Collaborative play in early childhood education childrens issues laws and programs

A key feature of the book is the weight given to children’s voices through the use of in-depth accounts of actual collaborative play episodes in two distinctive early childhood settings.

C OLLABORATIVE P LAY IN E ARLY

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COLLABORATIVE PLAY IN EARLY

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C ONTENTS

Chapter 1 Current Understandings of Collaborative Play 7

Chapter 2 Early Childhood Education in New Zealand 17

Chapter 8 Funds of Knowledge – Science, Mathematics

Chapter 10 Can I Play? Intervention Strategies 101

Section Three – Implications 111

Chapter 12 Gender 121

P REFACE

Young children’s collaborative play is a little-researched and poorly understood area This solidly research-based book throws new light on a fascinating world of children’s play and relationships in early childhood settings A key feature of the book is the weight given to children’s voices through the use of in-depth accounts of actual collaborative play episodes in two distinctive early childhood settings The detailed, full field notes provide a substantial body of evidence of a little known area of children’s lives in early childhood settings, allowing the reader to become a participant in the children’s play

The introductory section of three chapters establishes the context The following section provides a comprehensive coverage of all major aspects of children’s collaborative play Dominant themes within children’s play are described and illustrated The chapters on leadership styles, intervention strategies and children’s scientific, mathematical and technological funds of knowledge are of particular significance and provide groundbreaking knowledge for early childhood educators

The final section of the book focuses on the implications of these new understandings on the nature of collaborative for early childhood educators New understandings on the gendered nature of children’s collaborative play and the significance of mixed gender play provide important insights for early childhood educator’s pedagogy and practice Early childhood educators will also find the chapter on strategies to encourage and enhance children’s collaborative play of real value, especially the strategies to involve boys in more complex collaborative play episodes

The author, Dr Brent Mawson is a Principal Lecturer in Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education in the University of Auckland He is

highly regarded for the quality of his research and publications into children’s collaborative play and leadership styles

Material in chapter 8 ‘Pretend I’m dead eh” has previously appeared in Mawson, B (2008) "Pretend I'm dead, eh": The place of death in socio-

dramatic play New Zealand Research in Early Childhood Education, 11,

51-64

Funding for the research was granted by the Faculty of Education, the University of Auckland

I NTRODUCTION

Collaborative play in early childhood education is an under-researched and under-theorised area (Shim, Herwig, & Shelley, 2001) The overwhelming proportion of research in the nature of collaboration of young children less than five years of age has focused on family situations and the relationship between siblings and between a child and their parent This book is focused around the findings of a two-year research project investigating the nature of young children’s independent collaborative play in two New Zealand early childhood education settings This study provides an almost unique picture of young children’s play away from adult surveillance and intervention Although the evidence comes from particular settings in New Zealand the nature of the play and the particular themes that absorb the children will resonate with most early childhood educators

The book is structured around three thematically linked sections The first section provides the necessary background and contextual information for an understanding of the research findings that are the core of the work Chapter One lays out the wider context of collaborative play It discusses the literature related to children’s collaborative play and identifies the gap in our knowledge

of children’s independent collaborative play in early childhood settings The most significant frameworks for describing and analysing children’s collaborative play are analysed and the strengths and weakness of each discussed

Chapter Two describes the nature of the early childhood sector within New Zealand The different services available to parents and children are outlined and the role of government policy is discussed The nature and

international significance of the national early childhood curriculum Te

Whaariki is also explained

Chapter Three describes the settings of the research, the research design and data collection methods The ethical and practical issues involved in researching in early childhood settings are discussed Similarities and differences between the two early childhood centres involved in the research and between them and the New Zealand early childhood sector in general are addressed and some suggestion of the level of generalisability of the material

is proposed

Section Two is concerned with describing the main findings of the research The nature of socio-dramatic and pretend or fantasy play is discussed and a summary of the dominant themes of children’s independent collaborative play that were observed is given The section then looks more closely at specific themes, using Ashiabi’s (2007) three categories of socio dramatic play themes; family roles (Chapter Four), character roles (Chapter Five), and functional roles (Chapter Six) as a framework Chapter Seven describes and discusses the place of ‘pretend I’m dead” as a dominant leitmotif

in the play within one of the early childhood settings

Chapter Eight uses the concept of funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) to examine the references to science, mathematics and technology concepts and knowledge within the play scenarios It is proposed that a knowledge of the situated place of these ideas within children’s play offers insights into the nature and scope of teacher content knowledge that may be needed to effectively interact with children and scaffold their learning Chapter Nine addresses the question of the nature of leadership within collaborative play Specific types of male and female leadership styles and behaviours, dictators and directors are identified The nature of leadership in mixed gender play is also addressed and the significant impact on male children is discussed Chapter Ten discusses the intervention strategies used by the children, both successful and unsuccessfully, as they attempted to gain entry to existing play episodes

Section Three focuses on the wider implications of the study Chapter Eleven is concerned with the impact of the physical environment and the resources available to them on children’s collaborative play Chapter Twelve addresses the question of how gender impacts on and influences children’s collaborative play

Finally in Chapter Thirteen strategies are suggested as to how early childhood educators can encourage and facilitate children’s independent collaborative play After discussing the resourcing of early childhood settings

a number of suggestions are provided for effective teaching strategies that can

be used to enhance this type of play, and the interactions between adults and children in early childhood settings

I am conscious that the child’s voice is often lost among the authoritative voice of the adult commentator so I have tried to give as much space as possible to verbatim reports of children’s play interactions They are quite capable of speaking for themselves and the detail of the play also allows readers to make their own interpretations of the evidence

Within this book you will come to intimately know some amazing young children who welcomed me into their place and gave me unconditional friendship I am privileged to be able to share their life and experience with the wider world

