Conceptualising progression in the pedagogy of play and sustained shared thinking in early childhood education: A Vygotskian perspective

Abstract

This paper is concerned specifically with the pedagogies applied in supporting learning through children’s play, and it is framed outside mainstream discourses on the nature of play. The development of the paper also represents one stage in a continuing effort to develop a better understanding of sustained shared thinking in early childhood education. The paper focuses on the educational potential of shared playful learning activities. However, given the overwhelming consensus regarding the importance of play in early childhood development, even a diehard educational pragmatist must begin by addressing subjects that are most commonly considered by psychologists. The paper begins with an account of ‘sustained shared thinking’, a pedagogical concept that was first identified in a mixed method, but essentially educational effectiveness study. Then a consideration of the nature and processes of ‘learning’ and ‘development’ is offered. It is argued that popular accounts of a fundamental difference in the perspectives of Piaget and Vygotsky have distracted educational attention from the most important legacy that they have left to early childhood education; the notion of ‘emergent development’. Pedagogic progression in the early years is then identified as an educational response to, and an engagement with, the most commonly observed, evidence based developmental trajectories of young children as they learn through play.

Full text

Sustained Shared Thinking
TO UNDERSTAND ‘Sustained Shared
Thinking’ (SST) it is important to
recognise firstly that it emerged as an
analytic node or ‘condensation symbol’ in
the process of qualitative research. These
data were collected in the intensive case
study analysis of 12 ‘effective’ pre-school
drawn from the 141 settings involved in the
Effective Provision of Pre-School Education
(EPPE) longitudinal study. The term came
to be defined as SST because research
respondents and observers specifically
referred to the sharing of thinking, and to
the particularly sustained nature of some of
the interactions identified in effective (in
terms of child outcomes) pre-school settings.
What is novel and important about SST is its
evidential basis in group settings, and as a
useful concept for pedagogy. Arguably, many
other researchers have adopted similar
terms and have described similar pedagogic
practices. In reviewing the literature for this
paper, the strongest theoretical resonances
were found with Vygotsky (1978) who
described a process where an educator
supports children’s learning within their
‘zone of proximal development’. But inter-
actions of this sort have also been described
as ‘distributed cognitions’ (Salomon, 1993),
in terms of the pedagogy of ‘’guided partici-
pation’ (Rogoff et al., 1993), and as ‘scaffold-
ing’ (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976). Similar
examples of participation and interaction
also characterise ‘dialogic teaching’
(Alexander, 2004), ‘dialogic enquiry’ (Wells,
1999), ‘interthinking’ (Mercer 2000, p.141),
and ‘mutualist and dialectical pedagogy’
(Bruner, 1996, p.57).
The research methods applied in the
case studies to identify effective pedagogy in
the EPPE project have been described fully
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2 77
© The British Psychological Society, 2009
Conceptualising progression in the
pedagogy of Play and Sustained Shared
Thinking in early childhood education:
A Vygotskian perspective
Iram Siraj-Blatchford
This paper is concerned specifically with the pedagogies applied in supporting learning through children’s
play, and it is framed outside mainstream discourses on the nature of play. The development of the paper
also represents one stage in a continuing effort to develop a better understanding of sustained shared
thinking in early childhood education. The paper also focuses on the educational potential of shared
playful activities. However, given the overwhelming consensus regarding the importance of play in early
childhood development, even a diehard educational pragmatist must begin by addressing subjects that are
most commonly considered by psychologists. The paper begins with an account of ‘sustained shared
thinking’, a pedagogical concept that was first identified in a mixed method, but essentially educational
effectiveness study. Then a consideration of the nature and processes of ‘learning’ and ‘development’ is
offered. It is argued that popular accounts of a fundamental difference in the perspectives of Piaget and
Vygotsky have distracted educational attention from the most important legacy that they have left to early
childhood education; the notion of ‘emergent development’. Pedagogic progression in the early years is then
identified as an educational response to, and an engagement with, the most commonly observed, evidence
based developmental trajectories of young children as they learn through play.

