dragon’s
name is Sun because he came from the sun. He breathes fire.”
Guy asks CJ, “Hey King CJ, can I help you capture the dragon?” CJ responds,
“Sure – of course, but remember we don’t harm the dragons – we took an oath,
we are friends and protectors of dragons.” CJ points to a posted written oath
that both he and Guy have signed their names.
(Field notes – January 17, 2006)
The imagined space of play created a zone of proximal development for
CJ and Guy. As king CJ adopted a regal posture and a powerful voice. As CJ
imagined he was the dragon king, he showed a different persona than his
everyday one in the way he stood and acted. CJ stood tall and held his head
high. His actions demonstrated that he knew how to act as a king.
CJ also pretended to be a king who used literacy. Along with using
iconic representations such as an apron around the neck to signify a royal
robe and a pointer as a royal specter, CJ willingly used literacy in the
imagined context when he read the royal decree that he had written.
Not only did CJ walk, stand and talk as a king, others socially
reinforced his position as king in this imagined space. Guy positioned CJ as
a king when he proclaimed that CJ was the dragon king. Their interaction
also involved a reference to literacy when CJ reminded Guy that they had
signed a written oath to protect dragons. This reference to a previous literacy
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event added to the imagined context. The oath became a sign that was used
symbolically to extend the imagined play context.
CJ and Guy incorporated and used literacy practices into the imagined
world of kings and knights. They used literacy practices in their play both
because literacy was part of their everyday culture and literacy was part of
the fictional world of kings and knights. CJ and Guy used both reading and
writing to support and sustain the pretend play context. In this fictional
context, CJ and Guy enacted the roles of readers and writers to display their
knowledge of the form and function of a written decree and a sworn-to oath.
As CJ and Guy participated in many different play events they used reading
and writing socially and culturally beyond what they were allowed to do in
the everyday classroom space. On this and other occasions CJ and Guy
engaged in literacy practices in a safe, risk-free environment.
A Contradiction between the Everyday Space and Imagined Spaces
CJ and Guy readily incorporated literacy practices into play events.
They drew on and used the cultural resources from their everyday world. But
both CJ and Guy frequently had a difficult time performing literacy tasks
assigned to them in the everyday classroom space. For example, earlier the
same day CJ wrote and read the royal proclamation, he had to read a
curricular assigned leveled text to the teacher. While reading, CJ had a
difficult time keeping his place in the story. CJ read at a slow pace with
many stops and pauses. He did not use any picture cues, any letter sounds or
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context clues. He asked repeatedly for help with unknown words as he read
the story. After about ten to twelve minutes of attempting to read this story
CJ went and got an easier text that he had read many times.
Guy had a much more difficult time performing literacy tasks in the
everyday classroom space. Because of this difficulty in the middle of the
study, he was identified as having a learning disability by the school. So
while Guy included many literacy practices and was successful using literacy
within his pretend play, he had a difficult time with much of the school-based
literacy required of him in the classroom. For example, Guy had difficulty
both reading aloud during guided reading and writing stories down on paper.
He had an adult assigned to work with him one-on-one for school-related
tasks. Because of these difficulties, his mother Cathy, who brought him to
school almost every morning, helped him get started with the school routines.
Simple accommodations were made for Guy. For example during journal
writing time, the lines in his journal were highlighted with a yellow
highlighter so he could easily distinguish between the lines – making writing
easier for Guy.
Guy was also very uninterested in many of the tasks required of him
during school-related activities. He found these activities, which frequently
did not allow for his active participation, very boring or not as important as
his self-initiated activities. An example of this was evident in a conversation
he had with his mother. Guy’s mother Cathy asked him why he was not
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paying attention during the morning meeting, he told her that he was
thinking about the costumes he wanted to create when he got home. He said,
“I’m trying to remember my costumes and I can’t let some of the other stuff get
in my head” (Conversation/informal interview with Cathy, 10-25-05).
A Leader in Imagined Spaces
Guy was an extremely imaginative and creative child. Guy was always
ready to join in on any activity where he could use his imagination. For Guy,
as with all of the focus children, play created a zone of proximal development.
Guy was always interested in playing at any story he had heard. The
majority of Guy’s writing involved stories he first created in his play. Once
again, the safety and “low risk” nature of play allowed Guy to succeed as he
used literacy.
Journal sharing beginning of the day -- It is journal-sharing time
during morning meeting. Individual children are being called upon to share
what they have written. Abby shares her journal writing from this morning.
She wrote about a toy (stuffed animal) dragon that she has brought in. She
reads, “Watch out! He’s watching you! He already turned Guy into stone.”
Hearing this Guy stands and pretends to be frozen with his arms up and out
to the side
(Field notes 2-21-06)
I shared this data from my field notes because this action was typical
for Guy. Imagined spaces for Guy were where he could show action. Abby
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seemed to anticipate that Guy would respond to her statement, “He already
turned Guy into stone”, exactly like he did. She knew, as all the children and
adults in Room 11 seemed to know, that Guy loved to play and he spent the
majority of his time playing.
The Power of Imagined Spaces
Guy loved to pretend and he would do so whenever he could. Guy’s
many playful actions demonstrated that play created a zone of proximal
development. Subsequently, the imagined spaces of play provided
opportunities for him to use literacy practices. The above example was not
the first time Guy was observed taking a moment or two to pretend to be a
character in a text or enacting an event from a story. Guy pretended while
he was writing, he imagined during reading time, he played during center
time and daydreamed during morning meeting. Guy pretended about eighty
to ninety percent of the school day.
Guy would play with anyone in the class. Guy’s actions in play were
collaboratively constructed and socialized as he acted and reacted to other
children. His play encouraged him to create stories with other children. He
played and imagined with many children in the classroom and out on the
playground.
Many of the children followed Guy’s lead during free choice time in the
classroom and at recess out on the playground. The children seemed to want
to have exciting adventures with him out on the playground. For example,
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one day I observed Guy, Faith, and Luke getting ready to go out to recess on
the playground. They put their backpacks on, appearing to be ready to go
home. Faith said to Guy, “Are you ready to go?” Guy responded, “Sure!”
Out on the playground I observed the following:
Playground – recess in the morning. Guy, Luke and Faith are flying around
on their jet packs (their backpacks). Faith: “Hey what’s the map say is over
there?” Guy: “I don’t know let me look!” Guy pulls out a piece of paper. (see
below) Luke: “Watch out you guys are flying too close to the sun!” Guy: “Oh
no we’re not. Look at the map it’s a fake sun put up here by Bullseye to trick
us.” Luke runs over to Guy and Faith and grabs the map from Guy. Luke:
“Oh I see! You know we should each have our own map – will you make me
one? Or can I copy yours.” Guy: “Sure! It’s easy.” (Field notes 3-6-06)
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Figure 4.1-- The map Guy, Luke and Faith played with on the playground
Words on the map: Climbing bridge, island, treetops, alligator, and
cave.
Guy was not only an active participant in reading and creating maps
he was also an expert literacy leader in the imagined space. He was able to
help Luke and Faith read the map and create one of their own. Luke
requested Guy’s assistance in reading the map and help in making a map.
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Guy was able to be “the expert” because in the imagined space he was a
reader and creator of maps.
Writing about Play
Guy liked superhero movies and stories about Batman and Spiderman;
adventure movies and stories like Indiana Jones and Peter Pan and scary
stories and movies about Frankenstein, Dracula, witches and werewolves.
Many of these characters were first included in his play and then written
about in stories. Guy wrote about his play during journal writing time and
writers’ workshop.
When Guy composed written stories as a teacher-assigned task he also
included people he knew such as family members and friends in addition to
the superheroes, adventurers, and monsters from his play. This was evident
in the story below called The Witch’s Dream. In this story, Guy included his
mom, his sister and himself. In his story the three of them encountered a
witch in a castle.
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Figure 4.2 Guy’s story the Witch’s Dream – First page - September 30, 2005.
Text from the story above says:
My mom, Enid and me were driving in the van.
Additional text –subsequent pages:
We saw a castle and knocked on the door. A little old lady answered
the door. She was a witch. “Come in, Come in! Don’t be afraid
Guy shared with me, the morning he wrote this story, that he had
played it with his little sister the night before. The above story was one of
many confirming that Guy’s play created a zone of proximal development for
his writing. He used his playful interactions with others in the imagined
space to create fictional text about his play during writer’s workshop. He
included characters and setting, and he developed the plot in written stories.
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Guy brought other written artifacts to school that he created at home,
which he included in his play. Guy brought in maps, secret plans, tickets,
and secret codes. Guy wrote about these written artifacts during journal
writing at the beginning of the day. As in the example below:
Figure 4.3 Guy’s writing about a map he created at home
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Guy writing above says:
I made a map. It is old. I think it is cool. My map has a lot of trees.
There are tally marks.
Guy also designed and created costumes for the characters he
pretended to be in his play. Cathy (Guy’s mother) reported that at home,
Guy would find various clothing around the house that the characters in his
play could wear. He would lay the clothing out and take or draw a picture of
the character’s outfit or “costume”. Guy participated in many literacy
practices while creating the costumes. He drew and labeled the various parts
of the costumes. Guy also labeled each of the costumes according to which
character the costume belonged to in his play. The literacy Guy used to
create costumes for various characters in play were intertwined with Guy’s
stories about his play.
During play, Guy was successful using literacy practices. Guy
successfully created stories by himself and with other children. Guy’s stories
included fictional characters from books, television, movies and popular
culture. His stories also included family and friends. Guy engaged in a
variety of literacy practices during play that extended or deepened the
pretend play events. Guy was able to write creative and exciting stories
during writer’s workshop and journal writing if he had the opportunity to
play the story first.
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Using Literacy in Play with Boys and to become a “Boy”
Sally was a six-year-old petite, friendly, outgoing African American girl
who particularly liked to play with boys. There were three boys in particular
she loved to play with: Alex, Guy and CJ. Sally also enjoyed pretending to be
male characters whenever she played. Over the course of the study, Sally
pretended to be Batman, Spiderman, Peter Pan, Secret Agent Spies, Ninja
Fighters, Power Rangers, a King, a bad guy, and a mean dinosaur “who will
eat your face off”. An example of this follows:
The boys played “Secret agent spies” out on the playground yesterday. In this
play, the boys sneak around, peaking around corners, hiding behind bushes
and trees “spying” on people - “who are mean to us” (Guy, audiotape, 2-21-06).
The first pretend play episode occurred on a day when Sally was absent. The
day Sally returned to school, she sat next to Guy during journal writing time.
