The Play Space & some conceptual questions

The Power of Play
Nov 5 · 4 min read

The Early Start Discovery Space

In case you missed my intro of who I am and what I’m doing here (I promise I won’t get philosophical) I’m a mum of two and doing my PhD. The Early Start Discovery Space is a children’s museum where children and their adults can come to play in various themed areas. I had to drag my own children away after hours here, and I say ‘here’ because I’m lucky enough to share an office right above it. Throughout my day I can hear kids laughing, and the sound of the train choo-chooing as kids play inside it, feeding it coal and going on imaginary journeys. It’s awesome.

After visiting the centre with my own two, it was really clear to me how varied the experiences were on a child by child basis, depending on the adult/s who accompany the children here. In my last post Play, Learning & Self-Regulation I wrote about the potential impact of guided play in formal learning spaces like schools. So what about less formal places, and what if the adult is a parent/family member, not a teacher?

A combination of social norms, parental and cultural expectations, and the needs of the child will contribute towards the way adults guide the children in their play. When I visited that day, some adults were hardly involved with their children at all, some were very present, some dipped in and out, some told their children what to do and where to go. I saw how significant the quality of the adult presence was, and for me it marked the difference between a child experiencing free play, direct instruction, guided play or a combination of all three (see my previous post comparing these).

An example of the differences between adults (& therefore the guidance they provide) was when my daughter took a shopping trolley full of toy food she had collected from the market over to another area, where she sat on a floor cushion and counted what she had collected. Another parent followed her movements and looked a bit..perplexed. I assume it was because the food was being taken outside of ‘the food area’. Is that allowed? What are the rules? My daughter clearly had a plan. She knew where she was going, and she knew what she wanted to do.

A conceptual question…

Of course my brain buzzed and the cogs started turning. A couple of questions:

  1. In an informal learning environment like the Early Start Discovery Space, with no clear set of learning objectives (unlike a school), is guided play the most successful form of adult interaction/presence*? (*I’m not sure instruction is the best term to use here).
  2. Intuitively I think the answer is yes, because there is such a huge amount of scope here to contribute towards children’s self-regulatory behaviour while children follow their own interests. So, then, is there a way to use the principles of guided play in an open-ended play space?
  3. If the space itself doesn’t define objectives (& why should it? Different children will have different play agendas) can we encourage children to engage in play-planning to set their own objectives? (This sort of practice is reminiscent of High Scope’s Plan-Do-Review). This way, guided play could indeed be used to support children in reaching their own objectives and as such develop some key high-order cognitive functions. AND if so…
  4. Can visiting adults and/or discovery space staff be taught techniques to support children in successful guided play? and can these techniques be communicated and shared between these two stakeholder groups?

What the answers to these questions might tell us

First of all, dissemination of research into a real-world setting is high on my agenda. Its why this blog isn’t written too academic-y (I’m making that a real word). Being able to make an impact alongside educators and adults who are interacting directly with children is a big portion of my drive to do this research. Working alongside the discovery space staff to design a sustainable professional development program would be amazing! In turn, engaging the parent/accompanying adult stakeholder group would have a ripple effect and result in even wider impact and engagement, maybe making its way into the home too.

Visits to the Early Start space could be made more purposeful: an opportunity to implement and practise executive function type ‘training’ for the children who visit.

The Power of Play

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The Power of Play (or PoP) is where I share my thoughts & ideas about play in early learning. For everyone, but with an academic edge.

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