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International Journal of EarlyYears EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ciey20

Encouraging social collaborationthrough play ‘The FlourishingChild‘Led Dorothy Faulkner aa Open University, Centre for Human Development andLearning , UKPublished online: 28 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Led Dorothy Faulkner (1996) Encouraging social collaboration throughplay ‘The Flourishing Child‘, International Journal of Early Years Education, 4:2, 81-89, DOI:10.1080/0966976960040209

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WORKSHOP FOUREncouraging social collaboration

through play The Flourishing Child'

Led by Dorothy Faulkner(Centre for Human Development and Learning,

Open University, UK).

Workshop Participants:Margaret Clyde (Early Years Consultant, Melbourne, Australia); Sue Docket, (Fa-culty of Education, University of Western Sydney); Marie English, (Postgraduate,Institute of Education, University of Warwick, UK); Pauline Evans, (CornerwaysResearch Centre, Cheltenham and Gloucester College, UK); Julie Fisher (Oxford-shire Early Years Team, UK); Per-Henrik Grim, (Dept. of Education and Humanities,University of Trollhatten/Uddevalla, Sweden); Janet Gruber, (Vienna InternationalSchool, Austria); Maritte Hannikainen, (Dept. of Education, University of Jy vaskyla,Finland); Elspeth Harley, (Education Centre, Adelaide, Australia); Choo Chang Ioke,(Institute CECE, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); Krishna Iyer, (Project Access, Madras,India); Ingrid Kuiperdal, (Instituto Pedagogica Arubano, Aruba, West Indies); Ve-ronicah Larkin, (Institute for Early Childhood, Eastwood, Australia); Marjorie Lee,(Chicago, USA); Judy McConnell (Faculty of Education, Washburn University,USA); Elizabeth Olomofe, (OMEP Lagos State Chapter, Nigeria); Bozena Pietre-wicz, (Faculty of Education, University of Warsaw); Louie Suthers, (Institute forEarly Childhood, Eastwood, Australia); D. Van der Aalsvoort, (Dept. of SpecialEducation, University of Leiden, Netherlands); Chuang Pay Wah, (Institute CECE,Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia).

In writing this account of the workshop, 'Encouraging Social CollaborationThrough Play', I have tried to give as accurate an account as my notes allow of therich and stimulating discussions which took place. I apologise in advance if I havemisrepresented any of these discussions and the conclusions that we reached, andalso if I have not managed to capture everyone's points of view. With such a largenumber of delegates who collectively represented such an interesting and diverserange of expertise and experience, it was simply not possible to document all thevoices and opinions that were expressed. For the people who participated in theworkshop, however, I hope that this account will help to recreate some of theatmosphere and excitement of the discussions which took place. For others I hopethat it provides a reasonably informative account of the main issues raised and of theconclusions we reached.

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Days 1 and 2The first meeting of the workshop opened with participants outlining their ownparticular areas of expertise and interest in the topic of children's play. Some of uswere nursery and infant teachers with a particular interest in play and early yearscurricula; others worked in college and university education departments and wereinvolved in training early years teachers. We had two drama specialists with expertisein the use of the expressive arts as a vehicle for children's development during theearly years. Some of us were psychologists carrying out research into the role of playfor children's development, and some of us worked for local and national governmentagencies and were responsible for planning services for young children and theirparents.

It was clear that everyone in the group had strong and deeply held convictionsabout the developmental value of providing rich and varied play experiences foryoung children as part of an early years curriculum. We also agreed, however, thatwe needed to be able to justify these convictions with a sound understanding oftheories about play and its role in child development. The three main areas we initiallydecided to focus on during the workshop were: Theories and Play; Play and theCurriculum; and Promoting the Value of Play. At our first session, therefore, weagreed to split up into smaller groups to discuss the various theoretical positionswhich have informed early years pedagogies.

