Play and Creativity

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  • Created by: Isla
  • Created on: 10-05-13 19:13

1 - Unit Overview

  • Purposes of Play Cultural experience.
    Learning
    Taking risks
    Fun
    Development
    Socialisation
    Meaning Making
    Taking on others perspectives
  • Typology of Play (Fisher, 2008) Exploratory
    Symbolic
    Dramatic - someone elses behaviour
    Socio-dramatic - scenario based
    Pretend - fantasy
    Locomoter
    Rough and tumble
    Games with rules
  • Contexts for play: spectator / solitary / cooperative / parallel - same activity but not together
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2 - Play and Playfulness

  • Play vs. Exploration - novel objects elicit exploratory behaviour / changes to play with repeated exposure.
  • Playfulness - a trait or a state?
  • Play may not always be fun for all.
  • Adults and children have different definitions of play.
    • Children tend to define anything literacy based as 'not play'.
  • Adults may not recognise their own impact on play through observational research.
  • Jigsaw Experiment - formal vs. informal setting:
    • Children in formal setting actually got worse before getting better when repeating task.
    • Shows importance of play in learning.
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3 - Pedagogical Play

  • Pedagogy - science and art of teaching and learning for children, teacher-led.
  • Androgogy - adults, self-directed learning
  • Vygotsky and Scaffolding - some play may need adult support.
  • Tikell Review - EYFS mostly successful but too bureaucratic.
    • New 2012 framework barely any mention of play compared to 2007.
    • 'planned and purposeful play'
    • 'play as a vehicle for learning'
    • High expectations for outcomes mean less play.
  • Truly free play controlled because:
    • health and safety
    • fear of disturbing other, older classes
    • BUT developmentally VERY IMPORTANT
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4 - Observation of Children's Play

  • Why observation matters:
    • Recognising and valuing children's ideas.
    • Understanding development and play.
    • Needed in education / care settings / social work / health / therapeutic work and conselling.
  • Naturalistic Observation - reporting facts / write for 5 mins, observe for 5 mins etc / might miss important observations while writing.
  • Reggio Observation - only records verbal communication
  • Target Child Method - Oxford Preschool Project, Sylva (1980)
    • Advantages - basic preparation / focuses observation through grid / enables later analysis.
    • Disadvantages - needs practice / timing is important / can feel constraining in grid.
  • Other Methods - Tavistock method / Time or Event sampling / checklists / rating scales.
  • Ethics - informed consent from child /parent /setting / confidentiality / anonymity / no photos or videos / intrusion of privacy.
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5. 5x5x5=Creativity

  • EYFS Principles:
    • Creative Values, competence and strength of child / EYFS - unique child, competent learner from birth.
    • Creative Behaviours and Dispositions, holistic learning / EYFS - learning and dvlpmt.
    • Creative Environments, physical and emotional / EYFS - enabling environments.
    • Creative Relationships, attentive, respectful, collaborative / EYFS - positive relationships.
  • Reggio principles - children as explorers and creative knowledge builders / support children's inquiries and expression.
  • 'A pedagogy of listening' - child initiated and adult framed, support children's ideas / Scaffolding - Vygotsky.
  • Move to 'what if thinking' - not 'what is this and what does it do?' but 'what can i do with it?'
  • Robinson (2001) - creativity as a function of intelligence.
  • Edwards et al. (1998) - creativity favoured or disfavoured depending on expectations of adults.
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6 - Children's Friendships

  • Purpose of friends and friendships: support / replacing family / leisure time / indentity dvlpmt / opportunities to play out strong emotions / establishing patterns for adult relationships / cultural affirmation, reproduction and production.
  • Friends and status: attitudes of liking and disliking / little research into friendships in non-formal settings.
  • Membership: Study with pre-school children, Moreno (1942) move away from observation by asking children / tendency to assume friendship is dyadic (2 people) when in reality could be more / friendships usually between 4-6 members (Epstein, 1985) or 3-5 members (Hartrup and Stevens, 1997)
  • Gender and race differences: girls friendships tend to be dyadic / Shrum et al. (1988) 85% best friendships 8-17yrs same sex / 90% same race 12 yrs and above.
  • Conflict: little evidence of personal conflict in non-western studies of play / non-western studies show other children control peers for pro-social rather than egoistic reasons.
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7 - Children and Internet Play

