Place, Pedagogy and Play connects landscape architecture with education, psychology, public health and planning. Over the course of thirteen chapters it examines how design and research of places can ...be approached through multiple lenses – of pedagogy and play and how children, as competent social agents, are engaged in the process of designing their own spaces – and brings a global perspective to the debate around child-friendly environments.Despite growing evidence of the benefits of nature for health, wellbeing, play and learning, children are increasingly spending more time indoors. Indeed, new policy ideas and public campaigns suggest how children can become better connected with nature, yet linking outdoor space to pedagogy is largely overlooked in research. By focusing on three themes within these debates, place and play; place and pedagogy; and place and participation, this book explores a variety of angles to show that best practice requires dialogue between research disciplines, designers, educationists and psychologists, and a move beyond seeing the spaces children inhabit as the domain only of childhood professionals. Through illustrated case studies this book presents a wider picture of the state of childhood today, and offers practical solutions and further research avenues that promote a more holistic and internationally focused perspective on place, pedagogy and play for built-environment professionals.
Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to positive ...developments (equifinality), and pretend play is an epiphenomenon of other factors that drive development. Evidence from several domains is considered. For language, narrative, and emotion regulation, the research conducted to date is consistent with all 3 positions but insufficient to draw conclusions. For executive function and social skills, existing research leans against the crucial causal position but is insufficient to differentiate the other 2. For reasoning, equifinality is definitely supported, ruling out a crucially causal position but still leaving open the possibility that pretend play is epiphenomenal. For problem solving, there is no compelling evidence that pretend play helps or is even a correlate. For creativity, intelligence, conservation, and theory of mind, inconsistent correlational results from sound studies and nonreplication with masked experimenters are problematic for a causal position, and some good studies favor an epiphenomenon position in which child, adult, and environment characteristics that go along with play are the true causal agents. We end by considering epiphenomenalism more deeply and discussing implications for preschool settings and further research in this domain. Our take-away message is that existing evidence does not support strong causal claims about the unique importance of pretend play for development and that much more and better research is essential for clarifying its possible role. (Contains 12 tables and 10 footnotes.)
Current literacy play research highlights the need for a better understanding of teaching possibilities for multimodal learning in children's play in immersive environments.
To examine how parents ...respond to young children's reading and playing of action texts communicated by designs in toys in a museum playscape.
41 children, 1YO-8YO, participated in the study, including 27 girls and 14 boys.
Children wore chest-mounted GoPro cameras to capture their toy-handling and interactions with caregivers. First-person video data captured children's interactions with exhibit elements and adult guidance. Geosemiotic analysis of exhibit spaces, toy designs, and parent-child interactions located instances of intense toy-handling for multimodal analysis of parents' guided play that helped children enact expected actions with toys.
Semiotic analysis of the designs of materials and space revealed artifactual and spatial action texts that children embodied multimodally through play. Familiar toys enabled free play and independent playing of action texts. Unfamiliar action texts in toys sparked guided play in two ways: 1) parental coaching from the side and 2) co-playing as parents enacted a play role to join the pretense. Parent's guided play connected medical toys to family's health practices to mediate children's recognition and playing of an action text's expected roles and practices.
When adults join children's embodied pretense in immersive play environments, co-playing interactions can flatten adult/child power relations while play coaching can reinscribe expectations for children's compliant direction-following. Further play research is needed in settings and disciplines beyond early childhood, language, and literacy education.
•Play literacies are embodied readings/playings of tacit action texts in toys and museum spaces.•Go-Pro cameras revealed how young preschool children handled toys and interacted with caregivers.•Geosemiotic analysis examined children's play as responses to embedded actions in toy designs.•Parents guided play by co-playing a role or coaching alongside, helping children play action texts.