Guy had created a map for the secret agent spy play the night before at home
and he brought it to school to use as he played “secret agent spies”. He was
writing about the map at journal writing. Sally, who sat next to Guy, saw the
map and asked him about it. Guy told her, “This is a map for secret agent
spies out on the playground.” Sally responded, “Cool, I want to play too. Guy
said, “Yeah but CJ and I are the spies.” To which Sally responded, “Okay,
Alex and I can be the bad guys and chase you.” Guy responded, “Okay! See you
by the dumpster.” (A designated spot for the children to gather to initiate or
continue play) –
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(Field notes 2 –21 –06)
I observed Sally frequently pretending as male characters during play.
In the socially imagined play spaces, Sally constructed meaning about the
world and her place in it where she could pretend to be male characters if she
wanted to. Even though Guy stated above that, “Yeah but CJ and I are the
spies.” Sally decided that she and Alex could play and be the “bad guys” who
chased the spies. In the above example, Sally was determined to play with
the boys and take up an active position as a “bad guy”.
In comparison, other girls who participated in secret agent spy play
joined in as the girlfriends, sisters and mothers of the secret agent spies,
fictional characters who helped and supported the spies. The other girls
pretended to be characters who remained back at the “Bat cave” (a reference
the imaginary world of Batman); drew maps, answered the “Bat phone”, and
cooked food. The girls took up supportive positions to the male characters of
secret agent spies.
Resisting Everyday Positioning in Imagined Spaces
While this study is not about how children’s gender positioning
intersected with their broadersocial positioning , I cannot talk about Sally
without referring to gender. Sally wrote stories about male characters and
explained to me why she enjoyed pretending to be male characters. Sally’s
determination to be seen as powerful and to pretend to be male characters
was questioned a few times by other children. In the example below, Sally
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stated the reasons why she loved to pretend to be Peter Pan. Guy questioned
her about taking up a position that he saw as a male position. He presented
her with an alternative female position and she resisted the position. She
wanted to position herself as more powerful.
Writer’s workshop
Sally and Guy are sitting at the table. Sally is writing a story about Peter
Pan. “I love this story. I love playing this story and pretending I’m Peter Pan!
Peter Pan can fly and fight with swords!” Sally exclaims. Guy laughs and
says, “Sally, Peter Pan is a boy why not be Wendy?” To which Sally responds,
“I ain’t going to be Wendy! Wendy needs Peter Pan to save her. She’s boring
and a baby! And I aint no baby”
(Field Notes and Audiotape 3-7-06)
Sally wanted to pretend that she was Peter Pan. Peter Pan has agency
and determines what he can and cannot do. Sally knew that Peter Pan could
fly and fight with swords while the character of Wendy had less agency
because she needed Peter Pan to rescue her. In Sally’s opinion, “Wendy was
boring”. Sally would not let Guy position her as Wendy simply because she
was a girl. Sally let Guy know that she was not going to be Wendy because
she considered Wendy a baby and she, Sally, was not a baby.
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Powerful Female Characters
The only time I observed Sally pretending to be a female character was
when she pretended to be a mom who planned and went on a vacation with
her family. “The family”, Sally, CJ, Alex and Carrie, had set up six chairs in
three rows of two to create a “mini-van” to pretend that they were going on
vacation.
Sally directed this pretend play episode. She exhibited agency as she
planned the trip, placing everyone in his or her part of the family. “CJ you be
the dad, Alex you the brother and Carrie you being the baby, since you are the
tiniest and all” (Audio tape, October 7, 2005). In terms of literacy, Sally
engaged in everyday literacy practices, which she may have observed on a
long trip with her own family. She made a list of things to take on vacation
and she wrote the directions for the route they were going to take. She told
CJ where he needed to drive to and what turns he needed to make - following
her “map”. She read a story to baby Carrie to “keep her entertained and
quiet.” She disciplined her “children” Alex and “baby” Carrie, telling them,
“I’m gonna write your name in my book – if you don’t behave!” She played the
game “I spy with my little eye” game as they drove down the highway.
Even though Sally took up a female position in this play episode, she
assumed a position that in many children’s minds is the most powerful one of
the family. Mothers, according to Davies (1989) “are the ever-present others
who apparently rule children’s lives and who negotiate with them acceptable
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ways of being in and conceptualizing the world” (p. 79). In other words, when
Sally pretended to be a mother, she imagined being a mother who utilized
literacy practices relevant to taking a long trip with her family.
In the imagined spaces of pretend play, Sally could choose to be any
character she wanted to be. She could also choose how she wanted to
interact. She could pretend to be a girl, a boy, a child or an adult. Like every
child in the class, she was not limited to particular character or gender roles
in her play.
Playing before Writing
As indicated earlier, Gloria and Iris were frequently observed together.
Gloria was a thin, pale, dark haired, European-American six-year-old girl.
Iris was a blue eyed and blonde haired European-American seven-year- old
girl. Gloria and Iris co-created play on countless occasions both in the
classroom and out on the playground. They also did much of their teacher
assigned tasks together.
Early in the study I observed Gloria and Iris’ co-created play creep into
their official school writing (Dyson, 1993). As Iris and Gloria’s co-created
imagined spaces in their pretend play, they interacted and reacted to one
another not only in their play but also as they co-created “webs of meaning”
(Dyson, 2003 p. 68) in their writing. In other words, their play influenced
their writing. The imagined spaces of play provided them the opportunity to
write with authority.
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Evidence of their ability to write together with authority was apparent
in the following two pieces of writing. Gloria wrote a first piece alone in
October of 2005. Gloria wrote this text for a writing assessment for the
school district where all of the children were assigned the same writing
prompt. They were asked to write about an actual time or imagined time
when they went camping. Below is Gloria’s writing assessment.
Figure 4.4 Gloria’s piece about camping
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Gloria’s writing says:
Me, Kim, Iris and Brigit went to Camp Wyandot. It had been my second time.
We chose Whipperwirl. Me and Iris got the top bunks. Iris got there late.
Anyway we had fun. We played in the campsite. We almost sunk in the canoe.
It was scary. We finally got to shore and had girl’s time. We ate candy corn
and Cheetos and that night we ate smores. The next day we went home.
(Transcribed from Figure 4.1).
Mrs. N. evaluated this story soon after Gloria wrote it. She evaluated
the writing above as having no voice, no sense of audience, and “writing that
had no soul” (Fieldnotes 10 – 5 – 05). As I analyzed this piece of writing from
Gloria, I noted the contrast between this written piece and what Gloria cocreated in her play and her playful interactions with others.
For example, Gloria and Mrs. N had an ongoing imaginative
conversation each morning, which occurred as soon as they greeted one
another. Right after saying hello they would begin to banter back and forth
about what Mrs. N was going to turn Gloria into that morning. The above
written piece was not indicative of Gloria’s abilities witnessed in this
compelling dialogue as well as the imaginative stories she created with
others.
In contrast to the above piece of writing, Mrs. N. gave all of the
children an assignment where they could create a text with at least one other
person. This assignment was reflected in the next piece of writing Gloria and
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Iris created together. The story was written, after the girls were observed
pretending to be characters in a similar story. This story was much more
detailed. It contained a landscape of interrelated voices (Dyson, 2003). The
symbolic reworking of the story in their play was much like the process
authors undertake when they generate written texts. The girls and all of the
other children simply reworked and edited the text first in their play
(Kendrick, 2003) and then on paper. Dyson (1997) maintains that when
children have an opportunity first to dramatize and then compose stories,
they become writers. She explains it this way:
In their unofficial play, their official dramatic enactment and follow-up
discussions, and in their own individual contributions as writers, the
children could not only appropriate, or invert, available roles and
relations, they could reconstruct them, imagining new choices from
expanding possibilities. Through marking, elaborating and
transforming the features, actions and circumstances of powerful
characters, children themselves gained some power – some ability to
have a say – in the evolving community dialogue (p. 144).
In other words, the girls created more complex written stories because
they were encouraged to imagine and think as if they were the characters in
the story and take action as those characters. They co-wrote detailed and
complex written stories after they played. Playing seemed to help the
children co-create a text beyond anything they could have written alone.
Their pretend play or playing the story became a sort of co-created story web
where they worked out who the characters would be, where the action would
take place, what would happen in the story, and how the main and
supporting details would “play” out. The following written story, Gloria and
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Iris wrote together after they pretended to be the Little Puppy and the Big
Bad Sea Lion:
The Little Puppy and the Big Bad Sea Lion
Once upon a time there was a little puppy and his mother and they
lived in a quiet cottage. One day the mother said, “Little puppy go out into the
world.” But before she went the mother said “Beware of the Big Bad Sea
Lion.” Sure mom” the puppy said.
The Little Puppy went out and saw a flamingo with some bricks. She
quickly made a house out of them. And then the Big Bad Sea Lion came and
she flapped and she snapped and she slapped and she flapped some more but
the house would not come down.
So she found a drill and she drilled it down. Luckily the Little Puppy
escaped with a loud “AHHHH” and it kept its tail.
Little Puppy ran away from her house and she met a big bear. She
asked the bear if she could have some of his big metal bars and some steel. He
said, “sure” and she built a house out of the bars and steel.
Then the Big Bad Sea Lion came again. It flapped and it snapped and
it slapped but the house would not come down. So she got a big hammer and
hammered and hammered and “bam, bam” she hammered the house down.
The Little Puppy ran away with a loud “AHHHH.”
The Little Puppy met up with a big rhinoceros with buckets of cement.
She quickly made a house out of it. And then, the Big, Bad Sea Lion came
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again and she flapped and she snapped and she slapped, but the house would
not come down. She tried almost everything until finally she decided to go
down the chimney. “I’m not bad for nothing” she said. She fell into a big
boiling pot of the stove and she screamed “ouch, ouch, ouch.”
The Big Bad Sea Lion got out of the pot and decided to be good. The
Little Puppy asked her to play in the garden and she said “yes.”
They lived happily ever after.
The end
P. S. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
(Written artifact – Gloria – 11 – 5 – 05)
Before Gloria and Iris actually wrote this story, Mrs. N. encouraged
the two girls along with the rest of the class during writer’s workshop to
pretend as if they were the characters in their own versions of a “three little
pigs’ tale”. Before they wrote the story I observed Gloria and Iris pretending
to be the Little Puppy and the Big Bad Sea Lion where they said the above
written dialogue: “Little puppy go out into the world,” and “Beware of the Big
Bad Sea Lion,” and “I am not bad for nothing.” They seemed to create and
incorporate into their story diverse voices of dialogue (Dyson, 1993) they had
heard in classroom stories and classroom interactions.