elsewhere (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2006). For
the purposes of this paper it will be enough
to explain that the research provided a qual-
itative extension to the 10-year (so far) longi-
tudinal EPPE study which has followed the
progress of over 3000 children in England.
EPPE controlled for the influence of family
and child characteristics and was able to
establish the ‘effectiveness’ of each of the
pre-school settings attended by the children
in its sample. The qualitative case studies
drew upon these findings to construct a strat-
ified random sample of ‘good’ to ‘excellent’
settings for further in-depth qualitative data
collection and analysis. EPPE was also able to
provide data on the ‘quality’ of each of the
settings as measured by the Early Childhood
Environment Rating Scale: Revised
(ECERS-R: Harms, Clifford & Cryer, 1998)
and the Early Childhood Environment
Rating Scale: Extended (ECERS-E: Sylva,
Siraj-Blatchford & Taggart, 2006).
Pedagogy was defined broadly in the
qualitative analysis to include all of those
processes and provisions that could be
considered to initiate or maintain learning
processes, and to achieve educational goals.
Such a wide definition was considered
important so that it would include the
common practice of providing resources for
exploration and (constructivist) ‘discovery’
learning environments (e.g. sand and water
play). The analytical process was initially
‘grounded’, as the process began with induc-
tion, and this was only followed later by
stages of deduction and verification using
the ECERS scores for quality. All of this
initial work was also carried out blind in the
sense that the researcher was unaware of the
particular learning outcomes achieved by
the settings and identified by EPPE. In the
identification of ‘sustained shared thinking’,
the pedagogic ‘Instructional techniques’
were at first coded with a multitude of
subcategories that included ‘Questioning’,
‘Demonstrating’, ‘Telling’, and ‘Dialogue’.
The re-classification of some of the
‘Dialogue’ as ‘Sustained Shared Thinking’
(SST) with subcategories of ‘Child initiated
SST’ and ‘Adult Initiated SST’ initially took
place after data such as the following were
revealed:
CONTEXT: Children engaged in water play.
BOY 8 (4:1) (who has been watching various
items floating on water), ‘Look at the fir
cone. There’s bubbles of air coming out.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘It’s spinning round.’
BOY 8 (4:1) ‘That’s ‘cos it’s got air in it.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 (picks up the fir cone
and shows the CHILDREN how the scales go
round the fir cone in a spiral, turning the fir
cone round with a winding action), ‘When
the air comes out in bubbles it makes the fir
cone spin around.’
GIRL 2E (4:9) (uses a plastic tube to blow
into the water), ‘Look bubbles.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘What are you putting
into the water to make bubbles? … What’s
coming out of the tube?’
GIRL 2E (4:9) ‘Air.’
(Dialogue continued …)
The analytical process was continued further
through theoretical sampling informed by
an analysis of the EPPE multi-level outcomes
data, and the centre quality ratings of the
ECERS-R and ECERS-E environmental
rating scales. Various positive correlations
were found between child outcomes on e.g.
Early Number outcomes with the ECERS-R
interaction Sub-scale (r=0.26, p<0.005).
Setting 421 (referred to above), for example,
was found to have achieved ‘excellent’
(95 per cent confidence level) practice in
terms of the children’s developmental
progress according to their ‘non-verbal’ and
‘number concepts’ assessments. Perform-
ance in ‘Language’ was also found to be
‘good’ (above 68 per cent confidence level).
Further analysis soon revealed a general
pattern of high cognitive outcomes associ-
ated with sustained adult-child verbal inter-
action along with a paucity of such
interactions in those settings achieving less
well. SST thus came to be defined as an effec-
tive pedagogic interaction, where two or
more individuals ‘work together’ in an intel-
78 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2
Iram Siraj-Blatchford