Given the theme of the conference, the theories of Piaget, (eg. Piaget, 1951) andVygotsky, (1978) were the starting point for many of us. The writings of Bateson (eg.Bateson, 1979) on the nature and purpose of play were also explored by one group.In the main, however, participants in the small-group discussions found themselvescomparing the many different conceptual issues involved in defining the nature andfunction of play, and the psychological processes involved in play. Also, a substantialamount of time was spent in finding out from each other how our own country's earlyyears programmes incorporated play into the curricula. It was salutary to find thatwhereas most countries were striving to sustain or create play-centred curricula foryoung children in day-care and educational settings, in England at this time, thepressure is towards creating a more formal curriculum, and instructing children inbasic literacy and numeracy skills.

Our second meeting began with the various sub-groups reporting back to the largergroup on their discussions the previous day. Some of the main points which emergedwere as follows:

• While there was considerable consensus that play must be a central part of anyearly years curriculum we felt that this belief was informed by practical experi-ence and observation rather than by theoretical accounts of the developmentalvalue of play;

• Theoretical accounts by themselves do not seem to offer sufficient justificationfor this belief as they do not provide strong evidence for claiming that play-basedcurricula are necessarily superior to other types of early years curricula;

• There was support for the view that the type of evidence which is needed in orderto convince parents, educators and policy makers that play-based curricula aredevelopmentally appropriate for young children, requires carefully specified,

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WORKSHOP FOUR

testable, outcome measures. By this is meant play activities which have beendesigned to promote particular sets of learning outcomes which specify clearlydefined cognitive, linguistic, personal, and social skills and strategies as theirgoals. For example the Department for Education and Childrens Services, SouthAustralia have developed some multimedia training materials for teacherswhich are designed to help them to develop play-based activities in these terms.Similarly the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation has developed a manualemphasising the important role of play in learning to assist in the training ofchildcare workers in India. Another example cited in this context was theUS-based Hi/Scope project (see Hohmann, Banet and Weikart 1979 for adescription). This way of conceptualising the value of play has links to Bruner's(1980) theories and research which emphasised that in order for play to becogniti vely challenging it needs to be carefully structured. Accounts of particularprojects, such as the UK-based Froebel Block Play Research Group (see Gura,1992 for an account), which clearly relate research to classroom practice and thedevelopment of children's competencies were also cited as offering the kind ofevidence needed to promote the value of play in early years education.

• This led to a discussion of the nature of 'desirable' outcomes, and whetheroutcomes which seemed educationally 'desirable' from teachers' and parents'perspectives were those which were desirable from the child's point of view. Itwas recognised that very often children will disengage themselves from playactivities when it becomes clear that the teacher's or parent's agenda is differentfrom their own. This raised the question of the role or roles that adults shouldadopt when attempting to engage with children at play. Again it was recognisedthat not all adults know how to play successfully with children, and that teacherand parent education programmes needed to address this issue.

• Other workshop members felt that it was not desirable to attempt to specifypre-determined outcomes for play activities as this destroyed the spontaneity andnatural impetus of children's play. There was strong support for the notion thatcreative, imaginative, child-initiated/directed play was necessary for develop-ment. Bruce's (1991) description of the nature and value of 'free-flow' play inearly years education provides evidence for this point of view. According toBruce 'free-flow' play should be seen as an integrating mechanism which allowschildren to 'wallow in ideas, feelings and relationships, and being able complete-ly to apply their own learning in a voluntary and intrinsically motivated way [..]gain what they need to know', (Bruce, 1991, p.4).

We began to realise that it was not going to be possible to arrive at any particularrecommendations about model curricula and training programmes. Partly this wasbecause the educational agenda of the various countries and localities represented byparticipants were so diverse. We did feel, however, that we had gained useful insightsinto some of the key issues involved.

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DOROTHY FAULKNER

PLAY

Solitary Parallel Associative Collaborative

Role Play Pretend Play Constructive Play

Functional Thematic

Figure 1: Workshop diagram showing categories of play which can be observed whenchildren play together in collaborative contexts.

