Understanding Young Children's Learning through Play

Building playful pedagogies

Pat Broadhead, Andy Burt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136582738
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This timely and accessible text introduces, theorises and practically applies two important concepts which now underpin early years practice: those of 'playful learning' and 'playful pedagogies'. Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt draw upon filmed material, conversations with children, reflection, observation, and parental and staff interviews, in their longitudinal study of outdoor and indoor play environments in an early years unit. This research-based text offers extensive insights into related theories, as well drawing on the authors' skills and knowledge as researcher and as class teacher in order to provide opportunities for personal reflection and possibilities for practical application in early years classes and settings.

Discussing both indoor and outdoor environments, the text explores ideas surrounding 'open-ended play', and 'the whatever you want it to be place'. It illustrates how the themes of children's play reflect their interests, experiences, knowledge gained at home and in school, and their cultural heritages. By showing how children become familiar and skilful within open-ended play environments, the authors illustrate how the children's co-operative skills develop over time as they become connected in communities of learners. Alongside the examples of children's playful learning, the book also considers the implications for resourcing and organising playful settings through playful pedagogies that connect with the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum (DfES 2007) and with the Tickell Review, ongoing as the book went to press.

Understanding Young Children's Learning through Play uses children's perspectives on their play to illustrate how rich their personal understandings are. It also includes parental reflections on what may initially appear a risky and unusual outdoor environment, and it draws attention to the importance of conflict resolution in play in order to extend children's resilience and assertiveness.

This insightful text will be of interest to students of early years education, early years practitioners, academics and researchers.

The background to the book The school, the research and recent developments in policy and theory

Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt

DOI: 10.4324/9780203156346-1

This study draws from a year in the life of the early years unit at Fishergate Primary School in York, England. The unit serves children aged from three years until the end of their reception year. Andy Burt, one of the book's authors, was the teacher in charge of the unit until July 2011 and, with the early years team, had been developing approaches to open-ended play in the unit for several years – we will explain what we mean by ‘open-ended play’ as the book unfolds, as we try to illustrate the concept as an holistic approach to teaching and learning in the early years and also explain how it links with the implementation of the Early Years Foundation Stage and the day-to-day responsibilities of practitioners in early years settings.

This book aims to support early years practitioners in deepening their understanding of what ‘playful learning’ might mean and look like and what ‘playful pedagogies’ are and might do in their classroom or early years setting. This focus on learning requires a focus on children's playful activities, and the joint research undertaken by Andy and Pat has looked closely at children's play in an open-ended, school-based play environment over a period of several months. Pedagogy is what adults do to provide learning and teaching experiences, but pedagogy is also informed by an educator's own understanding about why they do what they do. Consequently, it is necessary to talk to and research with the adults in the early years setting to try and capture these pedagogical insights around playful learning, and our joint research has aimed to do this. This research underpinning this book has been designed to try and capture each of these complex aspects – learning and teaching – and to try and better understand the relationship between them through better understanding the day-to-day business of playful learning in an early years unit.

This book aims to capture the impact of these developments on the children, on the team members and, where possible, more broadly across the school and in relation to parents and carers. Pat Broadhead has been researching open-ended play and its links with the growth of sociability and cooperation for several years (Broadhead 2004, 2006, 2010; Broadhead et al. 2010). She has observed children becoming increasingly expert at playing together as they become more familiar with one another and with the materials and resources available to them. Shehas also studied the connections between cooperative play and intellectual challenge for young children in relation to traditional play materials including sand, water, large and small construction and role play, and in relation to open-ended play materials that are sufficiently flexible to allow children to create their own play themes around the materials. Where intellectual challenge is in evidence amongst groups or pairs of interacting peers, learning-in-action is also most likely to be evident; however, intellectual challenge and learning potential are not necessarily easily recognised when children are playing; they have to be searched for. The study of children's playful engagements in their early years settings is relatively recent but increasing numbers of studies are becoming available (Brock 1999; Howard 2010; Martlew et al. 2011; Nutbrown 2006; Rogers and Evans 2008; Worthington 2010a). However, there continues to be debate and contention in this complex area (Wood 1997)

Two of the biggest challenges for both practitioners and researchers are, first, to understand how play in an early years educational setting is linked with learning for the playing children and, second, to share this understanding with those with whom they work but also with those who are more sceptical about the benefits of play as self-initiated intellectual pursuit and as a way of understanding ourselves and our interests as we gradually make meaning in the complex world around us. We hope to bring some of these complexities to life in the following chapters.