lectual way to solve a problem, clarify a
concept, evaluate activities, or extend a
narrative. This can also be achieved between
peers.
In the following example a Nursery
Officer was observed supporting some SST
that was initiated by a child and entirely
unrelated to the activity that the adult had
planned:
1.20 BOY 3 (3:11) has finished his cake and
starts to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to NURSERY
OFFICER 1.
NURSERY OFFICER 1 pretends to blow out
the candles. ‘Do I have a present?’
BOY 3 (3:11) hands her a ball of playdough.
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘I wonder what’s
inside? I’ll unwrap it.’ She quickly makes the
ball into a thumb pot and holds it out to BOY
3 (3:11), ‘It’s empty!’
BOY 3 (3:11) takes a pinch of playdough and
drops it into the thumb pot ‘It’s an egg.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 picking it out
gingerly ‘It’s a strange shape.’
BOY 1 (4:0) tries to take the ‘egg’.
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘Be very, very careful.
It’s an egg.’ To BOY 3 (3:11) ‘What’s it going
to hatch into?’
BOY 3 (3:11) ‘A lion.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘A lion? … I can see
why it might hatch into a lion, it’s got little
hairy bits on it.’ She sends BOY 3 (3:11) to
put the egg somewhere safe to hatch. He
takes the egg and goes into the bathroom …
BOY 3 (3:11) returns to the group.
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘Has the egg
hatched?’
BOY 3 (3:11) ‘Yes.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘What was it?’
BOY 3 (3:11) ‘A bird.’
NURSERY OFFICER 1 ‘A bird? We’ll have to
take it outside at playtime and put it in a tree
so it can fly away.’
SST was found to occur most commonly in
one-to-one adult/child interactions. An early
association was also found between SST and
‘open-ended’ questioning (Siraj-Blatchford
& Manni, 2008). Most of the examples of
SST that were identified in the study really
were quite extended and readers will need to
refer to the technical report (Siraj-Blatch-
ford et al., 2003) for more examples. But
these findings have led to a series of engage-
ments with the theoretical literature (Siraj-
Blatchford, 2007, 2008), of which this paper
may be considered another.
Child development and learning
It is often observed that Piaget believed that
a child’s ability to learn depended upon
their current stage of development. Educa-
tors, therefore, developed their curriculum
and pedagogy to suit the child’s cognitive
capability. Vygotsky (1978) by contrast,
considered the relationship between
learning and development to be more
complicated. As Bodrova and Leong (2007)
have put it, Vygotsky argued that:
‘For certain knowledge or content and for
certain ages, one step in learning may mean
two steps in development. In other cases,
learning and development proceed at a more
even pace. However, teaching should always be
aimed at the child’s emerging skills, not at the
existing ones.’ (p.31)
But it is simplistic and mistaken to claim (as
many do) that the major difference in
perspective between the two theorists is one
of seeing ‘learning leading development’
and the other as ‘development leading learn-
ing’ (e.g. Wood & Attfield, 2005, p.91). Both
saw the potential for learning grounded in,
and essentially limited by, even if not
‘within’, the child’s current developmental
capabilities; for Vygotsky this was the whole
point of defining the ‘zone of proximal
development’ as:
‘The distance between the actual developmental
level as determined by independent problem
solving and the level of potential development
as determined through problem solving under
adult guidance, or in collaboration with more
capable peers.’ (1978, p.86)
But to understand Vygotsky’s more compli-
cated relationship between learning and
development we need at first to consider the
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2 79
Conceptualising progression in the pedagogy of play …

difference between learning the solution to a
problem, and the development of capability in
solving particular kinds of problems, and then
secondly we need to consider the emergent
nature of child development. ‘Emergence’ is
actually a philosophical notion that dates
back to the very earliest writings in 19th
century psychology, and also to classical
views of society being considered to act as a
living organism (Sawyer, 2003, p.14).
In terms of child development, ‘emer-
gence’ may be considered to involve
processes that occur over time that result in
the development of higher order structures
of the mind. Most significantly in terms of
the arguments presented below, these may
relate to particular intellectual, social and
cultural competencies and capabilities, and
they are initially developed in social inter-
action and following the acquisition of a
range of communication and collaboration
skills (Siraj-Blatchford, 2007).
But it is important to recognise that this
involves much more than any simple accu-
mulation of specific skills or understandings.
The developmental structures that finally
emerge are considered irreducible to their
component parts. In fact, from the perspec-
tive of emergent development, it is consid-
ered impossible to deduce the child’s
development as a whole from any observa-
tions of their previously learnt behaviour or
behaviours (Sawyer, 2003). When children’s
play is considered to support their develop-
ment, this should be understood in emer-
gent terms, where the first order (and
relatively superficial) reproductive (Vygotsky,
2004) or empirical (Piaget, 1950) learning
that is involved is contributing towards, but
not itself constituting the achievement of,
either a series, or a continuous process, of
irreducible restructurings of the mind.
These developmental achievements are
often seen to involve a ‘renaissance’ or
gestalt change in the mind:
‘A child’s play is not simply a reproduction of
what he has experienced, but a creative
reworking of the impressions he has acquired.’
(Vygotsky, 2004, p.11)
While we might observe a child’s behaviour
and their use of various skills, knowledge, atti-
tudes, etc., these should be recognised as
representing only the material conditions
required for development. Both Piaget and
Vygotsky applied these notions of ‘emer-
gence’ (Sawyer, 2003), but while Piaget
applied in his analysis the heuristic notion of
discrete ‘stages’, Vygotsky always considered
development as a continuous process, and
only Vygotsky was concerned, and wrote
explicitly, about pedagogy (Moll, 1990, p.15).
One of the many insights that we might
be at risk of losing by not appreciating this
complex relationship between learning and
development is the wider relevance of emer-
gent development to the whole curriculum.
While literacy is now widely seen as an emer-
gent developmental accomplishment, and
this has also been extended in some quarters
to Mathematics (Hughes, 1986) and to
‘emergent science’ (Siraj-Blatchford, 1999,
2006), in other subject areas very little has so
far been written. ‘Emergent Literacy’ was a
term first applied by Marie Clay (1966) and
Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) further
defined the concept as:
‘… the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that
are presumed to be developmental precursors to
conventional forms of reading and writing’, as
well as; ‘… the environments that support
these developments.’ (op cit, p.849)
Clearly this definition may be applied much
more widely, with ‘Emergent Curriculum’
practices and resources being applied to
support young children in learning the skills,
knowledge and attitudes identified as devel-
opmental precursors to a much wider range
of curriculum subject areas.
Play, pedagogy and the emergent
curriculum
Play is widely recognised as a leading context
for the child’s acquisition of communication
and collaboration skills. For neo-Vygotskians
play is also considered to be a ‘leading activ-
ity’, but it is important to recognise here that
this does not mean that play should be
considered to predominate in the life of
80 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2
Iram Siraj-Blatchford