Day 3By the third day, our numbers had dwindled somewhat and time was running out. Asour starting point we decided that the single term 'play' was not a useful explanatoryconcept (see Gardner, 1992 for a discussion). So, in order to return to the originalfocus of the workshop — encouraging social collaboration through play — wedeveloped the taxonomy shown in Figure 1. which is based in part on Parten 's (1932)categories of play. Parten described four ways in which children typically play andclaimed that children show developmental progression through these four stages,although the earlier stages are not necessarily abandoned. Parten's stages are asfollows:

• Solitary Independent Play — where the child plays independently withoutreference to what others are doing;

• Parallel Activity — here the child plays independently, but engages in similaractivities or plays with toys or objects like those being used by other childrennearby. There is, however, no attempt to join in with the play of these others;

• Associative play — where a child plays with and talks to other children and theyborrow each other's play material, follow one another and make mild attemptsto control who may or may not play in the group. While all the members of thegroup are engaged in similar activities, however, their play is still somewhatrandom and unorganised;

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• Cooperative (or collaborative) play — where this happens children play togetherin a group and organise themselves around some common goal, or play theme.They may decide that strategies such as a division of labour, or the allocation ofroles is necessary, and their activities are structured so that the efforts of one childare supplemented by those of another.

Building on Parten's categories, we felt that collaborative play could encompassvarious other categories of play such as Role Play, Pretend Play and ConstructivePlay, (ie. play with materials such as building bricks, construction kits, natural objectsand the like where the children make or build something together — Faulkner, 1995and Smith, 1994 offer more detailed descriptions of this and other categories of play).All of these different kinds of play could in turn be classified as either 'functional'or 'thematic', (although Figure 1 only shows this for Pretend Play).

By 'functional' play we meant play which requires children to experiment withobjects, materials, and concepts (for example when they imitate or act out real-lifesocial roles in the case of Pretend Play). Functional play has both cognitive and socialproblem-solving components. For example when children decide that they want tobuild something together, not only do they have to decide how to find and useappropriate materials, (cognitive) they also have to negotiate how to organisethemselves, (who does what), so as to achieve the desired goal, (social). 'Thematic'play, by contrast involves children in the co-construction of some shared story orfantasy world where they act out imaginary (as opposed to real-life) themes. Pretendor fantasy play is usually thematic, as is Role Play.3 These types of play also haveboth social and cognitive components, in addition, however, they often have apowerful emotional component, as when children act out scary or dangerous themes,(see Corsaro, 1986 for an interesting discussion of the emotional aspects of play). Aswith other discussions we had had in the workshop, we recognised that the play termswe were using are defined and categorised in several different ways by variousresearchers and practitioners, (see for example Moyles, 1989 and Simlansky, 1968).For our purposes, however, we felt that our own taxonomy provided some usefulpegs on which to hang the rest of the discussion.

We next exchanged views about the age at which children could be expected toplay together collaboratively. In general we agreed that most children were capableof collaborative play with another child by the age of 24 to 30 months, although wecould give examples of collaborative play (particularly between younger and oldersiblings) which had been observed in children younger than two years of age. Wedecided that the practice of segregating children according to strict age groups innurseries, day-care and other educational settings was counter-productive, as it doesnot allow younger children to learn about social collaboration from their moreexperienced older peers. We felt that 'family grouping' would be a more appropriateform of organisation as this allows children to develop cross-age friendships andprovides a context in which older and younger children can play together.

We then began to think of ways in which children could be helped to move fromassociative play to more genuine collaborative play through activities such as roleplay, pretend play, functional play, and constructive play. From our own experienceof working with children we know that each of these different types of collaborativeplay needs a different kind of support. We also know that particular settings, locations

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and contexts are better suited to some types of play than others. Thinking moregenerally, however we decided that almost all play can be collaborative if we:

• Mix age groups;

D Provide familiar materials;

• Provide time and opportunity;

• Take care to arrange appropriate physical environments taking space and locationfactors into account;

• Think carefully about psychological factors such as group dynamics, and child-ren's states and moods;

• Provide a variety of carefully selected materials and equipment which arerelevant to children and their particular play.