  • EU Kids Online, Livingstone and Haddon (2010)
    • 25,000 children from 25 European Countries.
    • 87% 6-8 yrs / 94% 11-14yrs / 95% 15-17yrs use internet.
    • Striking rise in younger children's internet usage since 2005.
    • By 2009, few differences between boys and girls internet usage.
    • Average age of first us 7yrs, 1/3 of 9-10 yrs use daily, 73% 13-14 yrs social networking.
    • 11-16 yrs - 64% could block those they did not wish to contact / 1/2 could change privacy settings.
  • Internet Anxieties:
    • Levin and Rosenquest (2001) - electronics threaten creative play.
    • Cordes and Miller (2000) - technology not developmentally appropriate or healthy.
    • Valentine and Holloway (2002) - overlap between virtual and real worlds/friendships.
    • Byron(2008) Risks - content / contatct / conduct - 15% 11-16yrs upset by sexting / 1 in 12 bullied online / 30% communicated with someone they didn't know offline.
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8 - Play, Physical Activity and Health

  • 2011 Guidelines for 5-18 yr olds
    • Moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least 60mins a day.
    • Vigorous intensity activites should be included at least 3 times a week.
    • Should minimise sedentary time - closely related to obesity.
  • Time in front of TV associated with obseity, lower academic achievement, lower well-being.
  • Parents vs. Peers: permissive parenting linked to higher physical activity - independence / friendship groups key / parent and child activity not strongly associated (Jago et al. 2010)
  • 15 years go 70% 7-year olds walked to school unsupervised, now only 7%.
  • Significant association between traffic density near home and gain in BMI - accounts for about 5% by age 18 (Jerett et al., 2010).
  • PEACH: Personal Environmental Associations with Children's Health:
    • Longitudanal study from last year primary, to first and fourth year secondary.
    • Accelerometer 7 days, GPS 4 days - no signal indoors to see indoor/outdoor time.
    • Children 3 times more active outdoors than indoors.
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9 - Neuroscience and The Creative Brain

  • No specific part of the brain responsible for creativity - movement between generative and analytical thinking / bilateral thinking - using both sides of brain.
    • People who are more creative / generative have more dispersed brain activity.
  • Cognitive fixation - getting stuck in analytical mode or on one idea, can usually control this - metacognition.
    • Random stimulus discourages fixation and encourages creativity.
  • Analytical thinking can benefit from extrinsic rewards, generative thinking has more intrinsic motivations eg. curiosity.
  • Genetic link to creativity is negligable.
  • You can make someone more creative by teaching them new ways of thinking and putting them in situations where they have to be more creative.
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10 - Children's Cultures and Spaces

  • Sociology of Childhood:
    • Childhood is a social construction - not universal.
    • Cannot be divided from gender / class / ethnicity.
    • Children's social and cultural worlds are worthy of study independent of adult concerns.
    • Children are active agents in their worlds and affect those around them.
  • Shavit (2009) - children's literature constrained by cultural systems.
  • Children's books have always been about the aspirations adults have for them.
    • More recently constructed from child's point of view - adults 'othered'.
  • Monomorphic and Polymorphic Spaces: purpose built play areas seen as boring.
  • Yantzi et al. (2010) - design of play spaces perpetuates segregation of disabled people.
  • Kehily and Swann (2002) - magazines are gendered.
    • For girls magazine reading more of a collective activity - for boys more individual.
    • For boys may not be seen as 'gender appropriate' behaviour to read magazines.
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11 - Listening to Children / Disability

  • Disabled children's voices from past and present:
    • Experiences of instituionalisation.
    • Importance to some of special, segragated spaces as well as inclusion.
    • Current and past experiences of abuse - dependency on services / living away from families / different cultural beliefs about disability.
  • Social construction of learning disability:
    • Not just about the biological impairment - relative to environment / culture.
    • More children in school context compared with adult life count as having a SEN.
  • Learning disability is: significally reduced ability to understand new or complex info / reduced ability to cope independently / starts before adulthood.
  • Communication other than speech: body language / signs / pictures or symbols / devices.
  • Play as an equalising concept.
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12 - Critical and Comparitive Perspectives on Play

  • Reggio Emilia - focus on children's interests / capturing complexity of children's experiences / documentation / making connections / importance of time: open-ended projects.
  • Te Whariki - New Zealand National Curriculum to meet needs of indigenous children / focus on spirituality / sense of self / 5 strands: mana - atuol (wellbeing) / whenua (belonging) / tangata (contribution) / reo (communication) / aoturoa (exploration).
  • In Reggio all staff qualified - nursery workers some of least qualified people in the UK.
  • Developmentally Appropriate Practice: normalisation / individualisation - assumes communication between practitioner and parents / social and cultural contexts.
  • Developmental Truths: developmental psychology is a minority world truth / seeks to normalise developmental patterns.
  • MacNaughton (2005) Micro-practices of power: surveillance / normalisation / exclusion / classification / distribution / individualisation / totalisation / regulation.
  • Post-structual view of play: looks at power relations between children and adults which are often overlooked / includeds aspects of context / more active and enabling view.
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