young children, that play is the only way that
young children learn, or that all kinds of play
promote development. But play does
provide an important context for learning
and development, as Vygotsky (1933) put it:
‘Only theories maintaining that a child does
not have to satisfy the basic requirements of
life, but can live in search of pleasure, could
possibly suggest that a child’s world is a play
world’ (p1). But: ‘The child moves forward
essentially through play activity. Only in this
sense can play be termed a leading activity that
determines the child’s development.’ (op cit)
In terms of empirical progression we know
that play begins with solitary play and the
child goes on to develop the capability to
share, then to co-operate, and finally to
collaborate in their play. We also know that
these developments open up much wider
opportunities for learning. But ‘solitary
play’, shared play, co-operative and collabo-
rative play are not discrete ‘stages’ that the
child works through. Even solitary play
serves us well at times throughout our
learning lives. In most theoretical accounts
describing the ways in which these different
forms of play open up the possibility of
learning, the notion of emergent develop-
ment is often implicit. For example, when
describing play as a ‘leading activity’ (Leon-
tiev, 1964; Oerter, 1993), it is only being
suggested that it should be seen as a driving
force in the child’s development of new forms
of motivation and action.
Activities that may all be considered
examples of SST (Siraj-Blatchford, 2007) are
considered by many neo-Vygotskian writers
(Karpov, 2005), to mark the transition from
learning activities that are characterised by
‘emotional communication with caregivers’
(Lisina, 1986), then to ‘object-centred joint
activity’ (Elkonin, 1989) where the child
begins object substitutions, and then on to
Socio-dramatic play (Leontiev, 1964), with
finally activities that reflect the child’s desire
to learn more formally and embrace formal
Learning (or schooling) as the dominant
learning activity.
In Table 1 (overleaf) I have endeavoured
to summarise these major developmental
phases and identify some of the major
features of pedagogic progression. The table
follows the example of the English Early Years
Foundation Stage (EYFS) Guidance (DfES,
2007) in referring to some of the most signif-
icant, overt and immediate learning that
takes place throughout each phase as some-
thing for practitioners to ‘Look, listen, and
note’, and to identify the potential develop-
mental significance of this separately. In
place of pedagogy I apply the more common
phrase ‘effective practice’. The first three
developmental phases that are identified
broadly correspond with Broadhead’s (2001)
empirical account of the ‘social play contin-
uum’ levels for ‘Associative Play’, ‘Social Play
and Highly Social Play’, and ‘Co-operative
Play’. I have resisted the temptation to
include any specification of the ages to which
these apply but can see no particular
problem with these being defined as broad
and overlapping phases (as again applied in
the EYFS). But arguably these processes do
not end with play, or in school, or even in
adult life. There is an essential continuity
between the playful collaborations of the
nursery and the more formal collaborations
between peers, and between teachers and
pupils in schools, in working partnerships, in
the provision of apprenticeship and tutorial
relationships and even professional mentors
and collaborators at the academic and profes-
sional level. In terms of competence, progres-
sion goes from mastering the very informal
and strongly improvised sustained and shared
interactions to more highly structured and
much more formal sustained and shared inter-
actions in adult life.
If we now consider how SST develops
over time in progressively more sophisti-
cated contexts, as sustained and shared
‘moments of activity’ (Leontiev, 1978), we
can begin by drawing upon George Herbert
Mead’s account of the processes that are
involved in children’s early ‘emotional
communications with caregivers’ seeing
these as gestural symbols that are at first
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2 81
Conceptualising progression in the pedagogy of play …