In formulating this list we had a lot of discussion about the nature of the props andmaterials that should be provided, and the locations in which play should take place.Again we shared our experiences and observations of children's play in the particularcontexts in which we worked and arrived at the very important conclusion that wedo not need to provide expensive toys and equipment in order to foster good qualityplay. Many of us were able to relate stories about the imaginative ways in whichchildren incorporate natural objects — leaves, shells, twigs, mud, water and sand —into their play. Also we were all able to think of examples of groups of childrencreating exciting pretence scenarios based around 'junk' objects such as cardboardboxes, lengths of cloth, old car tyres, broken machinery and the like.

We also thought very carefully about the role which adults should adopt in orderto facilitate collaborative play. Should adults attempt to join in with the play or shouldthey keep their distance? We decided that adults should:

• Trust in children and their ability to identify their own needs and wants;

• Allow children genuine choice rather than impose adult 'play agenda';

• Ensure that children's need to feel safe, their need for a familiar, non threateningplay environment, and their need to play with familiar others are met;

• Make time to observe children's play carefully and intervene when it is clear thatthere are safety concerns or when extra support or scaffolding is necessary tosustain children's continuing involvement in collaborative play.

Next we moved on to discuss the kinds of social skills children needed to acquire inorder to play together collaboratively. We realised that we all had slightly differentunderstandings of the term 'social skills' and that would be more useful to make atripartite distinction between 'skills', 'knowledge' and 'dispositions'.

Under the heading of 'skills', we decided that in order to play collaboratively,children needed good communication skills. These communication skills do not needto be verbal. Children at all levels of verbal ability manage to play together collabor-atively, as is the case when older children draw younger children into games ofpretence. Dunn and Kendrick (1982) have documented many examples of collabor-ative play between younger and older siblings. Similarly those of us who worked in

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multilingual nurseries and day care settings had many stories and examples to tell ofchildren playing and interacting successfully despite not having a common language.

Skills such as being able to recognise play signals; knowing how to negotiate entryand exit from a group; having some knowledge about the play theme or topic thegroup was engaged in; being able to manage conflicts of interest amicably; and havingsome rudimentary understanding of the relationship between cause and effect, (ie.understanding that one's own actions can affect another person's actions or mood),all came under the heading of play 'knowledge', or play 'cognition'.

Finally, we attempted to identify characteristics of children which could beassociated with a play 'disposition'. All of us had known children who did not seemto have the will or inclination to play, or who were not successful in their attempts toplay with other children. Conversely we could all think of children who were popularwith other children and who could be described as highly skilled 'players'. Theselatter children display some or all of the following characteristics:

• They are curious;

• They are relaxed;

• They demonstrate patience and perseverance, and an ability to focus on the taskor game in hand;

• They show empathy and a sensitivity to the needs of other children;

• They listen to their playmates and do not always force their own views and ideason other children;

• They have a sense of humour;

• They are imaginative and have good ideas about games to play, and things toplay with;

• They display self-awareness;

• They have positive self-worth;

• They have faith or trust in others, and in themselves.

The group then considered how adults could intervene to encourage and support thedevelopment of these skills, knowledge, and characteristics in children. We agreedthat adults could support children by reinforcement and by praising positive aspectsof dispositions they already have. They could model desirable characteristics andbehaviours, and they could provide play environments to foster these dispositions.