In “playing” their story, the girls entered an imagined space that was
just as engaging and complex as the Three Little Pigs tales that they had
heard in the everyday space. The above story illustrated how the two girls
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were able to craft a story, interact and shape meaning in imagined space.
Their joint story making was not unlike that of other children in other
studies (Dyson, 2003), in that as they co-constructed the above tale, each girl
participated “relatively equally”. The girls were “not communicating
information to an unknowing other but cueing shared meaning … Thus, such
story making seemed to promote social cohesion, as well as to provide mutual
entertainment” (p. 60). In other words, because the girls wrote the story
with one another the story was much more interconnected and compelling.
Summary: How Pretend Play Creates Opportunities for Using
Literacy Practices
When children pretend to be people or other characters in narratives
the imagined spaces of their pretend play create zones of proximal
development in which children can learn to use literacy by participating in
literacy practices beyond those they would normally engage in the everyday
classroom. Across time, I observed all of the focus children engaged in all of
the following literacy practices:
1. Children created/co-created artifacts for themselves and others that
were relevant in pretend play worlds and which were then
subsequently used in literacy events.
2. Children positioned themselves and each other in pretend play
stories as literacy users.
3. As they played, the children composed fictional stories that
included people from their lives, characters they encountered in
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stories from books and other media, and characters they had
pretended to be as they played.
4. Children retold stories about their experiences in play both orally
and in writing. The children orally retold stories during peer
conversations and during structured instructional time, such as
center work time and also during sharing time at morning meeting.
In addition, the children retold stories during both writer’s
workshop and journal writing.
Relevant and Useful Artifacts Created in Pretend Play
During the study, the children created artifacts for pretend play
contexts. Various children used the artifacts when they played whether or
not they made them. The artifacts the children created were relevant to
pretend play contexts and useful in social and literacy events.
Examples of the usefulness and relevance of the artifacts were
observed with all five of the focus children. CJ made and read a royal
proclamation. Both he and Guy signed an oath to protect dragons. CJ
referred to this oath as he pretended as if he was a king. This oath reminded
the boys that they had a responsibility to protect dragons. Guy created maps
that he and others followed during their secret agent play and “flying” with
their jet packs. Guy also designed costumes in a sketchbook for fictional
characters from Guy’s play. Sally drew and read a map for her pretend
family’s vacation. She made a list of items to take on the vacation and used a
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book to write her children’s names in if they misbehaved. Gloria and Iris
wrote and read recipes so they could create medicine for sick patients.
Positioning Oneself and Each Other as Users of Literacy in Pretend Play
Stories
All five of the children took up positions and positioned one another in
pretend play stories as users of literacy. Due to the voluntary and
intentional nature of play (Vygotsky, 1978) children selected what characters
they were going to be but also positioned one another as they played. Guy
and CJ agreed that CJ was a powerful king who needed to rule and whose
proclamation should be followed. Guy was willing to follow him when they
attempted to tame a dragon. Both CJ and Guy were secret agent spies –
sticking together and taking notes as they spied on people who were mean to
them. Luke positioned Guy as an experienced mapmaker. Guy took up that
position and was willing to help Luke create his own map. In pretend play
stories, Sally was able to pretend to be anyone or anything she wanted to be.
Sally frequently pretended to be male characters during play. As male
characters and occasionally a female character in pretend play stories, Sally
was able to be powerful and competent when she used literacy and
participated in literacy events. Sally also resisted positionings as certain
characters simply because of gender. Finally, Gloria and Iris took up
positions and positioned one another as friends, sisters, and equal partners in
pretend play stories where each had an active role in the story being told.
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Composing Literacy Texts: Fictional Stories
The children composed stories during play in which they would
intertwine people from their lives with characters they encountered in stories
from books and other media. For example, CJ acted as if he was king of the
world, a tamer and protector of dragons. Guy and CJ pretended as if they
were secret agent spies while Sally imagined she was the “bad guy” chasing
them. Gloria and Iris acted as if they were a Big Bad Sea Lion and a Little
Puppy. They enacted the story over and over – revising and changing the
dialogue. Kendrick (2003) argues that young children play in pretend worlds
much like a writer writes when they are writing a story. Children will replay
a pretend play event, revising and editing the context and the dialogue until
it feels right to them.
Retelling Oral and Written about their Experiences in Play
All five of the children retold oral and written stories about their
experiences in play. The children retold oral stories during informal peer
conversations, such as center work time or journal writing time and during
structured instructional time, such as sharing time at morning meeting.
Sally’s oral retelling of pretending to be Peter Pan was a vivid example.
Many children retold stories in writing during writer’s workshop and
journal writing. Guy’s retelling of The Witch’s Tale demonstrated that
children write about play experiences that they have at home and in the
community. Gloria and Iris co-wrote stories after they pretended to be
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various characters and creatures in their stories. The written stories they cowrote after play contained rich dialogue and detailed action. The girls used
pretend play to “get inside” text worlds (Dyson, 1991). In other words,
pretend play allowed the girls to consider what characters were thinking
about and what was happening in the story. The girls could also re-consider
and re-image different directions for their stories during play.
In this chapter, I confirmed that children engage in literacy during
their play that is situated in their collective cultural histories, values and
practices and is related to their everyday lives. I also corroborated findings
that maintain children use literacy materials in pretend play events if
literacy materials are provided for them. I also found that children wrote
about their play during school-assigned writing tasks. Finally, using the
poststructural theory of positioning I showed how children took up positions
and positioned each other as users of literacy in pretend play worlds.
In the next chapter I detail the difference an adult makes as I played
with the children. I search for differences as the children and I explored
imagined spaces, mediated meaning, and used literacy practices during
pretend play. I look at the four literacy practices listed above and determine
the difference I made when I entered imagined spaces of pretend play with
children. As I analyzed the data I asked myself the following questions: As
the children and I played together was there a difference in the artifacts, they
created? As we played together what positions did the children take up and
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how were all participants positioned? Finally, during writer’s workshop and
journal writing how was the children’s writing different? Additionally, I
analyzed an extended use of drama that continued over three week in the
children’s first grade year when the children were positioned as experts. I
analyzed for how the children’s literacy practices changed when they
imagined they were experts.
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CHAPTER 5
FINDINGS II: MEDIATING LITERACY LEARNING IN IMAGINED
SPACES
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter I analyze data related to the second research question
of this study: When teachers play with children, how can teachers mediate
children’s literacy learning and how do children mediate their own literacy
learning?
Since all five of the children in this collective case study engaged in
literacy practices in imagined contexts, I was provided with many
opportunities to mediate literacy learning during pretend play. To analyze
the data, I examine the actions I took as I played with and positioned the
children particularly as we played together using drama during the months
of November and December in the children’s first grade year of the study. I
analyze the different literacy events and practices that took place when the
children and I pretended to be expert zoo veterinarians, zoo designers and
zookeepers (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995; Taylor & Edmiston, 2005). During
what we called the zoo drama, we created or co-authored an imagined world
of a zoo, zookeepers, and zoo designers. The teacher, Mrs. N. sometimes
joined in and played with us.
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The children and I participated in literacy practices as we played in
imagined spaces together. The literacy practices in the pretend
play/classroom drama were afforded by the imaginary expert contexts and
the literacy practices were those that such experts would need to engage in,
for example: designing habitats for zoo animals.
In this chapter I analyze for two aspects of mediation. The first aspect
of analysis involved mediation moves (Moll & Whitmore, 1998) taken by an
adult sometimes explicitly and at other times implicitly. Such mediation
occurred as I played with the children in the imagined spaces of zoo animals
and their caretakers. The second aspect of analysis focused on mediation
that occurred among the children.
As discussed in Chapter 2, when adults play with children, the actions
taken can be viewed as happening in three spaces, everyday spaces, imagined
spaces, and authoring spaces (Edmiston, 2008). As noted in chapter four,
when children play they demonstrate agency. Children can readily take up
imaginary positions as fictional characters who use literacy. In the imagined
spaces of pretend play, children are learning literacy practices by
participating in various uses of literacy that they could not or would not
normally use in the everyday. In authoring spaces, children and adults are
intentional about their uses of literacy.
When adults play with children, learning takes place in an authoring
space in the overlap of the everyday space and an imagined space. Both
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children and adults have agency when they play because the children and
adults imagining together. The authoring space is a co-created learning
space where meaning is made intentionally or authored. (See Figure 4.5,
below)
Figure 5.1 Revisiting the Everyday, Imagined and Authoring Space (Edmiston,
2008)
My entries into the children’s play
My entries into the children’s play were negotiated differently for each
child I played with, for each group of children I played with, and for each
episode of play I became involved in. At first, as I examined my entry into
children’s play, I noticed that there were some basic guidelines I tacitly
followed each time I played with the children because I wanted the children
to allow me to play with them.
First and foremost I attempted to follow the storyline or theme
being pursued by the children.
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When I participated in a pretend play episode, I would either take a
position that was complimentary to what the children were doing or
a position where I was asking for their assistance or I would allow
the children to position me.
If I saw an opportunity to add some literacy use that was inherent
to the pretend play I would attempt to do so.
What follows is an example of one of the many times I played with
Gloria and Iris on the playground.
Lunch recess -- Iris and Gloria are playing healers on the playground - I
come out/approach the girls and Iris says: “Pretend that you are the mother
and you’re very sick – lie down over here.” I agree to sit on the step (not lie
down because I have a skirt on and it is windy outside) “Oh mother, you can’t
talk because of your disease.” Gloria says. I nod my head. Iris puts her hand
on my forehead and begins to “cry”. Iris: “Oh sister what are we going to do?”
Gloria: “We gotta collect some more berries and herbs to prepare our special
medicine to fix mother.” The girls collect more leaves and twigs on the
playground and stack them into a pile. They do this until the end of recess.
(Field notes 10 – 26 – 06)
In this episode when I was invited to play by Gloria and Iris, I entered
an imaginary space of an already established context. Gloria and Iris decided
and I agreed to play within the imaginary space of mothers, daughters, and
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healers. It was also determined by the girls that I would pretend to be sick
and the girls would create a medicine to help me become better.
Since the girls invited me to play with them I followed the storyline
that they were pursuing and allowed them to position me and pretended to be
the mother who could not talk because of a disease. As above, the many
times the girls invited me to play with them, they positioned me as their
mother. While Davies (1989) maintains that motherhood is seen by girls as
the only “powerful position to which they can legitimately make any claims”
(p. 78), the girls made my position as a mother very limited in terms of
agency.
