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Abstract

Competing trends in early childhood education emphasize the need for strong curricular approaches and for unfettered exploration. We propose an approach to early learning that avoids this false dichotomy: guided play. Guided play takes advantage of children’s natural abilities to learn through play by allowing them to express their autonomy within a prepared environment and with adult scaffolding. We provide examples of how guided-play situations have been implemented in past work, as well as evidence that guided play is successful for education across a range of content—perhaps even more successful than other pedagogical approaches.
Current Directions in Psychological
Science
2016, Vol. 25(3) 177 –182
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0963721416645512
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A recent article in Forbes magazine posed a question that
has always captivated entrepreneurs, business leaders,
and politicians: What is the key to prosperity? The arti-
cle’s answer was simple: play (Townsend, 2014). A grow-
ing body of literature from developmental psychology
and education science reinforces this conclusion (see
Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Berk, & Singer, 2008). For exam-
ple, at-risk children who attend play-based preschools
are significantly less likely to later be arrested for a felony
or suspended from work than children who attend pre-
schools without an emphasis on play (Schweinhart,
Barnes, & Weikart, 1993).
Although results like these suggest that play may sup-
port the growth of a variety of abilities, this work is pri-
marily correlational (Lillard et al., 2013). Therefore, it is
important to temper enthusiasm for play with consider-
ations of what play cannot do. Giving children unstruc-
tured time to explore may indeed boost their social and
self-regulatory abilities, but pedagogy of some kind is
necessary to encourage the growth of knowledge and
critical-thinking skills. Put simply, children cannot learn
letter–sound pairings or addition by running around on a
playground, even if that playground is covered in letters
and numbers. Strong curricular approaches thus have
value in teaching children the skills they need to start
school (Campbell, Pungello, Miller-Johnson, Burchinal, &
Ramey, 2001; Schweinhart et al., 2005).
Unfortunately, the issue of the proper role of play in
early education has too often been framed as a false
dichotomy between learning and play (Clements &
Sarama, 2014; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2011). Discussing
early education in these terms masks the fact that each
approach has some merit. Here, we advocate for a mid-
dle ground: guided play, which melds exploration and
child autonomy with the best elements of teacher-guided
instruction (Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Singer, &
Berk, 2010; Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2013).
What Is Guided Play?
Guided play refers to learning experiences that combine
the child-directed nature of free play with a focus on
learning outcomes and adult mentorship. Children thrive
when they engage in free play, which involves active
engagement and is fun, voluntary, and flexible (Burghardt,
645512CDPXXX10.1177/0963721416645512Weisberg et al.Guided Play
research-article2016
Corresponding Author:
Deena Weisberg, Department of Psychology, University of
Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut St., Solomon Labs, Philadelphia, PA 19104
E-mail: deena.weisberg@psych.upenn.edu
Guided Play: Principles and Practices
Deena Skolnick Weisberg1, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek2,3,
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff4, Audrey K. Kittredge5,
and David Klahr6
1Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania; 2Department of Psychology, Temple University;
3Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; 4School of Education, University of Delaware; 5Faculty of Education,
University of Cambridge; and 6Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract
Competing trends in early childhood education emphasize the need for strong curricular approaches and for unfettered
exploration. We propose an approach to early learning that avoids this false dichotomy: guided play. Guided play
takes advantage of children’s natural abilities to learn through play by allowing them to express their autonomy within
a prepared environment and with adult scaffolding. We provide examples of how guided-play situations have been
implemented in past work, as well as evidence that guided play is successful for education across a range of content—
perhaps even more successful than other pedagogical approaches.
Keywords
cognitive development, guided play, education, early childhood
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178 Weisberg et al.
2011). But for reaching specific learning goals, some
adult support is necessary. Guided play thus has two key
elements: child autonomy and adult guidance. This
makes it engaging, but with the advantage of focusing
the child on the dimensions of interest for a learning
objective.
Guided play can take two forms. In one, adults design
the setting to highlight a learning goal while ensuring
that children have autonomy to explore within that
setting. For example, high-quality museum exhibits teach
visitors while allowing them to explore as they like.
Research suggests that children’s relatively free explora-
tion with a restricted set of materials can lead to learning
(Cook, Goodman, & Schulz, 2011; van Schijndel, Visser,
van Bers, & Raijmakers, 2015).