Meeting and engaging in joint research

Andy and Pat first met several years ago when Andy was the Year 1 teacher in another York school. At that time, Pat had been researching play with the reception teacher in the school and with other reception teachers in York schools on a project funded by City of York Local Education Authority and York University (Broadhead 2004). We had been researching the levels of sociability and cooperation that children were showing as they played together with a range of traditionally available play materials (sand, water, large construction, small construction and small world and role play). We used an observational schedule, the Social Play Continuum (SPC) (Broadhead 2004, 2006). This requires the observer to record specified, observed characteristics of play. These characteristics are organised into four domains showing increasing complexity and intellectual challenge in the play: the Associative Domain, the Social Domain, the Highly Social Domain and the Cooperative Domain. As well as recording the play in this quantitative way, we made extensive notes of qualitative descriptions of the play and also undertook joint discussion after we had completed our quantitative-qualitative observations of play. To our surprise, during the joint research, the use of the SPC revealed that the role play stimulated the lowest levels of cooperative play. The Cooperative Domain, as defined and described on the SPC, has the highest levels of intellectual challenge and a very small number of role play observations were categorised as being located in the Cooperative Domain.

When discussing this at a project meeting in this earlier project, one reception teacher had suggested that it might be because the role play areas were themed by adults, as a home corner (in two reception classes), a shop, a café and a party, but the other areas we had been observing, especially the sand, water and large construction, were non-thematic; they were in effect much more open-ended. As a result, we had seen from our observations that children introduced and developed their own play themes in these areas and became more absorbed and more committed to them than they were to the role play; it was these high levels of commitment that brought the play into the Cooperative Domain with its associated high levels of intellectual challenge.

Leading on from this, we introduced what we called open-ended role play areas in the five classes, using cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, cable reels, fabrics, old wooden clothes horses and other materials. Further joint observations undertaken by the researcher and the teacher in this new area had revealed that the play moved rapidly into the Cooperative Domain (as measured on the Social Play Continuum). In one of the classrooms, the teacher, in discussion with the children, said she was ‘tired of calling it the open-ended role play area’; it was such a mouthful. One girl said it could be called ‘the whatever you want it to be place’ (Broadhead 2004: 73). In saying this, she was acknowledging that this open-ended area enabled the children to determine and develop the play themes – unlike the themed areas that adults had provided in the previous research such as the shop or the party. Much of Pat's subsequent research has focussed on developing these ideas in conjunction with a range of early years practitioners.

However, during this earlier project, Andy had seen the joint research ongoing in the reception class of the school in which he was then working. He wanted to introduce the ideas into his Year 1 classroom and so we began to work together with the Year 1 children introducing open-ended play materials into the classroom.

One thing Pat noticed was that Andy seemed prepared to give the children high levels of freedom, at an early stage, with the new open-ended play materials; sometimes the play appeared noisy and chaotic but the use of the SPC observational schedule showed that the play was cooperative and full of problem-setting and solving, rich uses of language and joint goal-setting and achievement. To an untrained eye, however, this richness might have seemed lost in the apparent chaos. As a researcher, Pat had undertaken many observations of play in a wide range of settings but it emerged that the combination of an open-ended play space along with an early years teacher willing to let this unfamiliar space be taken over by the children to quite a considerable extent led to some exciting and highly engaged play as we researched together in the Year 1 classroom.

The joint research came to an end and the link between Andy and Pat was lost for a range of reasons. It was several years later that Andy emailed Pat, who was working at Leeds Metropolitan University, to ask if she wanted to come and look at some of the ways in which he had developed the ideas over the years. This book is the result of subsequent work between the staff team in the Fishergate early years unit and a play researcher.

Introducing the school and the team

Fishergate School is in a Victorian, two-story building close to the city centre of York. There are just over 200 children in the school and, on average, around 45 children per morning and afternoon session in the early years unit. These are 30 reception-aged children and 15 nursery children from the age of three years. The school serves a mixed and very broad catchment with children from privately owned houses, a large number living in council houses and flats and some in privately rented accommodation. Some children live in sheltered housing as a result of domestic violence in the family. Children also regularly attend from a local, permanent traveller's site. Children have occasionally attended who live in houseboats on the river. There are regular attenders with a parent in the armed services and children with a parent or parents attending the University of York. The population of the school overall is quite transient, with children leaving before Year 6 on a regular basis. Within the early years unit, the children's lifestyles outside school have some very marked contrasts, with some living in relative affluence and others in poverty with all its attendant challenges. There are always some children in the unit with the potential for challenging behaviour resulting from the difficulties and lifestyles being experienced by children, parents or both in the home and wider community. In addition, there were some children with statements of special need and children in the process of assessment for a statement within the unit during the period of research.

When Andy was appointed to the post in 2005, the numbers of children in the unit were quite low with spare capacity available. From 2007, the numbers of pupils began to increase with a full reception intake since 2007 and a full nursery intake since 2009. This increase in numbers may have resulted from the good Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) report of 2006 but, as the next chapter also shows, it also coincides with the developments and significant changes in the outdoor play area. The staff team have also noted that an increasing number of parents are coming to look around because they have been told about the unit and how it works by other parents; this may have impacted on the increase in pupil numbers and may also be linked to the gradual introduction of a more open-ended approach to teaching and learning through the expansion of flexible play resources and materials.