Attention then shifted to considering what children might be said to be learningthrough collaborative play. Here we were interested in social rather than cognitiveoutcomes. When children play together they:

• Learn how to negotiate with each other;

• Develop positive ways of interacting with their peers;

• Learn about sharing and turn taking;

• Begin to develop an appreciation of the worth of others;

• Begin to acquire the ability to control their own emotions;

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• Learn how to manage hard situations such as those which are unfamiliar or whichinvolve some element of risk or challenge;

• Develop a sense of their own strength and limitations;

• Learn how to adapt to different situations, and to accommodate to others'expectations;

• Can use play to come to terms with or manage their own fears;

• Can use play to experiment with different roles and feelings;

• Develop an appreciation of the values and limitations of rules;

• Begin to acquire an understanding of cause and effect (eg. how their ownbehaviours or actions can affect the behaviours and feelings of others).

Finally, we were able to formulate a 'Mission Statement' which attempted to expressour convictions concerning the positive benefits of collaborative play. The MissionStatement reads as follows:

Collaborative play is special because it offers the greatest potential to enhanceand support the development of social knowledge among children. Social knowl-edge encompasses those skills, attitudes, cognitions and dispositions which arevital to the developing child. The quality of collaborative play is related directlyto adults' commitment to create and support an environment in which the playand the child can grow and flourish.

Hence the sub-title of this account — The Flourishing Child.

AcknowledgementsI am grateful to Judy McConnell and Sue Dockett, (also workshop participants), whohave been kind enough to read and comment on this report at very short notice. Theircomments and suggestions have been very helpful and have been incorporated intothe report.

Notes1. Information about these training materials can be obtained from the Department of Education

and Children's Services, Curriculum Resources, Customer Service Centre, PO Box 33,Campbelltown, SA 5074, Australia.

2. M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (1995) Playing to Learn: A Training Manual forEarly Childhood Education, Third Cross Street, Institutional Area, Taramani, Madrass, 600113, India

3. For me the difference between Role Play and Pretend Play is that while both may containelements of fantasy and pretence, in the case of the former it is the children themselves whotake on, or act out, roles and characters in the stories they are creating, whereas in PretendPlay the children allocate these roles to dolls and other toys and act out the play through thetoys.

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References:Bateson, G. (1979) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, London, Wildwood House Ltd.Bruce, T. (1991) Time to Play in Early Childhood Education, London, Hodder and Stoughton.Bruner, J. (1980) Under Five in Britain: The Oxford Preschool Research Project, Oxford,

Grant Mclntyre Ltd.Corsaro, W. (1986) 'Discourse processes within peer culture: from a constructivist to an

interpretative approach to childhood socialisation', Sociological Studies of Child Devel-opment, 1, pp. 81-101.

Dunn, J. and Kendrick, C. (1982) Siblings: Love, Envy and Understanding, London, GrantMclntyre Ltd.

Faulkner, D. (1995) 'Play, self and the social world', in P. Barnes, (Ed.) Personal, Social andEmotional Development of Children, Oxford, Blackwell.

Gardner, H. (1982) Art, Mind and Brain, New York, Basic Books.Gura, P. (Ed.) with the Froebel Blockplay Research Group, directed by Tina Bruce (1992),

Exploring Learning: Young Children and Block Play, London, Paul Chapman PublishingLtd.

Hohmann, M. , Banet, B. and Weikart, O.P. (1979) Young Children in Action, Ypsilanti,Michigan, High/Scope Press.

Moy les, J.R. (1989) Just Playing ? The Role and Status of Play in Early Childhood Education,Buckingham, Open University Press.

Parten, M. (1932/33) 'Social participation amongst pre-school children', Journal of Abnormaland Social Psychology, 27, pp. 243- 69

Piaget, J. (1951) Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood, London, Routledge and KeganPaul.

Smilansky, S. (1968) The Effects of Sociodramatic Play on Disadvantaged Pre-schoolChildren, New York, Wiley.

Smith, P.K. (1994) 'Play and the uses of play', in J. R. Moy les, (Ed.) The Excellence of play,Buckingham, Open University Press.

Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes,Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.

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