82 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2
Iram Siraj-Blatchford
Table 1: Towards a Model of Pedagogic Progression in Play.
Playful activity
1. Emotional communication
with caregivers
2. Object-centred joint
activity
3. Socio-dramatic play
4. Transition to learning
activity
Sustained shared thinking
Communications with adults
and peers involves the
exchange of significant
gestures.
Pretend role play and object
substitution become
internalised (as imagination)
and as inner speech develops.
Sharing play symbols and
signs in pretend play with
partners.
Collaborative involvement in
improvised play with partners.
Collaboration in increasingly
structured activities and
games with more complex
rules.
Pedagogy
Adult models and leads
(Treating all of the child’s
actions as ‘communicative’).
Scaffolding is then
progressively reduced.
‘Extensions’ provided.
Object substitution and
‘pretend’ modelled by adults
and/or peers.
Scaffolding in the provision of
props (e.g. dressing up
clothes) and environments
progressively reduced.
Extension by encouraging
more abstract symbolisation
and open ended questioning.
Modelling by adults and peers.
Progressively reduction of
scaffolding in the provision of
ideas and themes for play.
Extend by encouraging play
with more capable peers.
Introduction of games with
more sophisticated rules.
Encouragement of extended
play (over days) to promote
self regulation, planning and
memory.
Progressively reduction of
scaffolding in planning.
Scaffolding more disciplined
collaborations, e.g. carrying
out an ‘investigation’.
Learning
Object permanence.
‘Social smiles’ and Gestures,
signs and symbols are
increasingly recognised by the
child as communicative acts.
Reciprocity in sharing peer
relations.
Being an (object) other to
oneself.
Increasingly acknowledging
other perspectives.
Collaborative skills as socio-
dramatic play becomes more
as partners at first share
symbols and then reciprocally
negotiate roles.
Greater resilience.
Reflection upon the
relationship between ‘pretend’
signs and ‘real’ meanings.
Orientation towards more
formal learning and school.
Learning to learn.
Developmental potential
Towards the development of
a conception of the ‘self’.
Towards the co-ordination of
‘self’ to ‘others’.
Towards a theory of mind
and metacognition.
Towards learning to learn and
the development of learning
‘dispositions’.

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2 83
Conceptualising progression in the pedagogy of play …
recognised by babies as communicative acts.
To paraphrase Morris (1962): ‘The ‘significant
gesture’, itself a part of a social process, inter-
nalises and makes available to the [child] the
means which have themselves emerged earlier, non-
significant, stages of gestural communication’
(op cit, p.xxii).’Significant gestures’ thus
provide the means by which a baby is able to
at first objectify the behaviour (or role) of
the other, and control their own behaviour
in response to these roles. It is also in this
process that the child first develops a
conscious awareness of the ‘self’.
The interactive contexts for these very
early learning experiences usually involve
the parent or primary carer playing ‘peek-a-
boo’ or other baby games that involve taking
turns. But the development of higher mental
functions only ‘emerges’ following a multi-
plicity of these relatively simple interactions.
The pedagogy that might be considered
implicit in these interactions follows a
sequence where the adult at first repeatedly
models a particular action or gesture (an
early example may be a big smile following
eye contact), the adult then observes the
child initially providing rewards when they
respond and then, as the child begins to
initiate the game themselves, progressively
reduce the scaffolding (in this case the adult
initiation and rewards). The adult may then
extend the game by employing props (e.g.
hiding their face behind a book) or by
encouraging others to play. More often that
not, the adult is entirely unaware of the
pedagogy that they are applying. S/he is
playing a game with (probably ancient)
cultural roots. They may also be considered
to be operating within the child’s ‘zone of
proximal development’.
This pedagogic sequence of modelling –
progressive reduction of scaffolding – extension
may continue to be employed in supporting
children’s learning in a wide range of play
contexts throughout the early years. As
children develop, a range of particular (and
increasingly unique) cultural, personal and
situational factors will make some contexts
more significant to the individual child than
others, but in the child’s first significant
gestures, and later in many other communi-
cations both positive and negative emotional
influences are likely to motivate their
learning, with the operation of interests,
desires and impulses being applied on the
one hand (perhaps dominating in the
earliest years), and concerns about what
Piaget referred to as ‘disequilibrium’, (and
cognitive dissonance or conflict) being applied
on the other.
For Van Oers (1998), the creative
processes of learning that are involved can
be characterised as a process of ‘progressive
continuous re-contextualisation’ (pcr-c)
where it is considered that as soon as the
individual recognises the potential of
achieving a recalled (and motivating) object
(or outcome) they may chose to re-contextu-
alise that object, transforming (or ‘transfer-
ring’) their (structure and meaning) of the
activity to that end. The developmental
significance of these first separations of
meaning from objects is enormous:
‘At that critical moment when a stick – i.e. an
object – becomes a pivot for severing the
meaning of horse from a real horse, one of the
basic psychological structures determining the
child’s relationship to reality is radically
altered.’ (Vygotsky, 1933, p.1)
It is in this context that the power of play and
pretence may be seen most clearly. Vygotsky
(1933, p.1) argued; in the child’s ‘real’ life,
action always dominates over meaning. The
evidence suggests that the crucial practice of
substituting a real object for a symbol may
occur spontaneously in play, but that this is
also greatly facilitated in the playful interac-
tion with others. So the role of primary
carers may, therefore, be paramount before
the age of 2 years, while peer play may be
more significant around age 4. As Moran
and Steiner (2003) argue, citing Smolucha
and Smolucha (1986):
‘Children do perform spontaneous object
substitutions as early as 12 months, but most
[early] substitutions occur during their second
year through pretend play initiated by
caregivers.’ (op cit, p.69)