The outdoor area is described in more detail in the next chapter, with developments to the indoor areas, which followed the focus on the outdoors, being described in Chapter 3.

The early years team

Andy has been the early years leader in the unit since 2005. Prior to this he worked for six years in another school in York, in Year 1 and in the reception class, having qualified in 1999. He has been an Advanced Skills Teacher since 2008, taking one day a week supporting other schools and settings. Over thelast two years, there have been increasing requests from within and beyond the Local Authority for Andy to talk about the developing approaches to playful learning and teaching in the early years unit, and along with this, regular visitors to the unit. He became deputy head at another York school in September 2011, a school that was taking creativity and exploration into the Key Stage (KS) 1 and KS2.

The subsequent staff descriptions begin with self-selected pseudonyms.

Debbie had left school knowing she wanted to work in childcare. She had worked for several years in a private nursery ‘moving up through the ranks, from assistant, to senior, to deputy manager’. Having been there a while and because of personal circumstances, she felt it was time for a change. She saw a post advertised in a local school, applied and was unsuccessful at interview but then applied at Fishergate, was interviewed and was accepted. Although the work represented a drop in salary she decided to accept the job. Debbie is responsible for the general set-up of the unit, ‘meeting and greeting parents’ and working with the children in a general way with no specific responsibilities for individual children other than her key worker group for which all staff have responsibility. In deciding where to go to engage with children she would ‘scan the room and mooch around but try not to make my presence known or interrupt them’.

Elizabeth had qualified with an NNEB (National Nursery Examination Board qualification) and begun working on a paediatric ward in a local hospital, working there for 15 years with children from birth to 15 years of age. She had taken further training to develop her knowledge of hospital play. When she had her own children, the shift work was difficult to continue. She then took part-time work in a local supermarket and gradually built up supply work in a number of early years settings. She had undertaken supply work at Fishergate and was then asked by Andy if she would provide full-time cover for a member of staff who was leaving. Although temporary in the first instance, Elizabeth had been at Fishergate full-time for four years. Her role is general with some administrative responsibilities and she occasionally took responsibility for children with special educational needs.

Jane had begun working with a mixed Year 1/2 class at Fishergate. Towards the end of the research period, Jane had moved into the early years unit to support two children with special educational needs and at the time of the research was working full-time, engaged with the two children for the majority of the time but also working and playing with others on occasion. She had worked as a teaching assistant elsewhere in York and Yorkshire and had begun her working life as a hairdresser. She had also worked in banking, retail and administration but decided that she ‘wanted to do something worthwhile that she could enjoy and help others with’.

Rachel had worked as a parent volunteer at Fishergate employed one day a week although this was to rise to three days during the research period. She, her husband and her children had travelled for two years in Bangladesh and onreturning found that the children could not be accepted back into their previous primary school. Rachel had visited Fishergate and felt it was ‘unique’ and ‘a very inclusive school with a welcoming ethos’. She was also completing a part-time BA in Early Years and felt she was able to put the ideas about play that she was engaging with into practice, as well as to better understand the meaning of ‘following the child's interests’ at Fishergate. Over the period of her involvement with Fishergate, Rachel felt she had seen a substantial change in practice evolve since Andy's arrival.

Vicky began working in the unit as the joint research was drawing to a close. Previously she had worked as a teaching assistant supporting a child with Down's syndrome. She then undertook a psychology degree, had three children of her own and trained as a breast-feeding counsellor, working for a local Sure Start programme. She had also undertaken other counselling work with parents on Sure Start projects. Her role at Fishergate was as a general team member. She had been temporarily employed to cover a substantial intake of children to the unit in the previous January.

Thus, although staff numbers may seem generous overall, it should be recalled that some of the staff were temporary and some were part-time and, at the time of the staff semi-structured interviews, the pupil numbers were at their highest, thus requiring an increased pupil-staff ratio.

The research unfolds: methods, challenges and ethical practices

The substantive period of data collection for the research began early in 2009 and continued until just before Easter in 2010. This allowed longitudinal data collection of the expert players aged five years who had been in the unit since age three along with new...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The background to the book The school, the research and recent developments in policy and theory
• 2 Resourcing and Developing Playful Learning Environments The Outdoor Area
• 3 Becoming Oneself as a Playful Being and the Growth of Identity Looking Outdoors and Indoors
• 4 Participating in Playful Pedagogies Adults as Creative Planners and Players
• 5 The Pedagogies of Risk and the Value of Conflict
• 6 From the 'New Child' to the 'Master Player' Playful Progression from Child-Initiated Activities
• 7 Understanding the Power, the Possibilities and the Challenges of the ‘Whatever You Want it to Be Place' Within the Early Years
• reference
• Index