Playwork is an emerging profession and little is known about the demographics of the playwork sector. The lack of demographic data has hampered the development of the professionalisation of the ...playwork field, as playworkers have been unable to substantiate claims about the extent and impact of their field with sufficient reliable evidence. As part of an online survey undertaken to explore playworker's understanding of the Play Cycle theory, playworkers were asked to provide background demographic data on years of practice, job role, qualification and location. This created a data set with which to explore possible relationships between these four factors using Pearsons Chi-Squared analysis. The results indicated that there are potential relationships between playwork practice with firstly years of practice and secondly with highest playwork qualifications. Perhaps more significantly, this study highlights some of the key challenges in collecting and analysing demographic data in the playwork field and offers some potential solutions which, although imperfect, could be built upon in further studies to produce demographic data with which to inform theprofessionalisation of the playwork field.
The International Playwork Census (IPC) was undertaken to compare demographic data from both playworkers and non-playworkers who use a playwork approach in their work. Data were collected from 273 ...responses in nineteen different countries reflecting the growth of playwork from its United Kingdom beginnings. Results showed the combined playwork (102 responses) and non-playwork (171 responses) workforce is female, white with no registered disability with an average age of 44.8 years. There were also significant differences between job roles in relation to sector employed, playwork training and play qualifications undertaken. There were differences between playworkers and non-playworkers. Playworkers were significantly found to work in management or practice within the Third (Voluntary) sector and have playwork qualifications. Non-playworkers were significantly employed in the statutory sector, work at the board level and have no playwork qualification. Up-to-date demographic data are important to develop the professionalisation of playwork. This study provides a current profile of professionals working with children in a play context who see themselves as belonging to the playwork field. It provides a unique insight into two different sectors within the playwork field: adults who describe themselves as "playworkers" and adults who describe their practice as "a playwork approach".
What Is the Purpose of Playwork? Newstead, Shelly; King, Pete
Child care in practice : Northern Ireland journal of multi-disciplinary child care practice,
07/02/2024, Letnik:
30, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Playwork is a recognised profession in the United Kingdom (UK) and is currently a growing area of interest internationally. However, debates about the nature and purpose of playwork have raged in the ...playwork field since the profession was invented in the early adventure playgrounds. This study is the first to capture data about what the now international playwork workforce understands to be the purpose of playwork. The International Playwork Census (IPC) was an online survey which asked participants from 19 different countries about their knowledge and experience of playwork. This paper reports on one question from the IPC: what is the purpose of playwork? A thematic analysis was undertaken from 193 responses on what was considered "the purpose of playwork" and three themes emerged: Facilitate and Provide for children's play; Support and Advocate. This paper describes how these three themes reflect both the historical change in understandings of the purpose of playwork and how different understandings of playwork are developed through the experience of practitioners working in range of different contexts.
During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic ...restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19. Folklorists Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop adopt a multidisciplinary approach to this phenomenon, bringing together the insights of a geographically and demographically diverse range of scholars, practitioners, and community activists. The book begins with a focus on social and physical landscapes before moving onto more intimate portraits of play among the old and young, including coronavirus-themed games and novel toy inventions. Finally, the co-authors explore the creative shifts observed in frames of play, ranging from Zoom screens to street walls. This singular chronicle of coronavirus play will be of interest to researchers and students of developmental psychology, childhood studies, education, playwork, sociology, anthropology and folklore, as well as to toy, museum, and landscape designers. This book will also be of help to parents, professional organizations, educators, and urban planners, with a postscript of concrete suggestions advocating for the essential role of play in a post-pandemic world.
