Extract 1: Henry Highpants
“they are using spatial language and gesture while discussing where the [objects] should have been placed. They are observing, manipulating, and discussing the position of the [objects] in relation to its spatial position and thus demonstrating their spatial thinking and using spatial language, making both available to the teacher for assessment” (p. 7)
intentional teaching | assessment-in-interaction | play-based learning
Educator role in children’s play
External or participatory:
Observer, stage manager, co-player, play leader, pedagogical designer (Fleer, 2015; Lobman, 2003; Meacham, Vukelich, Han, & Buell, 2014; Trawick-Smith and Dziurgot, 2011)
Educator reluctance in joining play; children learn through play (Church & Bateman, 2019; ‘hijacking’ Pyle & Danniels, 2016; Samuelsson & Johansson, 2009; Theobald, Danby et al, 2015 )
Educator uncertainty/discomfort in the imaginative state of play (Young, under review)
“In current educational research, joint play between adults and children has not been examined as an analytic account of what the participants are doing. Rather, it has loosely defined as anything that the children and adults do together during more or less structured playtime or in the presence of play materials (Kontos, 1999; Singer et al., 2014).”
ECEC research concerned with the ‘role’ of the teacher, but play is a co-constructed, collaborative, multi-party activity (Bateman, 2015; Jung, 2013; Pursi, 2022, 2019; Pursi & Lipponen, 2018). In other words, our analytic interest is “not the individual action but an interactive field that is sustained through the co-operative action of different kinds of actors” (Goodwin, 2018)
Playful stance of educators.
How to enter the play and embody a relevant stance in the ongoing activity? What are “the cues and markers through which such footings become manifest” (Goffman 1981, p.157). Participation framework of pretending (Morita, 2015): what is the conditionally relevant next action?
References
Bateman, A. (2015). Conversation analysis and early childhood education: The co-production of knowledge and relationships (pp. 41–66). Hampshire: Ashgate/Routledge.
Church, A. & Bateman , A. (2019) Children’s right to participate: How can teachers extend child-initiated learning sequences? International Journal of Early Childhood, 51, 265–281 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-019-00250-7
Fleer, M. (2015). Pedagogical positioning in play: Teachers being inside and outside of children’s imaginary play. Early Child Development and Care, 185, 1801–1814. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2015.1028393
Goffman E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia.
Goodwin, C. (2018), "Why Multimodality? Why Co-Operative Action?" (transcribed by J.S. Philipsen). Social Interaction: Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 1, (2), https://tidsskrift.dk/socialinteraction/article/view/110039/159345.
Guarrella, C., van Driel, J. & Cohrssen, C. (2022). Towards assessment of playful learning in early childhood: Influences on teachers’ science assessment practices. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21811
Hedge, K. & Cohrssen, C. (2019.) Between the red and yellow windows: A fine-grained focus on supporting children’s spatial thinking during play. SAGE Open. doi: 10.1177/215824401982955
Jung, J. (2013). Teachers' roles in infants' play and its changing nature in a dynamic group care context. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28, 187–198.
Lobman, C.L. (2003). What Should We Create Today? Improvisational teaching in play-based classrooms, Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development, 23:2, 131-142, DOI: 10.1080/09575140303104
Meacham, S., Vukelich, C., Han, M., & Buell, M. (2014). Preschool teachers’ questioning in sociodramatic play. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29(4), 562–573. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.07.001
Morita, E. (2015). “Say (x)”: a device for securing conversational footing in the talk of young children, Discourse Processes, 52(4), 290–310
Pursi, A. (2019). Play in adult-child interaction: Institutional multi-party interaction and pedagogical practice in a toddler classroom. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, (21), 136-150.
Pursi, A. (2022). Play. In A.Church & A. Bateman (Eds.) Talking with children: A handbook of interaction in early childhood education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pursi, A., Lipponen, L. & Sajaniemi, N.K. (2018). Emotional and playful stance taking in joint play between adults and very young children.Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, (18), 28–45.
Pursi, A. & Lipponen, L. (2018) Constituting play connection with very young children: Adults’ active participation in play. Learning, Culture and Social Interactions, 17, 21–37.
Pyle, A. & Danniels, E. (2016) A continuum of play-based learning: The role of the teacher in play-based pedagogy and the fear of hijacking play. Early Education Development, 28(3), 274-289.
Samuelsson I.P., & Johansson, E. (2009) Why do children involve teachers in their play and learning? European Early Childhood Education Research. J. 2009, 17, 77–94
Sidnell, J. (2022). Reframing ‘Footing. In M.H. Jacobsen & G. Smith (Eds.) The Routledge International Handbook of Goffman Studies (pp. 131–142). London: Routledge.
Theobald, M., Danby, S., Einarsdóttir, J., Bourne, J., Jones, D., Ross, S., Knaggs, H. & Carter-Jones, C. (2015) Children’s perspectives of play and learning for educational practice. Education Sciences, 5, 345–362; doi:10.3390/educsci5040345
Trawick-Smith, J., & Dziurgot, T. (2011). “Good-fit” teacher–child play interactions and the subsequent autonomous play of preschool children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 26(1), 110–123.