The second form of guided play occurs when adults
watch child-directed activities and make comments,
encourage children to question, or extend children’s
interests. For example, 4- to 8-year-olds at a Chicago
Children’s Museum exhibit were asked to build a sturdy
skyscraper to highlight principles of engineering. When
adults asked open-ended questions while the children
were building (e.g., “What is this for?”), children learned
more and could transfer their knowledge to a new struc-
ture (Haden, Cohen, Uttal, & Marcus, 2016). Another
example comes from a study that trained instructors to
reinforce the meanings of new words in a play session.
Adults augmented children’s play by inserting definitions
for concepts when children’s attention was naturally
focused on those concepts. For example, they might
teach the word below as a child decided to make a dragon
fly over a toy castle (Toub et al., 2015).
These examples illustrate how sensitivity to children’s
attention and engagement within the flow of an activity
allows for the accomplishment of a learning goal. In
guided play, adult scaffolding focuses the child toward the
pedagogical goal without usurping child autonomy. Allow-
ing children to lead ensures that they are intrinsically moti-
vated to learn. If children feel that they are doing an
activity only because an adult wants them to, or because
they want to earn a reward, then they can feel prodded or
bribed and lose interest (Lepper & Henderlong, 2000).
Guided play emphasizes the need for keeping the activity
engaging from the child’s point of view (Ramani, 2012),
because children learn best when they are active and
involved (Chi, 2009; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). Importantly,
adult guidance is just as crucial. Without it, even older
children might struggle to learn some types of content,
because demands of the learning context may exceed
their capacities for encoding and storing relevant informa-
tion (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006).
In brief, guided play takes place in a constrained envi-
ronment with scaffolding that allows adults’ expertise to
inform children’s independent choices. We crucially
emphasize that guided play leaves the locus of control
with the child, allowing for self-directed exploration
while enhancing learning and genuine enjoyment. The
adult’s role is to prepare the environment and use open-
ended prompting to encourage the child toward the
learning goal, but children must navigate their own path
through the learning context. Maintaining this balance
between child leadership and adult scaffolding is the
essence of guided play’s successful formula for learning
(Honomichl & Chen, 2012; Weisberg et al., 2013). This
approach takes its inspiration from Lev Vygotsky, who
championed the idea of teaching at each child’s “zone of
proximal development”: the level at which each child is
most ready to develop new skills. Our goals here are to
clarify exactly how we think this kind of teaching should
be implemented and to provide evidence that it works
for preschool and early elementary education.
The Efficacy of Guided Play:
Four Key Examples
Many studies have illustrated the efficacy of a guided-
play approach. Some were reviewed in a recent meta-
analysis of learning in children, adolescents, and adults,
which aggregated the results of 164 earlier investigations
( Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2011). This anal-
ysis found that “enhanced discovery” (analogous to
guided play) led to better outcomes than other types of
learning. Here we present four detailed examples illus-
trating this claim in young children.
In one example, Sobel and Sommerville (2010) showed
4-year-olds a machine with colored lights, which could
be activated with buttons. All children had to figure out
which lights would turn on at the same time. Some of the
children played with the box first and then observed the
experimenter press each button once and narrate his
action (discovery condition). Other children engaged in
these two phases in reverse, first observing the experi-
menter and then playing with the box (confirmation con-
dition). Children learned how the lights worked better in
the discovery condition than the confirmation condition.
Acting on a toy to discover how it works thus leads to
better learning compared to playing with a toy merely to
confirm what has been shown. This suggests that partici-
pating in active discovery allows children to benefit more
from adult teaching (see Schwartz, Chase, Oppezzo, &
Chin, 2011, for an analogous result with adult learners).
The second study directly investigated different strate-
gies for teaching preschoolers the properties of various
shapes, such as triangles (Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Newcombe,
& Golinkoff, 2013). To understand triangles, children
must learn that every figure with three sides and three
angles is a triangle, even if it is not an iconic equilateral
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Guided Play 179
triangle. Each child received a set of bendable sticks that
could be used to construct shapes and a set of cards
depicting shapes. These cards presented two different
types of shapes: typical (e.g., equilateral triangles) and
atypical (e.g., triangles with one very wide internal
angle). Children saw these materials in one of three con-
ditions. In the free-play condition, children could do
whatever they wished with the cards and construction
sticks without direction from the experimenter. In the
didactic-instruction condition, the experimenter acted as
an explorer discovering the properties of each type of
shape while the child passively watched. In the guided-
play condition, the experimenter invited the child to
explore with her and to discover the shapes’ properties.