84 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2
Iram Siraj-Blatchford
As suggested earlier, this does not just relate
to artefacts, the child learns to be an object
to themselves, and to objectify ‘others’. In
play the child is at first able to be another to
her/himself, developing the capability of
‘interacting with pretend others (increas-
ingly acknowledging ‘their’ perspective),
and then is able to ‘switch’ freely between
roles (Fein, 1991).
Progressively, as the child continues to
communicate with adults and other
children, the meanings that they are
constructing are mediated by all of their
previous historical moments of significant
activity. Increasingly we can see that the
child’s socio-dramatic play becomes recip-
rocal and collaborative. At this point concep-
tual knowledge and understanding of the
‘other’, and of the ‘self’, develop further and
learning ‘dispositions’ become more signifi-
cant (e.g. probably most clearly identified in
studies of gender preference). The develop-
ment of these sophisticated levels of abstrac-
tion (and meta-consciousness) commonly
referred to as a theory of mind, also facilitate
the development of a wider Meta-cognition
(the knowledge and awareness that children come
to develop of their own cognitive processes). The
meta-cognition that is so important in
learning-to-learn, also develops as the child
finds it necessary to describe, explain and
justify their thinking about different aspects
of the world to others.
Whenever play partners communicate
they do so from their own historically
constructed perspective, which includes
their understanding of the perspective of
themselves constructed by the other partici-
pant in the communication (or SST). This
has important implications for development
as: ‘… the child’s position towards the external
world changes … and the ability to co-ordinate his
point of view with other possible points of view
develops’ (Elkonin, 1978, p.282).
Forman and Cazdan’s (1998) research
suggests that children’s problem solving
improves in collaboration, as the partners
alternately provide scaffolding for each
other within the partners ‘zone of proximal
development’ (ZPD). That is, the ‘zone of
capability’ that extends beyond what the
partner is capable of doing on their own to
include those activities they may successfully
do with the support of their peer.
Thus, from an early age, young children
learn to separate objects and actions from
their meaning in the real world and give
them new meanings. This provides the basis
for early representational thinking and inn
more advanced forms of representational
thinking these ‘props’ are no longer
required, so that problems may be solved
entirely ‘in the head’. Co-operation and
collaboration provides scaffolding in the
development of meta-cognition and
learning-to-learn. As Moran and Steiner
(2003) suggest, in the context of collabora-
tions later in life:
‘Collaboration is shared creation and discovery
of two or more individuals with comple-
mentary skills interacting to create a shared
understanding that none had previously
possessed or could have known on their own’
(Schrage, 1119, p.40). It is not just an
intellectual endeavour; rather, it is like an
affair of the mind in which emotions can
transform the participants and the work itself
is interesting and supportive’ (p.82).
A creative learning mechanism something
like Van Oers’ pcr-c may be considered to
operate as much in these more challenging
contexts as in the earlier learning. But as
children get older: ‘Play is converted to internal
processes at school age, going over to internal
speech, logical memory, and abstract thought’
(Vygotsky, 1933, p.1). As an illustration of
the ways in which the pcr-c learning
processes may be applied in the case of the
child’s later reasoning and development we
can borrow a short dialogue cited by
Donaldson (1992) needs adding to refs who
uses it to illustrate what she refers to as
children’s ‘spontaneous wonderings’ (p.44).
The dialogue also illustrates rather well the
syncretic motivation to reconcile apparently
contradictory experiences or stimulations
referred to earlier. Jamie (3 years 11
months) was standing in a lane beside a