Over time I came to realize that as I allowed the children to position
me and agreed to whatever they suggested, I did not have much agency
during pretend play. With little agency on my part, I saw that my
interactions while playing with the children were not making much of a
difference particularly in terms of how I wanted to mediate their learning.
As I continually reviewed the data I realized I needed a couple of other
guidelines during the time I played with the children. I found that I needed
to do the following in order to promote more literacy use:
Position the children as knowledgeable in the pretend play episodes
and shape the play to create dramatic form, which possibly could
lead to the children using literacy.
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Include literacy practices relevant to our pretend play context and
through our combined agency mediate meaning.
These further guidelines were evident in a later interaction with the
girls.
Free choice time- shortly after our mother/healer play outside -- I walk over to
where the girls are sitting, drawing and talking quietly among themselves.
Abby has joined Gloria and Iris from outside. I ask what they are doing – Iris
begins to take up “our” story from outside. Iris: “Oh mother, I am so glad the
medicine worked and you can talk again.” Me: “I know I was so worried I
would never talk again. You know girls that medicine was powerful stuff and
it could help other people when they lose their ability to talk. You are such
great healers. I wonder how we can help other people?” Gloria:” I know we
can make medicine for other people.” Me: “But what if you’re not around and
other people want to make the medicine? How can they make it if they don’t
know what goes in it.” Gloria turns to Abby and Iris says: “I know we should
get some paper and write down the recipe.” Iris says: “ I know too we can
pretend that we have a big vat of the medicine boiling and if we write down
the ingredients we can hunt for more ingredients outside.” Abby: “I’ll get the
paper and clipboards.” Iris: “I’ll get the colored pencils to write the
ingredients in different colors” The girls collected the writing supplies and
begin to write down the recipe.
(Field notes – 11-1-05)
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In this interaction, not only did I follow Iris’ lead and pretend to be
their mother again but I also positioned the girls as “great” healers and
suggested to them that they could help others with their medicine. While
the girls and I pretended once in the imagined space of “healers” I also
encouraged them to use literacy in their play. The statement, “But what if
you’re not around and other people want to make the medicine? How can they
make it if they don’t know what goes in it,” encouraged the children to think of
a way to make the recipe public or available to others.
Playing in imagined spaces with the children allowed me to mediate
their literacy learning within the play activity. As I outlined in chapter two
play creates collective interrelated zones of proximal development (Moll &
Whitmore, 1993). In zones of proximal development, our play not only
encouraged the learning of subject matter through different types of social
relationships facilitated by myself and the teacher but our play also involved
various literacy events and practices inherent and relevant to the imagined
spaces.
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Children and Adults Playing Together When Using Drama
In time we discovered that play was indeed work. First there was the
business of deciding who to be and who the other must be and what the
environment is to look like and when it is time to change the scene.
Then there was the even bigger problem of getting others to listen to
you and accept your point of view while keeping the integrity of the
make-believe, the commitment of the other players and perhaps the
loyalty of the best friend. Oddly enough, the hardest part of the play
for us to reproduce or invent was the fantasies themselves. Ours were
never as convincing or interesting as the children’s; it took us a great
deal of practice to do what was, well, child’s play in the nursery (Paley,
2004, p. 2).
Paley’s quote points out the importance of adults following children’s
imaginative leads during play. Children demonstrate their interests in play.
They allow us to see what they are thinking about and how we can expand
upon what motives them. Children have the ability to set the stage for their
learning. As teachers we need to be able to see this capability, to join in, and
as players we can extend the children’s zones of proximal development.
In this section I examine the actions I took as I played with and
positioned the children particularly as we played using drama during the
months of November and December in the children’s first grade year of the
study. This section presents and theorizes about different literacy events
that took place when the teacher Mrs. N., the children, and I pretended to be
expert zoo veterinarians, zoo designers and zookeepers. As noted in chapter
one when taking expert positions, participants assume expert roles, such as
scientists, archeologist, zoo designers etc., to solve fictional problems.
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Mediating Literacy Practices within the Zoo Drama
Researcher’s journal – November 25, 2005
Wow, am I excited! Millie (Mrs. N.) and I met today to discuss the drama we
want to use with the children starting next week. It’s nice to do this in a social
setting with Millie as she has so many great ideas. We are going to pretend to
be zoo personnel (I am glad because I have done this before and I’ve noticed
that the children seem to pretend to be animal caregivers at one time or
another in their play). We decided to introduce an imaginary context of
penguins that were hurt being transferred from one place to another. We are
going to appeal to the children and request their help as expert veterinarians
to take care of the penguins. Millie and I decided that I would send the
children a letter by email so she can set it up on the Monday before I come on
Tuesday. The letter is up to me.
I made the above journal entry after I met with Mrs. N. the Friday
after Thanksgiving. After meeting with her I was excited and nervous
because this was an opportunity to play and imagine with all of the children
in the class. Up to this point I had only been able to play with pairs or small
groups of children on the playground and during free choice time.
My objectives were different than those of Mrs. N.’s. I was interested
in the second guiding question of this study: When teachers play with
children, how can teachers mediate literacy learning and how can children
mediate their own literacy learning?
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Mrs. N.’s Goals
Mrs. N. was interested in the curricular benefits our play could have.
This required us to label our actions, as we played together, as drama, which
in terms of the study was not a problem because as stated in chapter two
Heathcote (1972) maintains the origin of drama is pretend play. Edmiston
(2007) further defines drama as the use of pretend play for curricular
purposes to create some dramatic form where adults actively engage
alongside children, “both to socially imagine other spaces and worlds and to
extend children’s learning” (p. 338).
Mrs. N. was more interested in the curricular goals that she believed
we could explore in the imagined worlds of drama. While Mrs. N. wanted the
children to use literacy in context as animal caregivers she also had science
and language arts curricular objectives that she wanted the children to meet.
The science objective was that the students would be able to identify animal
habitats and animal characteristics. The language arts/reading objective
that she wanted the children to accomplish was to read, hear and use a wide
variety of non-fictional texts.
Mrs. N. also planned with two other teachers who were going to begin
a unit on penguins in their classrooms. Mrs. N. liked to do whatever topic the
other teachers were doing so that they could pull their resources. This helped
the teachers so they could gather more information to present to the children
and create activities for three classes of children. The children would benefit,
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they argued, because they would hear consistent information across the
building. Also, in the informal education program, the arts teachers (dance,
music and art) included the content being taught in the grade level
classroom, into their lessons.
The socially imagined space of the drama
With these factors in mind she and I decided that we would introduce a
dramatic context that invited the children to help me with a problem. The
dramatic context involved penguins getting hurt. Writing as if I was a
zookeeper, I sent the children a letter positioning them as experts and
requesting their assistance in caring for penguins. I sent the children a letter
by email attachment the Monday before I came to school on Tuesday. Mrs. N.
enlarged and presented the letter to the children during their morning
meeting.
We begin to create an imagined zoo world
The New Zoo
November 28, 2005
Dear Room 11:
I am writing you to ask for your help. I am a zoo director at a zoo. Our
zoo has had an emergency. The penguins that were traveling to our zoo by
truck had an accident. Many of the Penguins’ beaks were injured so they are
unable to eat and to feed their babies. Also, the number and variety of
penguins coming to our zoo is much larger than we had planned.
We have heard that you are Expert veterinarians who have treated
many different injured animals mainly birds. We were also hoping that you
could help us design a larger Habitat for the different variety of Penguins we
are receiving.
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If you are able to assist us in the above, please write us as soon as
possible to inform us of your decision.
Sincerely,
Kimberly K. Miller
Zoo Director
(Written artifact shared with the children – November 28, 2005)
Since Mrs. N. and I decided to play with the children, we needed to
signify to the children that we were pretending alongside them as someone
other than their teacher and an adult helper/playmate. Through the use of a
“pivot”, a mediating object, we indicated to the children when we were
shifting into the imagined world of zoos, animals and habitats (Vygotsky,
1966). I wore a hat to indicate that I was pretending to be a zookeeper. For
the children as veterinarians I was Mrs. Miller rather than my usual Kim.
Mrs. N. put on a white lab coat to indicate that she was pretending to be zoo
veterinarian, Dr. Nuget rather than Mrs. N.
A negotiated imagined space
While the children accepted our invitation to create and enter an
imagined world of expert zoo animal caregivers they demonstrated
considerable agency and selection over the pretend play context. The
children made two modifications to the original expert context that they
wanted to pursue in the imagined space. These two changes to the expert
imagined world came from the emerging interest of the children. The first
change was that all of the children expressed an interest to include animals
other than penguins in our play and since this interest met with both Mrs.
N.’s objectives and the purpose of my study, the entire class decided to
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include other animals in our zoo. The second change was that the children
were more interested in planning and building the animal habitats and they
showed less interest in pretending to be zoo veterinarians. These two
modifications altered Mrs. N and my original idea of having the children
pretend to be veterinarians taking care of pretend hurt penguins and using
the literacy practices of animal doctors and caregivers. This put the focus of
the classroom drama on the literacy practices involved in designing a zoo and
habitats for the animals.
The above negotiation of the imagined space demonstrated the fluidity
of play worlds that are continuously willed into existence as playing children
intend and improvise their actions. The zoo drama that we created over
three weeks allowed the children to choose how they were going to participate
and how they were going to act among different possible ways of being. As
noted in Chapter 4, the children developed a practice of agency during this
play.
Adult moves of mediation
I analyzed the data collected during the classroom drama in two ways.
The first, for adult moves of mediation that I made as I played with the
children in imagined spaces. These mediation moves encouraged and
positioned the children to take risks, experiment, and collaborate both with
one another and the adults (Moll & Whitmore, 1998). As we played, the
children’s learning was not an individual achievement but a “joint
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accomplishment between adults and children” (p.39). In other words, when
we pretend to be zoo designers, all of the children and adults participated
together to create various artifacts for the zoo.
Our main concern as a class in the imagined space was to design
habitats for the different animals coming to a zoo I made mediation moves to
position the children with literacy expertise (Heathcote & Bolton, 1995) zoo
designers who used literacy practices. In other words, the expert zoo
designers were positioned to use the literacy practices required of those
designing zoos. Mediation in this imagined space involved four moves. These
four moves were as follows:
Facilitating Move – consciously plans the environment and provides
materials for authentic and purposeful uses of language, literacy, and
learning processes
Assisting Move – encourages taking risks, focusing questions, and ideas,
and shaping activities into manageable possibilities, ensuring all
experience success
Participating Move – Researches alongside children, combining adults
and children’s questions and demonstrates research of those questions
Evaluating Move – Assesses the imagined space, children’s individual
and collective development to reflectively decide further moves to make
in interaction
Table 5.1 Mediation Moves in Play (adapted from Moll & Whitmore, 1993;
Edmiston, 2005)
Every time I imagined and played with the children, I demonstrated at
least one of these mediation moves. I demonstrated a facilitating move when
I intentionally planned the classroom environment. Facilitative moves
included providing many materials for the children to use during the drama.