After this training phase, children were asked to select
only the real triangles from a set of typical shapes, atypi-
cal shapes, and non-shapes. Children in both the guided-
play and didactic-instruction conditions learned better
than children in the free-play condition. But children in
the guided-play condition were significantly better at
transferring their knowledge to atypical shapes compared
to children in the didactic-instruction condition. Chil-
dren’s active participation in discovery, combined with
appropriate scaffolding from a knowledgeable adult,
allowed them to better understand the important features
of the shapes (see also Sim & Xu, 2015).
Guided play can also allow children to generate their
own learning opportunities that go beyond adult teach-
ing. In our third example, 4- to 6-year-olds saw a toy that
had several functions (e.g., pushing a button turned on a
light; pressing a lever played music). When adults dem-
onstrated only one of these functions, children’s later free
play concentrated on the demonstrated function. When
adults seemed to happen on the function by accident,
however, children’s later free play revealed more experi-
mentation with the toy’s full range of functions (Bonawitz
et al., 2011). Guided play may thus enhance the discov-
ery of undemonstrated functions, whereas direct instruc-
tion may inhibit this kind of exploration. Importantly,
teachers can scaffold self-directed exploration in other
ways, such as by hinting at other ways to explore after
providing a demonstration (Kittredge, Klahr, & Fisher,
2013) or by asking pedagogical questions (Landrum,
Bonawitz, Omar, Bamforth, & Shafto, 2015).
These examples suggest that guided play offers an
effective alternative to direct instruction when there is a
learning goal in mind. But finding an optimal balance
between self-discovery and adult guidance is a serious
challenge, because it heavily depends on the target con-
cepts. As children get older and the contexts for learning
become more complex, children might not be able to
fully discover causal relations without increases in explicit
instruction. Klahr and Nigam (2004) directly tested this
hypothesis with a group of third and fourth graders as
they learned to design simple experiments in a science
lesson. After an initial period of exploration, children in
the direct-instruction condition saw a teacher perform
experiments and explain why each experiment was good
or bad for determining the effect of some variable. Chil-
dren in the discovery condition were asked to design
experiments that would reveal each variable’s effect with-
out any further guidance.
We acknowledge that there is some ambiguity about
the precise label that should be applied to these two
conditions (Klahr, 2013), especially since this direct-
instruction condition was similar in some respects to
Sobel and Sommerville’s (2010) discovery condition. But
the most relevant aspect of this study is that, on a difficult
far-transfer task in which they were asked to make richer
scientific judgments, the few children who discovered
experimentation strategies on their own performed no
better than the many who learned it from direct instruc-
tion (see also Chen & Klahr, 1999). For learning this chal-
lenging procedure, it is difficult to design an environment
that will ensure that children attend to the critical features
of the learning goal without more adult scaffolding. Such
studies remind us that the balance between adult scaf-
folding and self-direction can and should shift depending
on the learners’ abilities and the learning goals.
These four studies, taken together, show that a combina-
tion of children’s self-directed participation and adult
scaffolding creates a powerful pedagogical approach for
learning in young children. More importantly, these studies
demonstrate that there is a vast pedagogical space between
the stark dichotomy of free play and direct instruction.
Why Is Guided Play Effective?
Guided play offers an exemplary pedagogy because it
respects children’s autonomy and their pride in discov-
ery. It thus may help to cultivate children’s love of learn-
ing, promoting their engagement while offering support
for knowledge acquisition. In this way, guided play cre-
ates the right mise en place—a confluence of environ-
mental and psychological factors that gently shape not
only the desired outcomes in learning but also a more
positive attitude toward learning itself (Weisberg, Hirsh-
Pasek, Golinkoff, & McCandliss, 2014).
The mise en place constructed in guided play can also
explain why these environments are successful at convey-
ing learning goals. For example, in the shapes study dis-
cussed above, having both typical and atypical shapes
present sparked comparisons between different types of
triangles. Different features of objects thus encourage dif-
ferent kinds of interactions, which in turn set the stage for
deeper kinds of learning. Similarly, the encouragement to
provide scaffolding during child-initiated activities can
lead adults to construct richer learning opportunities:
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180 Weisberg et al.
Parents who were encouraged to work with their children
to assemble a block structure in a guided-play environ-
ment produced more spatial talk (and hence more oppor-
tunities to learn spatial concepts) than parents who
engaged freely with their children (Ferrara, Hirsh-Pasek,
Newcombe, Golinkoff, & Lam, 2011).
