Play Revisited:Lessons from Vygotsky

Natalia GajdamaschkoFaculty of Education

Simon Fraser UniversityBurnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S6

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The Concept of Play• The concept of childhood play is understood

differently by different scholars andeducators. At times they hold oppositeviews on the nature of play.

• In Vygotsky’s theory – the concept of playas the leading activity in childhood

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Some History• El’konin and Vygotsky established their research group on playin 1931. Their research interests were not limited to the phenomenologicalaspects of play, but were intertwined with attempts to develop a culturalhistorical methodology. The theoretical challenge can be formulated as“to show the place and role of play in the culturaldevelopment of the child.”

Vygotsky’s participation in the program was brief, butnevertheless he established its theoretical direction.(Pentti Hakkarainen, 2005)

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Play and Imagination Development

“Imagination begins to develop throughplay—you are absolutely right in that, …theidea is convincing and of centralimportance; before play there is noimagination.” (Vygotsky (1931), cited inEl’konin, p.14)

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Play Revisited: Lessons from Vygotsky

• “Imagination does not develop all at once, butvery slowly and gradually evolves from moreelementary and simpler forms into more complexones. At each stage of development it has its ownexpression, each stage of childhood has its owncharacteristic form of creation. Furthermore, itdoes not occupy a separate place in humanbehavior, but depends directly on other forms ofhuman activity, especially accrual of experience.”

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Play as the Leading Activityin Childhood

• What is a leading activity?

• What is an activity?

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Vygotsky and Piaget on Play

• A popular view: Vygotsky and Piaget have a lotin common and share the same views on thenature of play.

• For example, Jeffrey Dansky wrote:Two seminal developmental theorists who proposed relationships between play andcreativity were Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget. Although some of their beliefs about earlycognitive development differed considerably, there is more than a littlesimilarity in their views… Despite Piagetian emphasis on individual origins andVygotskian emphasis on social origins of symbols, when the two theorists wrote about playand creativity, they both made the following important points: both emphasized thatimaginativeness of children’s play is inextricably tied to their understanding (andmisunderstanding) of daily events. Both maintained that play can itself be a source ofcreative imagination…” (p.395. Encyclopedia of Creativity, Academic Press. 1999)

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Vygotsky and Piaget

• Saba Ayman-Nolley wrote: “The theories of Vygotsky and Piageton the development of creativity converge and complementeach other in several ways. Piaget provides the mechanism ofthe processes involved in the development of creativeimagination and Vygotsky gives the general structure of thechanges and evolution in the content and function of creativeimagination” (p.108, Piaget and Vygotsky on Creativity, TheQuarterly Newsletter of the LCHC, 1988)

• And at the same time, she observed, “Although we seeconsiderable convergence in Piaget’s and Vygotsky’stheories…they do differ in their explanation of the roles oflanguage and unconscious thought in creative imagination”(p.110) .

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Some Doubts

• The role of language and unconscious thought was the main point of Vygotsky’scriticism of Piaget. Vygotsky disagreed with viewing imaginative thinking as theopposite of realistic thinking (the point of agreement between Piaget and Freud),and he disagreed with Piagetian characteristics as undirected, childish,egocentric thought that gradually is supposed to be replaced by adultlogical, realistic thought.

• Vygotsky considered imagination to be an active, conscious process ofmeaning-making, imagination that forms a special unity with thinking andlanguage and emotions that helps the child to make sense about the world:

" In the process of their development — imagination and thinking are oppositeswhose unity is inherent in the very first generalization, in the very first conceptthat people form." (Vygotsky, Vol.1, p.78).

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The Development of Imagination in PlaySome Key points to consider:• The key role of language as a psychological tool in development of imagination:

“From the perspectives of Freud and Piaget, an essential characteristic of primal childfantasy is the fact that this is a nonverbal and consequently noncommunicable form ofthought.” (Vygotsky, p.345, V.1).

• “…development of imagination, like the development of other higher mental functions, islinked to the development of speech. The development of imagination is linked to thedevelopment of speech, to the development of child’s social interaction with those aroundhim, to the basic forms of the collective social activity of the child’s consciousness.”(Vygotsky, V1. p.346.)

• Our opinion: In the interpretation of play and the development ofimagination through play, one needs to consider the logic of theVygotskian theory of development and his idea of cognitive tools andmediation that he places at the center his theory.

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Imagination and Speech DevelopTogether Through Play

“Speech frees the child from the immediateimpression of an object. It gives the child thepower to represent and think about an object thathe has not seen” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 346).

“A divergence between the fields of meaning andvision first occurs at preschool age” (p.97) ----INPLAY

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ZERO IMAGINATION• "We saw that the zero point of imagination

...appears in the following way—the individual isin a state where he is unable to abstract himselffrom a concrete situation, unable to change itcreatively, to regroup signs to free one's self fromits influence."

• “Creative people are more adept at manipulatingsigns and psychological tools and, therefore, atadapting to their environments than are peoplewho use their creative imagination less often.”(Vygotsky, 1997b).

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Mastering cognitive tools

Cognitive tools for imagination:Vygotskian perspectives:Vygotsky believed that imaginativeactivities are crystallized in culture. Hewrote: “ All objects of common life appear…as crystallization of the imagination”(p.86.)