I made sure that the children had ample access to texts about different zoo
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animals, animal habitats, animal characteristics, zoos/zoo careers and maps.
I also provided the children other materials applicable to zoo designers –
paper (including large sheets), colored pencils, rulers, scissors, markers, and
other writing utensils. If I did not have materials out and available to the
children, the children would request them, demonstrating their agency in the
imagined space. For example:
Guy: “Mrs. Miller, Remember those zoo maps you showed us yesterday?
Me: Yeah – what about them?
Guy: I was wondering if we could see them again
Me: Sure
>Maybe we should leave them out
<I think they are on my briefcase.
Rick: Yeah if you leave them out
> We could use them as a guide
Me: You mean as an example or a model?
Guy: Yep!! I think that it is important to have an example
(Field notes, December 1, 2005)
In the above episode, I provided the boys with a map that they could
use as a resource on which to base their blueprints. The boys requested the
maps knowing that they could use the maps as a guide. I furthered their
understanding of the potential of the zoo maps by supplying vocabulary and
labeling the maps as an example or a model of reference.
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Whenever I assisted as they imagined the zoo world, I encouraged
them to take risks, focused their questions and ideas, and shaped the
activities into manageable opportunities to engage in literacy practices. For
example, before the children could build a model of a zoo, they needed to
know certain animal characteristics and the types of surroundings best for
the animal that they were interested in housing in the model. As a learning
community we researched the animals that each child was interested in,
while the adults and the children worked together to accomplish a list of
activities determined by the group to be important to the project.
Anytime I pretended with the children, I made a participating move.
So whenever I pretended to be zookeeper I was inviting the children to
participate with me in an imagined space. The children and I had questions
we were interested researching and finding answers to. The letter that I sent
to the children at the beginning of the drama inviting them to participate
with me in taking care of zoo animals positioned them as capable experts.
The letter signaled that I was seeking their expertise in order to care for
many more animals than I had anticipated.
Finally, an evaluating mediational move occurred whenever I
evaluated any action in the imagined space. This last mediational move was
particularly evident when the children completed one phase of designing of
the zoo habitats and moved onto the next.
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Guy and CJ had just finished creating their habitat for the zebras and
the giraffes. They wanted to place their model of the “Grassland” habitat out
in the hall with the rest of the children’s models. They were the last one to
bring out their model. The only place they could put it is beside the lion
(Wildcat) display. They were concerned that the lions will eat the zebras and
giraffes.
Guy: “We can’t put it there I’m afraid the lions will eat our animals”
Mrs. Miller: “That’s true, lions are predators and those animals are their prey.
What could we do at the zoo to stop all the cats from eating the animals?”
CJ: “I know maybe we could put up a fence.”
Mrs. Miller: “Great idea but cats can climb fences can’t they?”
Guy: “Maybe, we could put up an electric fence? But I don’t want to hurt the
lions.”
Mrs. Miller: “Maybe we could work on our plan with designers from the
Wildcat habitat.”
(Field notes 12-8-05)
As I made the final statement, the focus returned to a collective zone of
proximal development – where as a community of zoo designers we worked
together to develop a shared solution to a problem within the imagined space.
My mediating moves shifted the children into an authoring space where they
could create new meanings that included using and learning literacy
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The Blueprints – A Negotiated Literacy Practice
While many possible literacy practices were embedded in the imagined
world of zoos and zoo animals, the major literacy practice that Mrs. N., the
children, and I decided we were going to utilize, as zoo designers, was the
creation of blueprints for the habitats. The idea for the blueprints came out
of a pretend play episode during free choice time that I observed and
participated in shortly after the above invitation letter was shared with the
class.
Free choice time Jarrod, Eric and Guy are playing together at the end of
the day. Jarrod has brought in stuffed animals -a baby jaguar and another
wildcat. I observe the boys playing with the stuffed animals and a shoe box/ a
couple of the classroom chairs and they seem to be setting up some kind of
habitat. I talk to them out of character to find out what they are doing and
they respond that they are building a place for the jaguar and a lion to live.
Eric takes a marker and pretends that it is bottle/he picks up one of the
stuffed animals – a lion cub and pretends to feed it a bottle. I decide to put my
zookeeper hat on (a pivot) and talk to the children as the zookeeper. After I put
on the zookeeper hat, I talk to the boys.
Me/ zookeeper: “What do you think we should do?”
Eric: “I think that we need to decide where all of these animals are going to
live.”
Me/zookeeper: “At the zoo?”
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Jarrod: “Yea at the zoo.”
Me/zookeeper: “I guess we should design the zoo and the different areas
where we want the animals to live.”
Guy: “You mean we would build it”
Me/zookeeper: “Yeah but we would have to know how it would be laid out”
>: “We should draw blueprints first”
Jarrod: “Blueprints – well I want to draw the jaguar blueprint”
(Field notes, November 30, 2005)
I noted on the Notemaking side of my fieldnotes that it was interesting
that the boys were incorporating the imagined space from our use of drama
earlier in the day, into their play during their free choice time. Over the next
few weeks as we pretended as a whole class in the imagined space of zoo
designers, I observed that many of the children spent their free time
pretending to care for zoo animals.
During the above interaction, I also decided as I observed the boys
playing with the jaguar and lion stuffed animals that I would enter their play
as Mrs. Miller the zookeeper so I put on my zookeeper hat and talked to the
boys as the zookeeper. I used the hat to signify to the children that I was
shifting into the imagined world of zoo animals and animal caregivers.
All Four Mediation Moves Together
When I wore the zookeeper hat and spoke to the boys as the zookeeper,
I made all four mediational moves shifting the children from an imagined
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space into an authoring imagined space. I made an evaluating move
attempting to assess what the boys were doing while participating and
pretending with them. This was evident when I asked the question: “What do
you think we should do?” My shift into the imagined space also was an
assisting move – attempting to focus any questions or ideas they had as we
played. The children voiced a question during our interaction when they
speculated about where all “these animals are going to live” and I responded
to their question by suggesting that we should design places for the animals
to live. I facilitated and extended the imagined context when I suggested to
the boys that we could design a place for the animals to live. I provided the
term blueprint and Jarrod stated that he wanted to design the jaguar
blueprint.
Undertaking literacy practices in the imagined world of the zoo
drama continued even when I was not at school. Mrs. N. reported on a day
that I was not there that the children insisted on creating a list of “what we
might have in each of our zoo sections” (email, December 2, 2005). The list
was used on succeeding days as we continued to create the zoo designs. We
referred to the list as we drew the blueprints, when we decided on the entire
layout of the zoo, and as we built the model of the zoo.
Adults and Children Together Making Mediational Moves
As I actively engaged with the children in the imagined spaces of zoo
animals I was able to extend the children’s learning. The imagined zoo world
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opened up playful spaces where control of the classroom and expertise in the
classroom shifted among the children and me. As I repeatedly positioned the
children as capable literacy users within the imagined world and activities of
zoo designers, the children began to develop the perspectives and habits of
zoo designers who read, wrote and designed materials necessary to design a
zoo.
The literacy practices that we participated in over the three-week
period were very complex. In imagined spaces, the children participated in
many different literacy practices. The children read and wrote letters. They
read and synthesized information out of non-fiction text. They created and
followed lists or steps in directions. They wrote reports on many different
animals and incorporated the information in the reports on the blueprints
they designed. All of the literacy practices were intrinsic to the imagined
space of expert zoo designers. In other words, the children used literacy
practices and demonstrated the agency of zoo designers as they pretended in
the imagined space of zoos.
The literacy practices in the imagined spaces did not just involve the
children reading and writing words. The children had a purpose and
audience for their actions, including reading and writing. The children
imagined themselves in a world where they had the power to use literacy as
they made choices, took action, and interpreted circumstances as zoo
designers. They were authoring their uses of literacy.
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One afternoon six children made choices and began to draw the blueprint of
the habitat they were going to create for the “Wild Cat” display. Two of the
boys began to draw cages for the cats and each of the children began to draw
separate spaces with cages for the various cats they wanted to include. Two of
the focus children CJ and Sally objected to the cages and brought up the point
that the cats in the display should have an opportunity to spread out and lie
in the sun – “like the lions do on the African Plain”. One of the other boys
wanted the cats to have plenty of room to run – “you know like the jaguars do!
They run really fast.”
CJ directed the children’s action back to the idea of the blueprint: “Our
blueprint should include lots of room for the cats, particularly the lions, to
spread out and lie in the sun. I think that the lions would be pretty upset if
they were cramped in cages.” Sally: “Yeah! We need lots of room for the lion
to spread out. Let’s turn our paper over so we can make the blueprint show
some tall grass and some room for the lions to lie down.” Jarrod: “Yep, and I
think it should have a running track! And a lake, too, because jaguars like to
play in the water. See this picture here” Jarrod shows the rest of the children
a picture he has found in a book of two jaguars “playing” in the water.
Mrs. Miller the zookeeper approached the group and asked how they’re doing.
(Field notes – 12 –6 –05)
Justin: “Okay, but we’re starting over on the other side because we need to
draw a space for the lions to lie down in the sun.”
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Mrs. Miller: “What do you mean?”
CJ: “I think that the lion would appreciate if we had a space in the habitat for
them to have room to spread out and lie in the sun. I don’t think that they
want to be cramped in a cage”
Sally: “you know if we had some tall grass, they could lie behind it and cool off
and wait for their prey. kinda like their natural surroundings.”
Mrs. Miller: “How much room do you think the lions need?”
Eric: “I don’t know probably not much!”
Sally: “Oh please, they probably will need a lot of space.”
Mrs. Miller: “I know why don’t you pretend to be lions lying in the sun and I’ll
take your picture and then we’ll have an idea about how much room the cats
will need.”
Sally: “Yeah, you guys lie down and I’ll take the picture”
Mrs. Miller: “Are you sure Sally?”
>: “Don’t you want to be in the picture?”
Sally: “Naw, I think that five cats lying down are enough”
Mrs. Miller: “Okay great when you’re finished taking the picture bring it to me
and we can print it.”