Open Questions
Further research, especially in naturalistic settings, is criti-
cal for building a more nuanced understanding of guided
play. One challenge is to determine exactly which aspects
of adult-provided guidance are most effective. For exam-
ple, in an adult-guided board game with kindergartners,
a very small difference in guidance—asking children to
add the spinner’s number to their current number, rather
than counting from 1—led to substantial differences in
learning about the number line (Laski & Siegler, 2014).
Another major aim for future research is to determine
exactly how to balance child agency with adult constraint
across a range of educational content and for different
learners. How often should learning experiences take the
form of guided play? How much child agency is neces-
sary for high-quality learning? Another key challenge will
be to differentiate how guided-play experiences affect
students’ learning of content compared with their motiva-
tion for future learning.
Conclusion
Decades of research have shown that free play is neces-
sary for healthy development and can boost certain skills
in early childhood. But children need to be pointed
toward the relevant dimensions of a problem if they are
to learn. Guided play combines the best elements of free
play and direct instruction: child autonomy and adult
expertise. It provides an optimal medium for delivering
educational content in ways that are enjoyable and that
allow for genuine child agency, while constraining chil-
dren’s activities to facilitate learning.
Existing curricula could naturally incorporate elements
of this approach, such as by allowing children to take the
lead within a prepared environment (see Neuman & Ros-
kos, 1992) or structuring material in game-like ways
(Morris, Croker, Zimmerman, Gill, & Romig, 2013). New
curricula might also build on the success of existing pro-
grams that implement aspects of the guided-play
approach, such as Montessori (Lillard, 2013), Reggio
Emilia (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998), Tools of the
Mind (Bodrova & Leong, 2015), and Community of Learn-
ers (Brown & Campione, 1994). The research reviewed
here gives us reason to believe that doing so will lead to
the best possible educational outcomes.
Recommended Reading
Bodrova, E., & Leong, D. J. (2007). Tools of the Mind: The
Vygotskian approach to early childhood education (2nd
ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall. Describes an
early childhood curriculum incorporating some of the prin-
ciples of guided play in the classroom.
Burner, J. S., Jolly, A., & Sylva, K. (Eds.). (1976). Play: Its role in
development and evolution. New York, NY: Basic Books. A
classic edited volume examining the role of play, discovery,
and learning, including many examples from nonhuman
animals.
Miller, E., & Almon, J. (2009). Crisis in the kindergarten: Why
children need to play in school. College Park, MD: Alliance
for Childhood. An accessible overview of the decline in
recess and other free-play opportunities in schools and
why this poses a problem for early education.
Singer, D. G., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (Eds.). (2006).
Play = learning: How play motivates and enhances chil-
dren’s cognitive and social-emotional growth. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press. A collection of papers pre-
senting evidence for how play contributes to learning.
Tobias, S., & Duffy, T. M. (Eds.). (2009). Constructivist theory
applied to instruction: Success or failure? New York, NY:
Routledge. An extensive (and sometimes heated) debate
over constructivist approaches to instruction in a wide
range of contexts.
Author Note
Deena Skolnick Weisberg and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek contributed
equally to the writing of this manuscript and should be consid-
ered as joint first authors.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
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... Play is one of the activities that best characterizes the stage of childhood and it is an internationally recognized right [1,2]. In fact, some authors propose the concept of playful learning as a way of referring to those playful experiences that generate learning [3][4][5]. The literature suggests that through play, the cognitive development of children could be facilitated [1,3,6]. ...
... Some authors specify that guided or regulated play is what would allow us to take advantage of the potential of play for educational purposes [3][4][5]. Regulated play has pre-established objectives and it is supposed to ensure the active role of children, promoting their curiosity, fun and freedom [3][4][5]. Playing to board games is a type of guided game that offers children playful learning opportunities. ...
... Some authors specify that guided or regulated play is what would allow us to take advantage of the potential of play for educational purposes [3][4][5]. Regulated play has pre-established objectives and it is supposed to ensure the active role of children, promoting their curiosity, fun and freedom [3][4][5]. Playing to board games is a type of guided game that offers children playful learning opportunities. Board games are accessible, inexpensive, easily adaptable resources for working gradually and at different ages, facilitating social interactions [7]. ...
... Play-based learning facilitates active engagement with educators, peers, and resources, shaping children's learning journeys (DeLiema et al., 2019;Fleer, 2009). Research suggests that guided play, which involves educators providing appropriate scaffolding to support children's agency and curiosity, is particularly effective in promoting young children's learning experiences (Weisberg et al., 2016;Zosh et al., 2018). Through guided play, children are afforded opportunities to explore and discover science concepts in a playful and captivating manner (Blake & Howitt, 2012). ...