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Not a Subconscious ActivityAs a cultural function, imagination is active and it is a part of the child’scultural experience. Vygotsky wrote:“…consider the domain of artistic creativity in this connection. This domain ofactivity is accessible to the child at a young age. If we consider the products ofthis creativity in drawing or story telling, it quickly becomes apparent that thisimagination has a directed nature. It is not a subconscious activity” (Vygotsky,Vol.1, p.346)

AND“…consider the child’s constructive imagination, the creative activity ofconsciousness associated with technical-constructive of building activity, we see consistently that real inventive imagination is among the basic functions underlying this activity. In this type of activity, fantasy is highly directed. From beginning to the end, it is directed toward a goal that the individual is pursuing.” (Vygotsky, Vol.1, p.347)

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Mastering Imagination in PlayAt the start of imagination’s development, theperson “is able to imagine much less than theadult, but he trusts the products of hisimagination more and has less control overthem.” (Vygotsky)

Thus:a) an ability to control imagination develops inplayb) the mastering of emotions (perezhivanie)occurs in play

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Mechanisms of Play Development• Condensing and shortening play

actions(El’konin believes that condensing and shortening play actions is a clear indication that the child has observed human relations and has an emotional experience of their sense.)

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Mastering Initial Social Relationships

The abbreviated and generalized nature ofplaying is the most important preconditionfor the child’s initial mastery of socialrelationships, their unique modeling in theform of play (El’konin, p. 14)

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Symbolic Function Develops• When a stick stands for a horse (The ability to transfer the function from one object onto another) .

In play the child creates the structure meaning/object, in which the semanticaspect – the meaning of the word, the meaning of the thing – dominates anddetermines his behavior. To a certain extent, meaning is freed from the objectwith which it was directly fused before. I would say that in play a childconcentrates on meaning severed from objects, but that it is not severed in realaction with real objects. Separating words from things requires a pivot in theform of other things. But the moment the stick – i.e., the thing – becomes thepivot for severing the meaning of “horse” from a real horse, the child makesone thing influence another in the semantic sphere

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Self Control Develops• In play, a child’s “greatest self-control occurs” (Vygotsky,

1978. P.99)• Play continually creates demands on the child to act

against immediate impulse. Because of that, play is theleading activity for development of self-control. Theability of a child to comply with the rules of play develops.

• In play a situation is created in which a dual affective planoccurs. Vygotsky said that a child simultaneously weepsin play as a patient, but is happy as a player. Flickeringemotions between reality and the imaginatory plane helpsthe child to learn how to control emotions.

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Mastering Mechanisms• Exaggeration. Karl Buhler, with complete justification, suggests

that this process of alteration, and especially exaggeration, providesthe child with practice dealing with quantities of which he has no directexperience. We see that exaggeration, like imagination in general, isessential in art and science alike. If this capacity, which is so amusinglyexpressed in the story made up by the five-and-a-half-year-old girl, didnot exist, humanity would not have been able to create astronomy,geology, or physics.

• Absurdities. Only recently was it noticed that certain absurdities oramusing nonsense which can be found in nursery rhymes by inverting the mostcommonplace events play a tremendously important role in child development.

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Mastering Mechanisms

• Association:The next component of the processes of imagination is association,that is, unification of the dissociated and altered elements. As wasshown above, this association can be based on various qualities andtake various forms, from the purely subjective association of images toobjective, scientific association corresponding, for example, togeographical concepts. And, finally, the last aspect of the preliminarywork of the imagination is the combination of individual images, theirunification into a system, the construction of a complex picture.

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Mastering Mechanisms

• Embodiment.But creative imagination does not stop here.As we have already noted, the full cycle ofthis process will be completed only whenimagination is embodied or crystallized inexternal images.

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Tools of Play• To understand play we need to analyze those

cognitive, psychological tools that mediateimaginative activities:

Didactic games, reading and telling children stories, introducingthem to aspects of their environment, and other lessonsinfluence the occurrence and development of role play only if theyintroduce children to the activities of adults and their interactionsand relationships.

“The results of the research … show that role play is especially sensitiveto human activities, work, and the interactions among people, and thusthat the major content of roles that children take on involves theReproduction of precisely this aspect of reality.” (El’konin)

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Cognitive Tools• To warn against a mechanical understanding

of the role of “cognitive” or “psychologicaltools” in the child’s activity, Vygotskyexplained that not everything could be “atool”: if something ”did not have the capacityto influence behavior, it could not be a tool.”(Vygotsky, Vol. 3, p.87).

• In the process of the development ofimagination in the child, Vygotsky suggestedthat the child “arms and re-arms himself withwidely varying tools.”

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ConclusionVygotsky’s mechanism of play explainshow imagination develops throughmechanisms like the transformation ofobjects, switching the meaning between theobjects, exaggerating, abstracting,condensing, shortening, inversions,absurdities — all of those attempt to createnew meanings and new kinds ofunderstanding about the world.

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Developmental Potential of PlayEl’konin (1999) indicated four broaddomains in which the developmentalpotential of play is essential:(1) needs and motivation;(2) overcoming cognitive egocentrism;(3) internal actions; and(4) volitional features of the child’sactions.( p.7)