(Transcript, audiotape, December 6, 2005)
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Figure 5.2 Lions on a grassy plain
In the above episode, as I mediated the literacy practices involved in
drawing the Wildcat habitat I, once again used the four mediational moves
discussed above. First and foremost, I participated with the children by
imagining with them as a member of the zoo designers community. As I
positioned the children as expert zoo designers, I offered them the
opportunity to think and act as designers who could create the most humane
space possible for the animals. Positioning the children as humane
designers allowed me to facilitate the children’s understanding about the
amount of space needed to dedicate to the lions lying on the plain. This was
achieved when I suggested that they lie on the ground as the lions would. I
also furthered their understanding by proposing that a picture be taken as a
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reference. I made two assisting moves when I asked the questions “What do
you mean?” and “How much room do you think the cats will need?” These
two questions focused the children’s ideas about the type of habitat they
wanted to create for the wildcats and how much of the blueprint needed to be
set aside for the cats to have room to lie on the ground. Finally, as I assessed
their actions in the imagined space, I suggested that the children pretend as
if they were lions – (Figure 4.6) the photograph of the “lions lying on the
plain” and observed that their blueprint work was moving forward. The
children were working toward designing a humane habitat for the Wildcats.
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Children Mediating Their Own Literacy Learning
In the above example, in addition to making meaning as they
pretended within an imagined space as the children positioned one another
they also mediated their own learning. CJ, Jarrod, and Sally took up subject
positions and positioned the other children to focus their attention on the
animals. They called on themselves and one another to consider what the
animals would want in the habitat. As observed in the interaction above, CJ
ardently called for the others to think about the lions being cramped in cages.
Jarrod also argued that jaguars need space to run and to play.
Sally took up a powerful position in this interaction. Sally’s positioned
herself as a lead zoo designer when she volunteered to take the picture. She
acted from a subject position where she led the literacy practices of the group.
She saw beyond just adequate habitats for the wildcats to imagine a more
humane zoo where the animals could have space to lie in the sun. Sally
imagined a zoo where the animals could lie in cool tall grass and wait for
their prey. In other words, she wanted to create a habitat for the animals
that was like their natural surroundings.
In the imagined world of zoo designers, the children began to mediate
their own learning of literacy practices. This was evident in the following
interaction, when I proposed an idea to the children, believing that they could
work together to create a blueprint because I believed the animals they were
going to include in their habitats were similar and might be able to live
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together. The children who knew the characteristics about their animals
resisted my attempt to mediate their learning. In the following example,
rather than passively accept my attempt to position them to behave in ways
expected of them in the everyday classroom space, in the imagined space the
children actively took ownership of the design of the blueprints. The
children’s agency in play was evidence as they improvise to create two
blueprints for habitats that would have been appropriate for the animals
being researched.
Gloria, Abby, and Iris are beginning to draw their blueprint. They have
decided to draw a blueprint for skunks, foxes and opossum habitat. Guy and
CJ are having trouble getting started.
Guy: “Mrs. Miller – do we have to use the whole paper?”
CJ: “Yeah, I know can we share another habitat – just take part of it for the
zebras and the giraffes.
Mrs. Miller: I don’t know maybe lets see what we can do.
Mrs. Miller (the zookeeper) approaches Abby, Gloria and Iris- drawing a
habitat for skunks, foxes, and opossums with the boys, who want to include
zebras and giraffes.
Mrs. Miller: “Can Guy and CJ work on your blueprint with you because your
animals and their habitats are similar?”
Gloria: “Sure – are you two working with foxes?”
Guy: “No I am researching a zebra.”
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CJ: “A giraffe.”
Abby: “Then your animals aren’t like ours”
Iris: “The animals we are doing are nocturnal and like cool weather”
Guy: “That won’t work then because our animals live in hot weather”
CJ: “I know that our habitat can’t be close to the Wildcat one.”
Mrs. Miller: “You know you’re right – it is going to have to be darker in your
habitat (referring to Gloria, Iris and Abby’s blueprint) than with the zebras
and the giraffes.”
Guy: “We should make a different blueprint for ours”
Mrs. Miller: “You’re right”
Guy and CJ get a separate sheet of large paper and begin to draw their
habitat.
(Fieldnotes and audiotape, December 13, 2005)
In the above episode the two boys had a difficult time getting started
drawing their blueprint. When I noticed them struggling to begin their
blueprint, I attempted to facilitate and assist them getting started. I came to
realize that both groups of children, who had researched the animals they
were creating the habitats for, knew the animals’ characteristics and types of
habitat that suited their animal best. The literacy practices were clearly
situated in appropriate contexts or spaces. As I mediated this interaction, I
evaluated the children’s decisions and choices of actions based on the best
habitats for various animals. The children did, too.
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When Gloria, Iris and Abby eventually refused to include CJ and Guy
in the activity they did so because of the type of habitat that each group of
children needed for their animals. The girls declined to include CJ and Guy
because both groups of children knew from their research that the animals in
each habitat were not compatible. Gloria, Iris, Abby and Tina all helped
design the Perfume Animal habitat. Guy and CJ designed the Plains Animal
habitat.
Unexpected leaders
Four girls, Abby, Iris, Gloria and Tina, designed a habitat that they
labeled as the Perfume animal habitat. Abby, who in earlier play situations
was many times positioned marginally in play, seemed to be a leader in this
imagined space. She came up with an interesting way for all four of the girls
to share their information with one another before they designed their
blueprint. She extended the original imagined space of the drama when she
pretended she was a news reporter at the zoo. This additional imagined
context expanded the other three girls’ knowledge about the perfume
animals.
Abby: “This is Abby Smith from the Columbus zoo reporting live in the
Perfume Animal display speaking to three zoo designers – Gloria Riggati, Iris
Keller and Tina Johnson.”
>: Ladies, just what do you hope to include in the habitat you are designing?”
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Gloria: “Well I want to include a bunch of trees so the skunks have places to
sleep during the day.”
Iris: “Yes it is important that they get their sleep so they can scavenge at
night.”
Abby: “ Yes, all of the animals you are including in your habitat are nocturnal
animals right?”
Tina: “Nocturnal you mean they sleep at the day?”
Iris: “Yes during the day!”
Gloria: “Raccoons do that too – we could include them in our habitat.”
Dr. Nuget (speaking from across the room): “Okay zoo designers its time to
finish up our work for now.”
Abby: “This is Abby Smith from the Columbus Zoo signing off.”
(Audiotape -- Transcript, December 7, 2005)
In the above interaction, Abby mediated Iris, Gloria and Tina’s
learning. The mediation took place as Abby pretended she was a news
reporter. This new socially imagined position that Abby took up permitted
her and the other girls to use the knowledge they gained in researching
animals. The knowledge they gained enabled them to use and refine literacy
practices in the imagined space.
As a news reporter, she used rich and detailed vocabulary that was
relevant to the imagined space of the drama. Abby initiated the discussion
when she asked the question, “Ladies, just what do you hope to include in the
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habitat you are designing?” Gloria, drawing on the knowledge she gained
from her research and interest in skunks responded to the question, “Well I
want to include a bunch of trees so the skunks have places to sleep during the
day.” To which Abby asked a question of the three zoo designers. “Yes, all of
the animals you are including in your habitat are nocturnal animals right?”
This question further facilitated the discussion by supplying scientific
vocabulary such as “nocturnal” and assisted in all of the children’s meaning
making. Iris prompted the use of nocturnal when she indicated that the
animals in their habitat “scavenge at night”. Tina needed further
clarification of the definition of nocturnal so she asked: “You mean they sleep
at the day?” Iris confirmed this. The children and I created/co-created
artifacts for one another and ourselves that were negotiated through and
were useful in pretend play worlds. Tina’s inquiry prompted Gloria to name
another animal to include in the habitat. Gloria knew that raccoons sleep
during the day and scavenge at night. This interview by news reporter Abby
clarified for the girls, which animals they were going to include in the
habitat.
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Summary: The Mediation of Literacy Practices in Pretend Play
In this chapter I looked at the literacy practices that were similar to
those listed in chapter four. I described in detail the difference I made when
I entered into and mediated the children’s learning in the imagined spaces of
pretend play. When I played with the children in the imagined spaces of
pretend play we created zones of proximal development. My participation in
and mediation of the children’s play, as they pretended to be people and
characters using literacy, made a significant difference in creating additional
zones of proximal development that affected the children’s literacy learning.
The children’s literacy learning occurred in the following practices:
1. The children and I created/co-created artifacts that were relevant in
pretend play spaces and which were then used subsequently in
literacy events.
2. While the children continued to position themselves and each other
in oral and written pretend play stories, I also positioned them as
users of literacy.
3. As we played, the children and I composed a variety of literacy texts
(fictional stories, nonfiction reports, and observations of various
people with expertise that the children pretended to be in the
imagined world of zoos and zoo designers).
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4. The children and I retold stories about our experiences during play,
both orally and in writing. We orally retold stories, wrote research
reports, and recorded observations.
Relevant and Useful Artifacts Created in Imagined Spaces
As I played with the children, we created and used artifacts that were
relevant in the imagined world of expert zoo designers. We had an
overarching agreed upon goal to create a model of a zoo where zoo animals
could live in safe and natural habitats. As we created the imagined zoo world,
the children made artifacts that were useful in creating a zoo model. Since
the children and I decided together to build a model for the animals coming to
the zoo, the agreement to make those artifacts was negotiated by the entire
group. The children and I agreed from a position of expert zoo designers that
it was important to draw blueprints before we could begin building the model.
To be able to draw the blueprints, the children/designers needed to research
the zoo animals they were creating the habitats for. Our research shaped
and extended the knowledge of zoos, the zoo animals, and their habitats as
well as facilitating the creation of the zoo model.
Positioning the Children as Expert Users of Literacy
In the imagined world of zoos, I consistently positioned the children as
expert zoo designers. My positioning afforded the children opportunities to
use literacy in imagined spaces beyond how they would or could usually use
literacy in the everyday classroom space. For example, positioning the
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children as expert zoo designers meant that it was reasonable that they
would read non-fiction texts about animals that they were interested in.
Many of the children read the texts together and gathered information about
animals that they needed to create a zoo model.
The children’s literacy practices occurred in authoring spaces, formed
in the overlap between the spaces the children imagined and the ones I was
imagining with them where I made moves to mediate, and thus shape, their
meaning-making. My mediation within authoring spaces created both a
sense of audience and purpose to their work. The children entered that
authoring space to use literacy not for the sake of practicing decontextualized
skills of reading or writing but because reading and writing activities were
essential to their imagined positions as zoo designers.