... As distinct pedagogical strategies, play, stories, and embodiment have the potential to significantly support children's science learning. Previous studies have highlighted the benefits of integrating at least two of these elements, such as combining story and play or incorporating playbased learning in science education (Murmann & Avraamidou, 2014;Weisberg et al., 2016). However, there is a dearth of research exploring the seamless integration of all threeplay, stories, and embodiment-in early childhood science education. ...
... A more nuanced definition of play is guided play, which can be best described as lying between direct instruction and free play (without guidance and support). It provides the benefits of child-directed free play while incorporating adult guidance toward learning objectives (Weisberg et al., 2016). In guided play, children have the freedom to use their abilities and explore their interests while receiving guidance from adults. ...
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While previous research has highlighted the significance of pedagogical approaches such as story, embodiment, and play for young children's science learning, limited attention has been given to how these three approaches can be integrated into a learning environment to support science learning for young children. Accordingly, this study designed a learning environment, "story-driven embodied play," by integrating story, body movements, and guided play to encourage children's agency in investigating a science phenomenon. Video data were collected for three iterations of the activity with preschool-age children (aged 3–5) at a local children's science museum and local preschools. Employing a sociocultural perspective on science learning through story, embodiment, and playful learning, the study found that the story-driven embodied play activity promoted children's agency by positioning them as protagonists when they investigated the science phenomenon through guided play. Furthermore, the results suggest that children, as embodied learners, used their bodies to interact with and figure out the science phenomenon during guided play. These findings extend our understanding of how to integrate story, embodiment, and play to generate synergy and promote young children's agency in science learning.
... No caso das crianças, como membros de uma dada comunidade e cultura, é amplamente reconhecido que elas possuem conhecimentos acerca dos mundos natural e social onde vivem e que esses conhecimentos podem exercer bloqueios ou, pelo contrário, influências positivas na compreensão dos conhecimentos científicos trabalhados nas escolas (Hyun, 2005;Weisberg et al., 2016;Sobel & Letourneau, 2018). Defendendo o desenvolvimento humano com base nos processos sócio-históricos, Vygotsky (1979) considera que a criança se desenvolve primeiramente no plano social, entre as pessoas (interpsíquico) e, somente depois, o pessoal e psicológico (intrapsíquica). ...
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O objetivo deste trabalho foi analisar as concepções de professores de ciências do Brasil e de Portugal acerca da importância de as crianças oriundas dos meios rurais aprenderem ciências e, com base nisto, propor uma estratégia para a formação docente que seja sensível à diversidade cultural das salas de aula. Os dados foram coletados mediante questões contendo situações-problemas, com posterior análise de conteúdo. À luz dos nossos achados, discutimos que as concepções dos professores brasileiros e portugueses convergem no sentido de que os conhecimentos rurais podem ser importantes facilitadores da aprendizagem dos conhecimentos científicos escolares, sendo estes necessários para melhorias nas qualidades de vida das crianças nas suas comunidades. Apesar disto, foram encontradas contradições entre o ensino para mudança conceitual e para mudança de perfil conceitual, porque os professores, ao mesmo tempo em que falavam de diálogo, atribuíam supremacia à ciência para que avanços aconteçam nos ambientes rurais. Consequentemente, propomos uma estratégia para formação de professores que seja sensível à diversidade cultural, contendo um conjunto de atividades cuja finalidade central é a promoção do diálogo intercultural no ensino de ciências para as crianças do meio rural. Essas atividades visam motivar os professores a desenvolver uma didática culturalmente inclusiva, que dê voz aos estudantes, aumentando a sua participação e interesse em prol da sua emancipação para as tomadas de decisões em contextos culturais diversos.
... The Preschool form of the StimQ 2 also greatly added to the PVR subscale by including a Pretend Play component, which aims to capture information about how symbolic pretend play is supported in the home. This is important because research on guided play, in which adults scaffold children's without infringing on their autonomy has been shown to relate to child curiosity, motivation, and learning [99][100][101]. The StimQ 2 also offers the advantage relative to its predecessor of being structured so that each subscale is comprised of distinct components (e.g., StimQ 2 -P READ subscale includes 3 components: Read Quantity, Read Quality, and Read Diversity of Concepts) that can be assessed either collectively or independently. This change in the new StimQ forms gives greater flexibility to users who would like to select key aspects of cognitive stimulation to target in their assessment. ...
