Overview: In this exercise you will explore your current position with regard to play and what you think the adult's role is.

Time: You should allow 1 hour(s), 0 minute(s).

Aim: to clarify your views about the adult's role in children's play.

Activity

In Bennett et al.'s (1997) study (see The Role of Adults in Children's Play) it appears that the teachers involved were, to some extent, influenced by Piagetian theories about child development. They had a positive view of children's capabilities, but sometimes their expectations were too high (e.g. assuming the four-year olds they worked with had the ability to manage their own learning or to cooperate effectively within a group).

For this exercise you need to describe your current position with regard to play. To do this, you will need to reflect and make notes on:

• your views about the value of play (have they changed in any way since you completed Play Experiences within Your Setting and Opportunities for Play within Your Setting?);
• your views about the role of adults in children's play;
• difficulties you have experienced in your setting with regard to play activities (e.g. children and adults having different, or even conflicting, purposes and intentions);
• changes you have made in your views about ‘the child’ and the value and purposes of play in order to help you better support and facilitate children's learning through play.

Write a description of how you approach play in your setting. Highlight what you think the adult's role is and try to relate this to specific theories of childhood, play and learning.

Acknowledgement

This exercise is adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled The role of play in children's learning – made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.