Positioning the children as expert zoo designers did not make the
children more knowledgeable but rather they were positioned to use the
knowledge, skills, and understandings that they already had and, further,
motivated them to develop new facets of knowledge and understanding
including about literacy use. In other words, as I pretended alongside the
children I was able to assist them to develop some new literacy knowledge
and understanding.
In imagined authoring spaces, I was at the same time able to position
the children to meet the teacher’s curricular requirements. As I played with
the children I was able to use their interests in animals to reach two
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curricular goals set by the teacher: to read and write non-fiction texts and to
learn about various animals and their habitats.
Over the three weeks in which we created the imagined world of zoos
and zoo designers as expert zoo designers all children read and wrote nonfiction texts. The reading and writing took place within an authoring space.
Not only did the children learn about various animals and their habitats but
also they created a model for the animals. The model allowed the children to
demonstrate their knowledge about animals, the animals’ characteristics, as
well as their habitats.
Besides positioning the children as zoo designers, on occasions I also
positioned the children as animals. From the positions of animals and as
themselves the children thought more critically and the imagined spaces
turned into authoring spaces. One example was when the children
demonstrated how lions or wildcats lie on the plains. The conversation that
took place during this pretend play event illustrated the children’s ability to
think about the consequences of putting wild creatures in cages and how we
as humans need to treat animals. Many of children noted benefits for the
animals of creating a space for the wildcats that was as close to their natural
surroundings as possible.
Literacy Texts: Non-Fiction Reports
My mediating actions were significant in terms of literacy learning
within this imagined space. I identified in chapter four that the children
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created fictional literacy texts when they played by themselves. When I
played with the children, they created non-fiction texts as well. These nonfiction texts included both oral and written reports about animal
characteristics, habits and environments. The children created these reports
by using written resources to gather information in imagined spaces that the
zoo designers needed.
Instead of teaching the children decontextualized skills in the everyday
classroom space, I played with the children in imagined spaces that
frequently became authoring spaces. In particular, I supported their literacy
learning as I participated and engaged in and various literacy practices. I
invited the children to play with me in imagined spaces where they could
care for animals and create natural habitats. The children accepted my
invitation though they began to author the space as they reshaped and
reconfigured the evolving world of zoos. Instead of directly teaching reading
and writing skills separated from any meaningful context, much of the
children’s literacy learning took place within meaningful imagined spaces.
Adult-directed lessons by me were non-existent. Instead, I made mediational
moves that were largely hidden or embedded within the activities of the
imagined world.
Retelling Imagined Experiences
As I played with the children in imagined spaces there were ample
opportunities for me to observe children retell others about their imagined
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experiences. The children did this by reporting their findings to one another.
They authored their retellings of imagined events. My participation in their
play assisted in the creation of the authoring spaces where those oral and
written retellings took place. During the two month period during which the
world of zoos and zoo designers was created my mediating actions were
significant in terms of the children’s literacy learning. Rather than teach the
children in the everyday classroom space, by playing with them in imagined
spaces I could participate in and assist them to engage in literacy practices in
imagined spaces that would not usually occur in the classroom. As the
children became fully engaged in and shaped the imagined spaces they
turned them into authoring spaces where they could make meaning that
included learning to use literacy in new ways.
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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
INTRODUCTION
Peter says to J.M. Barrie, “This is absurd. It's just a dog.”
J.M. Barrie responds to him: “Just a dog? Porthos dreams of being a bear,
and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he's just a dog? What a
horrible candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, "He can't climb that
mountain, he's just a man", or "That's not a diamond, it's just a rock." Just.”
(Dialogue from the movie – Finding Neverland 2004)
The quote from the movie Finding Neverland reminds us that pretend
play is not a “just.” Children should have the opportunity to play because
children are more aware or they can imagine many possibilities when they
are playing. Over the course of this research study, I discovered that children
enter zones of proximal development during play as they engage in activities
with one another. It was during these activities where the children could
imagine and pretend that they used and learned literacy. I also notice that
when I played with children, I could mediate children’s learning.
In this study I gathered and analyzed data in order to answer two
related research questions:
1. When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities
for children to learn literacy practices?
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2. When teachers play with children:
•
How can teachers mediate literacy learning?
•
How do children mediate their own literacy learning?
During this research study I was a participant/observer in a
kindergarten/first grade classroom in a large urban school district for a tenmonth period. The primary data sources consisted of field notes, audiotapes,
researcher’s journal, and informal interviews/conversations with the children,
parents and the teacher as well as written artifacts. An ethnographic
perspective helped me not only examine what was happening during pretend
play/drama in this classroom but it also helped me understand the local
meaning the children constructed during play.
I examined some of the literacies children use as they interact within
the imagined spaces of pretend play or drama. I analyzed how when
participants play or use drama they positioned one another and mediated
each other’s learning in the imagined space. Finally, I examined how I made
a difference when I played with the children during pretend play or drama.
This chapter is divided into four sections. First, I review the findings of
chapter four as I note the literacy practices the children included in their play
on their own as well the texts they used and created after they played in
imagined contexts. Second, I review the findings of chapter five. I examine
the literacy practices that were included in imagined spaces and I show how
an adult could mediate the use of further literacy practices within the
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pretend play context. Third, I discuss some of the implications and
limitations of my findings related especially to teacher practice in early
childhood classrooms. Finally, I discuss possible directions for future
research.
Discussion of Findings in Chapter Four
In chapter four I presented and theorized literacy use as the children
played together. I found that the children’s use of literacy was contingent
upon the imaginary theme. When children used literacy they did so as the
characters, people and creatures whom they pretended to be would use
literacy. The children would only use literacy if it were relevant to or added
to the pretend play event.
Over time, the children in their pretend play consistently utilized four
literacy practices. The four literacy practices were as follows:
1. Children created/co-created artifacts for themselves and others that
were relevant in pretend play worlds and which were then
subsequently used in literacy events.
2. Children positioned themselves and each other in pretend play stories
as users of literacy.
3. As they played, the children composed fictional stories that included
people from their lives, characters they encountered in stories from
books and other media, and characters they had pretended to be as
they played.
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4. Children retold stories about their experiences in play both orally and
in writing. The children orally retold stories during peer
conversations and during structured instructional time, such as center
work time, and also during sharing time at morning meeting. In
addition, the children retold stories during both writer’s workshop and
journal writing.
Analysis of the play interactions between and among the children
presented a complex picture of the literacy practices children included in
their play on their own. Across time, I observed five focus children. Each of
the five focus children provided insight into the pretend play context for
literacy learning.
As I documented in chapter four, the imagined spaces of pretend play
created zones of proximal development in which the children pretended as
people and characters who used literacies as social practices. Pretend play
provided contexts where children could act as fictional characters as they
participated in literacy events with one another. As literacy users, the
children took up subject positions and used their agency within pretend play
activities. During pretend play activities, the children used agency to make
choices, take risks, and begin to reshape their understanding of literacy.
The five focus children created artifacts that were used as part of
pretend play contexts. The children used the artifacts whether they made
the artifacts or not. The children only used the artifacts if the artifacts were
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relevant and useful to the pretend play contexts. Most of the artifacts were
created by more than one child. If an individual child or a small group
created an artifact that was relevant to the pretend play context, other
children proceeded to create a variety of similar artifacts to extend or
enhance future pretend play events. For example, the three boys who
pretended to be police officers made badges, tickets and warrants for arrests.
Some of the boys created badges and some of them created the tickets or
warrants for arrests. They all exchanged or traded artifacts so all three could
use a variety of artifacts. All of the boys used the artifacts as they played
with one another.
In addition to children creating many relevant and useful artifacts as
they played, children read and wrote in imagined spaces. Imagined spaces
provided the children with a purpose for their reading and writing. The
artifacts the children created during pretend play either sustained the
pretend play event or extend it in some way. The children never stopped
pretending in order to practice a de-contextualized literacy skill. The
artifacts were part of integral literacy practices relevant to the pretend play
context.
All five of the children had agency when they played. During pretend
play, the children became actively involved in authoring their interactions
and relationships by exploring different ways of being in imagined
encounters. When they played, rather than behaving in ways expected of
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them in everyday situations and passively accepting how others positioned
them the children became actively involved in authoring their relationships
by exploring how they could be different in imagined encounters which might
include how they could use literacy. When the children played they decided
who they were going to pretend to be and how they were going to interact.
The children took up subject positions during their pretend play that
stemmed from the context of an imagined space. It was the imagined context
that determined whether or not the children included literacy.
During play, the children composed literacy texts. The children
composed stories during play where they intertwined people from their lives
and characters they encountered in stories from books and other media.
These stories were enacted during play. The children were observed
frequently acting stories out over and over again – revising and reconfiguring
the story until they were satisfied in their tales. The children played in
pretend worlds much like writers do as they craft a story. Both composing
play and composing writing required that the children negotiate their
relationship with one another by either inserting their selves into the text or
challenging the taken for granted positions and relationship among one
another.
The five focus children retold oral and written stories about their
experiences in play. Sometimes they retold their play stories in schoolassigned tasks. They had opportunities to tell stories about their play during
177
structured instructional time, such as sharing time at morning meeting. The
children also retold oral stories during informal conversations that took place
during center work time or journal writing time.
Discussion of Findings in Chapter Five
In chapter five I extended my analysis from the literacy practices the
children engaged in the context of their pretend play to examine what
occurred as I played with the children. I made a difference when I entered
into and mediated the children’s learning in the imagined spaces of pretend
play. My participation in, and mediation of, the children’s play, as they
pretended to be people and characters using literacy, made a significant
difference in creating additional zones of proximal development that affected
the children’s literacy learning. The children’s use of literacy was relevant to
the pretend play context. Children used the literacy as the characters,
people, and creatures they pretended to be.
When I played with the children, we were able to create and use
artifacts that were relevant to imagined spaces. We negotiated what types of
artifacts to create. The artifacts were always central to our play worlds. My
participation with the children in pretend play positioned the children so they
could act from positions of expertise and thus have more agency to perform
tasks within the imagined context. As I positioned the children they were
afforded opportunities to use literacy in imagined spaces beyond the literacy
they would use in the everyday classroom space.
178
The children’s literacy practices and learning about literacy occurred
in authoring spaces, formed in the overlap between the spaces the children
imagined and the ones I was imagining with them where I made moves to
mediate, and thus shape, their meaning-making. My mediation within
imagined authoring spaces created more of a sense of audience and purpose
for the children. By interacting with me, the children entered that authoring
space to use literacy not for the sake of practicing decontextualized skills of
reading or writing but because reading and writing activities were essential
to their social positions in the imagined space.