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Considerable evidence demonstrates the importance of the cognitive home environment in supporting children's language, cognition, and school readiness more broadly. This is particularly important for children from low-income backgrounds, as cognitive stimulation is a key area of resilience that mediates the impact of poverty on child development. Researchers and clinicians have therefore highlighted the need to quantify cognitive stimulation; however existing methodological approaches frequently utilize home visits and/or labor-intensive observations and coding. Here, we examined the reliability and validity of the StimQ2, a parent-report measure of the cognitive home environment that can be delivered efficiently and at low cost. StimQ2 improves upon earlier versions of the instrument by removing outdated items, assessing additional domains of cognitive stimulation and providing new scoring systems. Findings suggest that the StimQ2 is a reliable and valid measure of the cognitive home environment for children from infancy through the preschool period.
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This study examines how parents' and children's explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors support children's causal reasoning at a museum in San Jose, CA in 2017. One‐hundred‐nine parent–child dyads (3–6 years; 56 girls, 53 boys; 32 White, 9 Latino/Hispanic, 17 Asian‐American, 17 South Asian, 1 Pacific Islander, 26 mixed ethnicity, 7 unreported) played at an air flow exhibit with a nonobvious causal mechanism. Children's causal reasoning was probed afterward. The timing of parents' explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors was related to children's systematic exploration during play. Children's exploratory behavior, and parents' goal setting during play, were related to children's subsequent causal reasoning. These findings support the hypothesis that children's exploration is related to both internal learning processes and external social scaffolding.
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Play is an integrative process, and the skills acquired in it-overcoming impulses, behavior control, exploration and discovery, problem-solving, reasoning, drawing conclusions, and attention to processes and outcomes are foundational cognitive structures that drive learning and motivation. Loose parts play is a prominent form of play that many scholars and educators explicitly endorse for cognitive development (e.g., divergent thinking, problem-solving). It is unique among play types because children can combine different play types and natural or manufactured materials in one occurrence. While educators and policymakers promote the benefits of loose parts play, no previous research has explored the direct relationship between preschool-age children's indoor loose parts play experiences and cognitive development. We address this gap by bringing together the relevant literature and synthesizing the empirical studies on common play types with loose parts, namely object and exploratory, symbolic and pretend, and constructive play. We also focus on studies that examine children's experiences through loose parts, highlighting the impact of different play types on learning through the reinforcement of cognitive skills, such as executive function , cognitive self-regulation, reasoning, and problem-solving. By examining the existing literature and synthesizing empirical evidence, we aim to deepen our understanding of the relationship between children's play with loose parts and its impact on cognitive development. Ultimately, pointing out the gaps in the literature that would add to the body of knowledge surrounding the benefits of play for cognitive development and inform educators, policymakers, and researchers about the significance of incorporating loose parts play into early childhood education.
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Characterizing behavior in any organism as play, including in humans, has often been controversial. Intuitive understandings of what constitutes 'play' are often difficult to describe in words so that other researchers can use them. This leads to problems in comparing studies, formulating and testing research hypotheses, and even in having a shared conversation. To alleviate this problem, many attempts have been made to define or identify play in all its guises. Unfortunately, these attempts have generally failed due to the narrow context in which they have been developed or the conceptual language in which they are expressed (e.g., cognitive, behavioristic, physiological). A careful perusal of these attempts has led to the identification of a set of five criteria, each of which need to be satisfied in at least one respect, in order to identify a behavior as play in whatever context or species being studied. In addition, play can be viewed as operating, at a functional level, in three processes (primary, secondary, tertiary) spanning the continuum from the seemingly atavistic to the developmentally valuable if not essential. Where specific instances of play fall along this continuum can only be answered by empirical research and not by inference from the labels we give to them. In any event, conceptual clarity appears necessary for scientific progress.
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Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but 5 years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications ("apps") for tablets and smartphones. However, there is simply not the time, money, or resources available to evaluate each app as it enters the market. Thus, "educational" apps-the number of which, as of January 2015, stood at 80,000 in Apple's App Store (Apple, 2015)-are largely unregulated and untested. This article offers a way to define the potential educational impact of current and future apps. We build upon decades of work on the Science of Learning, which has examined how children learn best. From this work, we abstract a set of principles for two ultimate goals. First, we aim to guide researchers, educators, and designers in evidence-based app development. Second, by creating an evidence-based guide, we hope to set a new standard for evaluating and selecting the most effective existing children's apps. In short, we will show how the design and use of educational apps aligns with known processes of children's learning and development and offer a framework that can be used by parents and designers alike. Apps designed to promote active, engaged, meaningful, and socially interactive learning-four "pillars" of learning-within the context of a supported learning goal are considered educational. © The Author(s) 2015.