In the 1970s, playwork was part of a broad, enriching perspective that focused on 'the whole child'. While acknowledging that change is accelerating, bringing with it greater complexity, we still ...tend to search for simplistic order. The so-called 'age of austerity' in which we find ourselves is a contemporary attempt to impose order on the chaos that is the global economy. The search for order is pertinent to many aspects of play in contemporary childhood. It is the child of the immensely influential paradigm of modernity and the resurgence since the 1970s of neo-liberal capitalism and advanced liberal politics. At a time of growing insecurity, dislocation and insecurity generated by these forms of liberalism, the narrative claims to offer certainty and redemption. One consequence of this push for order is to increase chaos in the complex system that is our globalised world, and the nature of 'complexity' is explained. The crucial aspect of systems in this state, known as 'complex adaptive systems' is that we cannot control them, we can only influence them. Because control of a complex system (or more precisely, a complex adaptive system) is not possible, attempting to control will have negative consequences. Thus is created precarity, a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. Two flawed approaches to playwork can be discerned: Intervention playwork - the provision in times of plenty of a resource-intensive enclave in which to herd children in order to protect them, and Environmental playwork - an approach which looks at the barriers that prevent children from playing in their communities and attempts to mitigate them in a variety of ways. A third longer-term approach to the development of play is required that can respond quickly to its changing environment, yet be grounded within a long-term perspective. A complex approach that takes a strategic and long-term perspective, whilst encouraging experimentation and learning at the level of community provision. The Welsh approach is described as a strategic perspective which places a duty on local authorities to assess and secure sufficient play opportunities for children in their area. That which is loved will persist, like a drystone wall maintained by generations.
In 1998, Sturrock and Else introduced the Play Cycle which has been integrated into both playwork theory and practice. An online survey with 157 responses found that playworkers’ understanding Play ...Cycle varied to how they were first introduced to the theory. In addition, understandings of the six elements of the Play Cycle were significantly different from the original author’s definitions. To provide a more consistent use of the Play Cycle in both future research and practice, this article offers new definitions for each element of the Play Cycle based on the results from this study. This has implications for any childhood setting where the Play Cycle is used, including playgroups, nurseries and out of school provision catering for primary-aged children.
When playwork settings re-opened in July 2020 after the first lockdown in March 2020, playwork as a profession demonstrated its adaptable and flexible nature for children to access the provision. ...This included open access provision becoming closed access and bookable, a reduction in the number of children, resources, and space to play, and increased cleaning. As part of a longitudinal study, now one year how are open access settings (adventure playgrounds and mobile play provision) and closed access settings (breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, and holiday playschemes) operating? An online survey was completed by 42 participants, 31 who ran closed access and 11 who ran open-access settings. Results indicated that all settings were running the same number of days and hours pre-March lockdown, however, fewer children are attending with a smaller number of staff, this being more noticeable within closed access settings. It appears the open access adventure playgrounds are operating as they were pre-March 2020 lockdown, however, the closed access childcare provision, e.g. after-school clubs are still running as they were in July 2020. Although funding has been made available to support aspects such as extra cleaning, playwork settings are concerned with being able to open and continue to operate.
The state of playwork Voce, Adrian
International journal of play,
20/9/2/, Letnik:
4, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Playwork in the UK is an approach to working with children in free play settings - and a body of theory and practice informing that approach - that emerged and has traditionally flourished in public ...play provision, funded to a greater or lesser extent by the state. After the ambitious 12-year play strategy (2008) of the last Labour government seemed to promise a bright future for such services, and for the professional development of the playwork community, the austerity measures of the coalition and Conservative governments since 2010 have greatly reduced the extent of staffed play provision in the public and voluntary sectors; and pushed this emergent profession into seeming decline. Conversely, there is evidence of playwork's growing influence and popularity in other parts of the world; but for the playwork community to withstand the dramatic downturn in its fortunes in the UK, it needs to unify, consolidate its resources, learn from its history and grow and retain control of its own support and representational structures. A new independent vehicle, emerging from a 2013 summit in Sheffield - called to find a response to the existential crisis facing playwork - may be the start of this fight-back.
This paper examines the life and times of the first 10 years of an adventure playground and the ways in which that playground has been affected by and responded to the opportunities and challenges ...presented by changes to the prevailing national and local socio-political and economic climate of that decade. The paper explores significant events in the playground's history and the ways in which those events have been influenced by the interrelationship between popular public perceptions of children and their play; the national and local policy context for children, play and playwork; and the implications of such for the playwork practice of those charged with developing and running one of the north of England's flagship playwork provisions. During the latter part of the playground's comparatively short life many of these factors have inevitably contributed to or been played out against a backdrop of ideological political and economic reform popularly termed as austerity. Although the full financial implications for small charitable organisations such as The Big Swing of the present UK government's austerity programme are only just becoming realised, the ideological neoliberal tenets by which they are informed have had a demonstrably detrimental effect on the playground's practice and delivery.
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