When adults take mediating actions in pretend play it can be
significant in terms of literacy learning. As I noted in chapter four children
will create literacy texts when they play by themselves. When I played with
the children, though they created texts required for curricular purposes,
these texts were also relevant to pretend play contexts. The texts the
children created included non-fiction texts, both oral and written reports.
Children always participated in these activities in groups of at least two.
Their literacy learning was always social.
Instead of teaching the children decontextualized skills in the everyday
classroom space, I played with the children in imagined spaces that
frequently became authoring spaces. In particular I supported their literacy
learning as I, participated and engaged in various literacy practices. I invited
the children to play with me in imagined spaces. When the children accepted
179
my invitations they would begin to author the space as they reshaped and
reconfigured the evolving pretend worlds. Instead of directly teaching
reading and writing skills separated from any meaningful context, much of
the children’s literacy learning took place within meaningful imagined
spaces. Adult-directed lessons were rare, instead I made mediational moves
that were largely hidden or embedded within the activities of the imagined
world.
As I played with the children in imagined spaces there were ample
opportunities for me to observe children retell others about their imagined
experiences. The children did this by reporting their findings to one another
and to me both in imagined spaces and everyday spaces. They authored their
retellings of imagined events. My participation in their play assisted in the
creation of the authoring spaces where those oral and written retellings took
place. Rather than teach the children in everyday classroom space, by
playing with them in imagined spaces, I could participate in and assist them
to engage literacy practices in imagined spaces that would not usually occur
in the classroom. , As the children became fully engaged in and shaped the
imagined spaces they turned them into authoring spaces where they could
make meaning that included learning to use literacy in new ways.
Implications
In this section I discuss the implications of how the imagined spaces of
pretend play can provide children with new and active ways of making
180
meaning in literacy practices. I describe the implications of why children
need time to play and pretend. Finally, I outline some of the implications for
teacher education of adults playing with children.
Implications: Why children should have the opportunity to play
Children need time to play and pretend because children have agency
when they play. During play, they can take up any imagined subject position
and position one another as competent users of various everyday social
practices including literacy practices. When children have agency they can
engage in practices and perform tasks that they may not attempt if they do
not have agency.
For example, in this study the children were able to write detailed
reports after they researched various animals from a wide range of resources.
Because the children were positioned as expert zoo designers who were
creating a zoo model they readily accepted an assigned task of creating
animal habitats. The children needed to know a variety of things about their
animal. The means of discovering that information was wide and varied
because the children could use a wide variety of materials to find out the
information. The children used books, movies, the Internet, magazines, tapes
and maps. The children were not required to complete any assignments that
were not relevant to the pretend play world of zoos.
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Adult-child play: Teaching implications
Past studies have looked at what literacy materials teachers should
provide for children in pretend play areas to contribute to their literacy
learning. Other studies have looked at how children bring their pretend play
stories into their official writing or have documented how adults have an
influence on individual children’s play.
This study is one of the first where an adult played with children in a
classroom setting relying on the imagined spaces of pretend play to provide
contexts for learning literacy practices. In terms of teacher education and
literacy education, there are numerous implications.
•
Because pretend play is voluntary and intentional, both children
and adults have agency in the imagined spaces of their pretend
play. In child-adult pretend play, agency is contextual, active,
relational, and negotiated. Children who repeatedly and
actively chose their actions and explored what interests them
developed a disposition for agency. Children’s agency allows for
children to engage in literacy events and practices usually
reserved for adults or older children. Adults can use their
agency to position the children as competent users of literacy
and experts in various practices.
•
When children have the opportunity to position themselves and
are positioned by others during pretend play, teachers can share
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power with children. The agency children have in pretend play
allows for power to circulate among the children and teachers.
When children and adults play together, both the adult and the
children have opportunities to introduce literacy into pretend
play.
•
When teachers play with and position children in imagined
spaces, teachers can shift children into an authoring space. In
the authoring space, teachers can engage children in individual
and collective zones of proximal development. The authoring
space encourages children to think beyond the immediate
context and situation. The critical importance of the authoring
space is evident in an example from this study. The shift into
the authoring space was apparent when we built the zoo model.
The children voiced concern about the placement of all of the
animal habitats. I shifted the children into the authoring space
by the questions I asked and the discussion that followed.
•
In imagined spaces of play, teachers can have high expectations
of all children. Teachers can use and adjust the level of
mediation. Mediational moves can be seamless. The imagined
spaces can dictate the literacy the children use and how the
teacher mediates the learning. Literacy during play is always
relevant to the context. Literacy practices during play are
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always meaningful to the play situation. Literacy practices
during play were initiated by the players and responded to by
the players. Literacy was always used to make things happen.
•
Teachers can use children’s interests to attain curricular goals
set by schools. An example from this study occurred over the
three weeks in which we created the imagined world of zoos and
zoo designers as expert zoo designers all children read and wrote
non-fiction texts. The reading and writing took place within an
authoring space. Not only did the children learn about various
animals and their habitats but also they created a model for the
animals. The model allowed the children to demonstrate their
knowledge about animals, the animals’ characteristics, as well
as their habitats.
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Limitations
There were two clear limitations to this study. First, I encountered
limitations due to qualitative nature of the study. Because this research
study was a collective case study and I focused on five children in one
primary classroom. The inherent nature of this type of study dictated that my
findings could not be generalized to all kindergarten/first grade children.
I also studied a non-traditional classroom grounded in an informal
philosophy. An informal philosophy stresses that children need to have many
opportunities to learn by doing and by interacting with their environment in
a social context. Because the school philosophy emphasizes that through all
learning activities, adult and children learn simultaneously I was afforded
many opportunities to play with and engage in literacy practices with the
children.
The second limitation was due to my criteria for selecting the five case
study children. I chose the focus children based on three criteria.
•
I focused only on children who included literacy or were willing
to include literacy in their play.
•
I chose children who frequently played in imagined spaces with
others.
•
I only included children who invited me to play with them.
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Future research
While this study addressed some of the gaps in the literature, two
major directions of inquiry evolved from this study. Those two directions
stemmed from the poststructural and sociocultural theoretical perspectives
underpinning this study. One direction that could be pursued is how children
take up gendered positions during pretend play and how that influences the
literacy they use. Another direction that could be investigated is what types
of alternative assessment could be developed when using pretend play to
meet curricular needs.
Future studies could investigate the gendered positions children take
up in their pretend play and the reasons why they take up those positions.
While during this study the children engaged in pretend play where they
could determine the subject positions they took up, future pretend play
research could investigate what limitations children put on themselves and
each other in pretend play in the area of gender. Research could investigate
the following questions. If children take up gendered subject positions in
their play are literacy practices gender specific? Could teachers use
authoring spaces to help children challenge how they are positioned? If in
future pretend play events or when using drama imagined contexts call for
specific gendered positions how do the children accept, reject, or negotiate
those gendered positionings? What can an adult do in imagined spaces to
disrupt gendered positionings and negotiate other ways of being?
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In an age of high stakes testing and prescribed curriculum, it is
important for accountability reasons to investigate how we as early childhood
teachers can justify our work. Children can create numerous detailed
products when they are playing just as we did during our zoo drama. A line
of research could investigate what standardized goals and objectives children
achieve when they are playing. This research could investigate the following
questions: What literacies are children using during play? What questions
are the children interested in asking and answering? What types of texts are
they reading as they play? What are they writing when they play? It is
important though to remember that teachers need to create spaces in their
classroom where they can listen to children, and share power in negotiation
and play with children. If we can strive to keep these ideas in mind, children
will create new outlooks and extend their horizons beyond our classroom
walls.
Revisiting the struggle
To conclude this dissertation study I circle back to where I began. I
revisit the interaction I described in chapter one to re-imagine what could
have happened if Billy and Kelly were in my classroom today.
I end with an imagined story about the two children, Billy and Kelly
and me, I introduced in chapter one. . Even though this story is imagined, it
is important to make a note of my actions as I envision how I would ideally
have played with those particular children whom I knew so well. In my new
187
story I position Billy and Kelly as writers and readers because I encourage
them to write as pirates. I begin my interaction with them as a pirate,
pretending with them in an imagined space. I shift us into an authoring
space when I suggest various activities to them that we need to do as pirates.
I encourage all of the children during our play to do what interests them as I
promote their working together.
Most importantly, I have learned that it is important to observe and
listen to children on the playground, in the hallway, by the water fountain
and in the lunchroom. Literacy learning does not just take place at desks in
classrooms because it can occur in any social interactions, and in any
situation, including all those literacy practices that open up as possibilities
when we play with children.
Writing as Pirates
It’s late spring 2007 and the first and second grade children that I
teach are returning to class after recess. Out on the playground I noticed a
group of five or six children pretending to be pirates where they were “walking
the plank, searching the shore for buried treasure and dueling with swords”. A
boy and a girl who were pretending as if they were pirates return to the
classroom and grab some paper and string to create “eye patches” to continue
their adventure on the high seas. I say to the children in my best pirate voice,
“I see you didn’t have to walk the plank.
188
Billy says, “No we didn’t but we were fighting with swords and we each
got a cut on one of our eyes.” I say to them, “Wow that must hurt – you should
see the medic on board so he can patch your eye.” Kelly says, “Mine’s not so
bad. I think all I need is the patch.”
Other children join us- who are slowly coming back into classroom and
ask what we’re doing. I say, “Kelly and Billy just got back from the island
where they buried some treasure and we were just talking about how they
needed to draw a map quick before they forget where on the island they buried
the treasure. Steve says, “I was with them too. I need to help them.” All of the
children begin to chime in that they buried some treasure too and they wanted
to draw a map. Kelly says, “We should also maybe write a description of the
tree we buried it next to.” I say, “Well I didn’t go with you I stayed on the ship
but I need to write down how many days we’ve sailed to help the captain
remember exactly where we were when we stopped to bury the treasure. Mary
says to me, “I didn’t go either and I want to write to my mom to let her know I
am okay.” I say, “Great idea, I think we should start writing.”
189
Conclusion
In this ethnographic study I provide a glimpse into one early childhood
classroom. In this study I showed how play creates zones of proximal
development. Important to this research was the realization that when adults
position children during pretend play, children can engage in literacy
practices and participate in literacy events beyond what they usually do or
can do in everyday classrooms. Adults playing with children in imagined
spaces have more opportunities to mediate children’s learning particularly
their literacy learning. Adults can easily shift children from an imagined
space into an imagined authoring space while pretending with the children as
other people. This shift allows children to appropriate strategies far beyond
those they can learn during decontextualized activities of everyday
classrooms.
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