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Decades of research demonstrate that a strong curricular approach to preschool education is important for later developmental outcomes. Although these findings have often been used to support the implementation of educational programs based on direct instruction, we argue that guided play approaches can be equally effective at delivering content and are more developmentally appropriate in their focus on child-centered exploration. Guided play lies midway between direct instruction and free play, presenting a learning goal, and scaffolding the environment while allowing children to maintain a large degree of control over their learning. The evidence suggests that such approaches often outperform direct-instruction approaches in encouraging a variety of positive academic outcomes. We argue that guided play approaches are effective because they create learning situations that encourage children to become active and engaged partners in the learning process.
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A school became safer after security measures were removed. Children can learn better in playful, rather than didactic, settings. At-risk students earned higher grades after writing about a personal value. A novel construct - mise en place - explains how small changes in context, such as these, can lead to large changes in behaviors by highlighting how the psychology of preparing to act within an environment shapes and is shaped by that environment.
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Play, Mathematics, and False Dichotomies (http://nieer.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/building-blocks-3.jpg)NIEER is hosting a blog forum on play-based learning in early childhood education, including posts from national experts in the field. Learn more about the forum here (http://preschoolmatters.org/2014/02/25/reflections-on-play-join-the-conversation/). Some worry that the push for quality education even partially driven by a desire to improve achievement may deprive children of important childhood experiences. Others worry that unstructured play without teacher engagement does little to develop children's minds, particularly for children at high risk of academic failure. Let's stop the cycle of "abuse"—or at least confusion—that stems from false dichotomies in early education. "Play vs. academics" is arguably the main one. Of course children should play. But this does not mean they should not learn, and even play, with mathematics. Consider the following. 1. In their free play, children naturally engage (http://dare2.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/handle/1871/33513/100556.pdf?sequence=1) in mathematics.[i] (/Users/meganca/Downloads/Clements%20&%20Saramakb.docx#_edn1) Observations of preschoolers show that when they play, they engage in mathematical thinking at least once in almost half of each minute of play. Almost 9 out of 10 of children engage (http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/conference/ConfWritings2/Ginsburg_Kyoung.pdf) in at one or more math activities during play episodes.[ii] (/Users/meganca/Downloads/Clements%20&%20Saramakb.docx#_edn2) 2. This mathematical play reveals intuitive knowledge of many concepts that most people think young children can't understand, from arithmetic, to proportions, to parallelism and right angles. Unfortunately, the same children may not "understand" these concepts when they arrive in middle school. If they are not helped to mathematize (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00230990#page-1) (reflect on, give language to) their early "theorems in action,"[iii] (/Users/meganca/Downloads/Clements%20&%20Saramakb.docx#_edn3) the ideas do not become theorems in thought. 3. Many adults, including early educators, believe that sequenced, intentional instruction will harm children's play. These concerns are misplaced. Math and literacy instruction increase the quality of young children's play. Children in classrooms with a stronger emphasis on literacy or math are more likely to engage in a higher quality of social-dramatic play.[iv] (/Users/meganca/Downloads/Clements%20&%20Saramakb.docx#_edn4) The new ideas energize high-level play activity. Thus, high-quality instruction in math and high-quality free play do not have to "compete" for time in the classroom. Doing both makes each richer. Unfortunately,
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Efforts to give preschool children a head start on academic skills like reading and mathematics instead rob them of play time both at home and school. Indeed, the scientific evidence suggests that eliminating play from the lives of children is taking preschool education in the wrong direction. This brief but compelling book provides a strong counterargument to the rising tide of didactic instruction on preschool classrooms. The book presents scientific evidence in support of three points: children need both unstructured free time and playful learning under the gentle guidance of adults to best prepare for entrance into formal school; academic and social development are inextricably intertwined, so academic learning must not trump attention to social development; and learning and play are not incompatible. Rather, playful learning captivates children's minds in ways that support better academic and social outcomes as well as strategies for lifelong learning. This book reviews research supporting playful learning along with succinct policy and practice recommendations that derive from this research. © 2009 by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Laura E. Berk, and Dorothy G. Singer. All rights reserved.