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2 85
Conceptualising progression in the pedagogy of play …
house in the English countryside. It was a
warm and dry day, and a car was parked on a
concrete drive nearby:
Jamie: Why is it [the car] on – that metal thing?
Adult: It’s not metal, it’s concrete.
Jamie: Why is it on the concrete thing?
Adult: Well, when it rains the ground gets soft
and muddy, doesn’t it?
[Jamie nods, bends down and scratches the
dry earth.]
Adult: So the wheels would sink into the mud.
But the concrete’s hard, you see.
Jamie [excitedly]: But the concrete’s soft in the
mix! Why is it soft in the mix?
(Donaldson; 1992, p.44)
A strong clue in understanding what is
happening here is in Jamie’s use of the word
‘mix’. At some point in the past he may have
seen concrete being mixed with a shovel or
concrete mixer. If so, he will have been left
with an apparent contradiction when he was
told that this hard floor material was also
‘concrete’. He had only ever seen it very soft
and fluid. In recontextualising concrete as a
hard substance Jamie’s conceptual under-
standing of scientific notion of ‘matter’ was
being challenged, and following further
examples will ultimately be transformed to
one that accepts the general principle that
‘matter’ often exists in more than one ‘state’.
Donaldson tells us that the adult was
thrown into some confusion by the child’s
question and was not able to answer. So
there may have been a missed opportunity
here, had the adult listened (or reasoned
themselves) more carefully they might have
been able to explain how concrete, after it is
mixed, then ‘sets’.
Bodrova and Leong (2007) cite Vygotsky
and Elkonin in recommending the encour-
agement of extended play (over several days)
to promote self-regulation and planning and
memory (op cit, p.143). Case studies
conducted by Van Oers (1994, 1996) have
shown that symbolic construction can be
introduced as an appropriate pedagogic
activity for young children from the age of
around 5. As Van Oers (1999) has suggested,
when children consciously reflect upon the
relationship between their ‘pretend’ signs
and ‘real’ meanings in play, they are
engaged in a form of semiotic activity that is
a valuable precursor to new learning activities
(p.278). In discussing the transition from
play to learning as a leading activity Carpay
and Van Oers (1993) argued that:
‘… learning activity must be fostered as a new
special form of play activity. As a new quality
emerging from play activity, it can be argued
that learning activity has to be conceived as a
language game in which negotiation about
meanings in a community of learners is the
basic strategy for the acquisition of knowledge
and abilities.’ (Cited in Van Oers 1999,
p.273, author’s emphasis.)
As previously suggested, this approach is also
implicit in emergent literacy and numeracy
practices where educators specifically
encourage children to recognise the value of
using symbols to represent and quantify arte-
facts. Educators who know the children in
their care, who know their interests, capabil-
ities, and potential quite naturally plan
ahead and initiate activities that they know
the child will enjoy and benefit from. Such
an approach is not curriculum centred, it is
child-centred, but it offers the possibility of
monitoring the child’s activities for breadth
and balance. Left to their own devices we
know that the play of children often
becomes repetitive, and effective educators,
therefore, encourage children to take on
new challenges and introduce new and
extended experiences.
Child development progresses as
children experience more challenging SST
in their play initially with adults, then in
reciprocal peer play and later in sophisti-
cated collaborative play. We can support this
process in early childhood education (ECE)
by providing children with these more chal-
lenging forms of SST and by providing more
sophisticated and abstract scaffolding props.
These transitions to social and cultural
competence are very gradual but they are
inevitable and it may, therefore, be consid-