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This study examined the effects of literacy-enriched play settings on preschoolers' literacy behaviors in spontaneous free play. 91 children, ages 3-5, from two urban day-care centers participated in the study. Prior to and following the intervention, the frequency of each child's handling, reading, and writing behaviors in play was assessed through direct observation. Videotaped samples of play areas examined the nature of children's play themes and their uses of literacy objects in play. Following baseline observations, the physical environment of one of the day-care centers was enriched with literacy objects in three distinct play centers: kitchen, office, and library. Significant differences were recorded for the intervention group in the frequency, duration, and complexity of literacy demonstrations in play. Further, children in the intervention group incorporated literacy objects in more diverse and functional ways in their play, using more explicit language than the nonintervention group. /// [French] Cette etude a porté sur les effets de situations de jeu comportant des objets pour lire et écrire sur les comportements relatifs à la lecture-écriture d'enfants d'âge préscolaire en situation de jeu spontané et sans contrainte. 91 enfants, de 3 à 5 ans, provenant de deux centres d'une ville, ont participé à la recherche. On a évalué par observation directe la fréquence des comportements de saisie, de lecture et d'écriture de chaque enfant, avant et après intervention. Des échantillons vidéo des domaines de jeu portent sur les thèmes de jeu et sur l'utilisation objects pour lire et écrire. Conformément aux observations de départ, l'environnement physique de l'un des centres comporte des objets pour lire et écrire, appartenant à trois domaines différents: la Cuisine, le Bureau, et la Bibliothèque. On a relevé des différences significatives pour le groupe d'intervention en fréquence, durée et complexité des manifestations de lecture-écriture. En outre, les enfants du groupe d'intervention ont introduit les objets de lecture-écriture. En outre, les enfants du groupe d'intervention ont introduit dans leurs jeux les objets de lecture-écriture de façon plus diversifiée et plus fonctionnelle, tout en utilisant un langage plus explicite que ceux du groupe sans intervention. /// [Spanish] Este estudio examinó los efectos de medio ambientes de juegos de alfabetización enriquecidos en las conductas alfabetizadoras de niños en edad pre-escolar durante juegos espontáneos. Participaron 91 niños entre 3-5 años, de dos centros urbanos pre-escolares. Mediante la observación directa antes y durante la intervención, se verificó la frecuencia de cada niño en el comportamiento y manejo de la lectura y la escritura durante el juego. Se grabaron videos de las areas de juego que examinaron la naturaleza de los temas y los usos de objetos de alfabetización. Continuando las observaciones básicas, el entorno físico de uno de los centros urbanos pre-escolares fue enriquecido con objetos alfabetizantes de tres centros de juegos distintos: la Cocina, La Oficina, y la Biblioteca. Se registraron diferencias significativas en el grupo intervenido en lo que hace a la frecuencia, duración y complejidad de las demostraciones alfabetizantes del juego. Más aún, los niños del grupo intervenido incorporaron objetos de alfabetización durante sus juegos de formas más diversas y funcionales utilizando lenguaje más explícito que el grupo no intervenido. /// [German] Die vorliegende Studie untersucht Auswirkungen von schriftsprachlich angereicherten Spielumgebungen auf das Lese-Rechtschreib-Verhalten von Vorschulkindern im spontanen freien Spiel. 91 Kinder im Alter zwischen 3 und 5 Jahren aus zwei städtischen Kindertagesstätten nahmen an der Studie teil. Vor und nach der Intervention wurde für jedes Kind die Häufigkeiten der Objekthandhabung, des Lesens und Schreibens durch direkte Beobachtung erfaßt. Die Spielthemen der Kinder wurden anhand stichprobenartiger Videoaufzeichnungen der Spielzonen erhoben. In einer der Tagesstätten wurde nach der baseline-Beobachtung die Umgebung von drei Spielzentren (Küche, Büro und Bibliothek) mit schriftsprachlichen Objekten angereichert. In der Interventionsgruppe zeigten sich signifikante Unterschiede hinsichtlich der Häufigkeit, Dauer und Komplexität von schriftsprachlichem Verhalten im Spiel. Weiterhin bezogen die Kinder der Interventionsgruppe Leseobjekte in vielfältigerer und stärker funktionaler Weise in ihr Spiel ein und verwendeten explizitere Sprache als die Kinder der Kontrollgruppe.