86 Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2
Iram Siraj-Blatchford
ered surprising that for many ECE educators
there remains an open question about how
much, at any point they should be empha-
sising the individual and immediate ‘rights’
of a child to ‘childhood’, or focusing our
attention on any future ‘needs’ that they may
have. But there is really no contradiction
between these two, young children realise
this themselves very quickly.
Pedagogical progression and transition
Researchers have always found it useful for
the purposes of analysis to identify different
developmental stages, phases and/or
contexts for learning. Practitioners and
policy makers also routinely differentiate
between home, nursery, kindergarten and
school contexts. But we must accept that one
of the central challenges of good practice
must be to provide individual children with
the lived experience of smooth transition
and continuity in their learning across these
phases and contexts. As Sanders et al. (2005)
have put it:
‘The process of transition may be viewed as one
of adaptation. This study has shown that the
best adaptation takes place where conditions
are similar, communication is encouraged,
and the process of change takes place gradually
over time’ (p.9).
This research (op cit) identified a number of
studies that showed significant discontinu-
ities (Potter & Briggs, 2003, Corsaro & Moli-
nari, 2000, Clarke & Sharpe, 2003) and
emphasised the need for teachers of 4- to
6-year-olds to be given more guidance on
how to introduce literacy and numeracy
activities in ways more suitable for young
children. As Sander et al. (2005) found in
their study of the effectiveness of the transi-
tion from the English Foundation Stage
(which applies to children aged birth to 5
years) and Year 1 of school (for children
aged 5 to 6):
‘Schools should encourage staff to adopt
similar routines, expectations and activities in
Reception and Year 1. School managers should
allocate resources to enable children in Year 1
to experience some play-based activities that
give access to opportunities such as sand and
water, role play, construction and outdoor
learning.’
Their findings also suggest that children
from minority ethnic groups, those with
English as an additional language, and
children with special educational needs find
transition more difficult (Margetts, 2003).
Many of the practitioners interviewed in the
EPPE case studies were also concerned that
chronological age should not be taken as an
indication of a child’s level of development
and that there should be some differentia-
tion in the pedagogy applied for children
(Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2002).
While this concept of ‘transition’ may
have often been viewed exclusively in terms
of ‘school readiness’ in the past, it can be
seen much more fruitfully in terms of:
‘pedagogical, curricular, and/or disciplinary
approaches that transcend, and continue between,
[all] programmes’ (Kagan & Neuman, 1998,
p.1).
In this paper I have argued that SST, as a
high order pedagogical concept, and as a
common approach, has the potential to
provide just this sort of continuity.
Conclusions
In this paper SST has been presented as a
form of ‘pedagogy’ in the sense that it is
something adults do to support and engage
children’s learning. But as I have argued
more fully elsewhere (Siraj-Blatchford,
2008), it is important to recognise that every
learning episode has both pedagogical and
curricula content. Learning has content as well
as form, and whenever learning takes place
we can say that a ‘curriculum’ is involved
(however implicit or hidden it might be).
This paper has been concerned to identify
pedagogic progression in play and much of this
is implicit (never rationalised) in the English
curriculum, EYFS Guidance (DfES, 2007).
But the EYFS is concerned with more than
just the pedagogy to be applied in the early
years in England, it prescribes some limited
curriculum content as well. Content analysis
(Siraj-Blatchford, 2009) suggests that this

Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 26 No. 2 87
Conceptualising progression in the pedagogy of play …
curriculum almost exclusively follows the
‘emergent’ curriculum model with most of
the learning representing the sort of ‘repro-
ductive’ or ‘empirical’ learning described
earlier. The National Curriculum in England
requires conceptual development only at a
later stage in schooling.
Drawing upon broadly Vygotskian
sources the model that I have presented
suggests that the adults that children grow
up with, progressively introduce them to the
cultural tools that they require to integrate
fully as contributing members of the society
around them. The tools that they begin with
are quite modest communicative compe-
tences but increasingly they provide access to
significant products of cultural achievement,
such as the world of literature and texts
(Wolf, 2007). The most recent results from
the longitudinal EPPE study (Sammons et
al., 2007), clearly show the importance of the
early years home learning environment
(HLE) and identify its influence over and
above that of parental education and socio-
economic status. The early HLE was found
to remain a powerful predictor of better
cognitive attainment at age 11 even after six
years in primary school. As Snow, Tabors and
Dickinson (2001) have shown, extended
discourse and exposure to rich vocabulary in
the home is a strong predictor of early
elementary language and literacy growth
and as I have argued elsewhere (Siraj-Blatch-
ford, 2009), these practices are ubiquitous in
middle-class, Western family contexts, but
they can’t be taken for granted elsewhere.
The EPPE research (Siraj-Blatchford & Sylva,
2004) provides only one of the most recent
contributions to a growing body of evidence
that shows that there are many disadvan-
taged children in even the wealthiest of
countries that deserve our very best peda-
gogical efforts when they attend pre-school
settings.
EPPE has shown that a quality pre-school
experience can be supportive in terms of
children’s learning and development in the
long term, so that a more conscious aware-
ness of the pedagogic processes that are
involved are likely to be extremely valuable
in the development of professional early
childhood educational practice.
Correspondence
Iram Siraj-Blatchford
Department of Early Childhood and
Primary Education,
Institute of Education,
University of London,
Room 101, 15 Woburn Square,
London WC1H 0NS.
Tel: +44 (0)20 7612 6218
Fax: +44 (0)20 7612 6230
E-mail: i.siraj-blatchford@ioe.ac.uk

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