S ECTION O NE – B ACKGROUND

Chapter 1

There is still no agreed definition of play Play research has been

“bedeviled by the search for a definition of what play is and what is does for the child’ (Bennett, Wood, & Rogers, 1997, p 4) A wide range of explanations as to the nature and purpose of children’s play have been advanced Moyles has identified 17 different play theories that have been promulgated since the 1870’s, seven of which have produced in the last 50 years (Moyles, 2005, p, 5) It is hardly surprising therefore that with a new theory of play appearing on average at less than ten-yearly intervals that this lack of consensus exists Currently a Vygotskian-based socio-cultural view of play and children’s learning underpins curriculum and teaching approaches within the New Zealand early education sector (Hedges, 2003)

Although a definition of play may still a matter of debate this has not prevented the development of models of the development in sophistication and complexity in children’s play The first significant hierarchy of play was developed by Parten in 1932 Parten identified six chronological stages of play,

1 Unoccupied behaviour 0 - 24 months

2 Solitary play – 24-30 months

3 Onlooker behaviour

4 Parallel play – 30-42 months

5 Associative play – 42-54 months

6 Cooperative play (Parten, 1932, cited in Rubin et al, 1976)

Critique of Parten’s hierarchy began to emerge in the 1970’s with a particular focus on his low rating of solitary play Roper and Hinde (1978) and Rubin (1982) found that children involved in solitary play were engaged in more cognitive activity than children involved in parallel play, which was seen

as been as low grade play

Smilansky developed the second major hierarchy of play She used Piaget’s three categories of sensorimotor play; pre-operational play and concrete operational play (Mooney, 2000) to develop her own categories of functional-sensorimotor play, constructive play, dramatic play, and games with rules (Smilansky, 1968, cited in Rubin, 1982) Smilansky regarded these types of play developing in a relatively fixed sequence

All of the play hierarchies give a very high status to collaborative play, which is seen to produce the richest learner for young children There is evidence that children who are involved in high levels of peer interactive play demonstrate more competent emotional-regulation, initiation, self-determination, and receptive vocabulary skills, and are less likely to be aggressive, shy or withdrawn They have greater cognitive, social, and movement coordination outcomes (Black & Hazen, 1990)

Recognition of the importance of collaborative play has given rise to a number of attempts to categorize and rank varieties of peer play Howes (1980) rating scale for interactive peer play identifies them as,

1 Parallel play

2 Parallel play with mutual regard

3 Simple social play

4 Reciprocal and complementary action and mutual gaze or awareness

1 Role play by imitation

2 Make believe with objects’

3 Make believe with actions and situations

4 Persistence in the role play

5 Interaction

6 Verbal communication,

Smilansky felt that elements five and six must be present in order for the

play activity to be considered socio-dramatic

Roskos (1990) outlined a taxonomy of pretend play, which had a hierarchy of increasingly complex play that moved from individual play with objects through to ‘episodes’, which she conceptualised as having three main elements The first she identified as a readying stage during which the group was formed and the intention to play and the initial interest was established This was followed with a leader directing the play and the players with the play resembling a kind of story complete with setting, characters and plot The third element was object of repetition in the play

Verba’s (1994) description of collaborative play was based on two principles, collaboration and coherence She identified three essential aspects

of collaborative play These were cognitive aspects (developing the goal, linking ideas), transactional aspects (developing mutual understanding, agreeing on ideas and intentions, resolving conflict) and management aspects (evaluation, intervention, decision making) Verba derived three functional categories from her analysis of the actions and behaviours of the children she studied These were the elaboration of activity and coordination of purpose, sharing focused on interest in the partner and development of inter-comprehension, and management using self-monitoring of the activity and guiding strategies

Shim, Herwig and Shelley (2001) identified three categories of

collaborative play These were Interactive-functional play (when two or more

players engage in complementary repetitive or active physical movements),

Interactive-constructive play (when two or more players create or construct something together), and Interactive-dramatic play (when two or more players

engage in complementary fantasy actions or vocalizations and role playing) They described eighteen behaviours that could be used by observers to identify children’s cooperative play

Broadhead (2004) formulated a social play continuum for the analysis of the nature of children’s play interactions The four broad categories within her framework are the associative domain, the social domain, the highly social domain, and the cooperative domain The cooperative domain is where fully collaborative play is situated Broadhead has suggested a number of criteria that need to be met for play to be within the cooperative domain These are

offering/accepting objects that sustains/extends the play theme, sustained dialogue is activity related and clear theme(s) emerge, explanations/ descriptions are utilised, new ideas/resources extend and sustain play, children display a shared understanding of goals, they offer and accept verbal and physical help which is often combined, problems are jointly identified and solved, and sustained dramatic scenarios are enacted and linked to play theme(s)

Ashiabi (2007) identified three categories of socio dramatic play themes These are family roles, character roles, and functional roles Family roles are fairly self-explanatory, character roles are categorised as being usually stereotyped (princess) or fictional (related often to popular culture characters) and functional roles are defined in terms of a specific action role (fireman, policeman)

Ashiabi (2007) identifies a range of positive benefits that children gain from involvement in collaborative play These include enhancement of a child’s ability to reflect before acting and to empathise with other children’s point of view, their negotiation skills, and to experience alternative problem solving and conflict resolution strategies Perspective taking and role taking skills are developed and the ability to co-operate is fostered Finally, Ashabi believes that the child’s ability to develop and sustain relationships and their ability to recognize the mental state of other people is developed “Through play a child first comes to understand self-awareness, the distinction between pretend and reality, and the intentions of others” (p.203)

The most recent hierarchy has been developed by Barton & Wolery (2008) Their pretend play taxonomy has the following elements

1 Functional play with pretence

2 Substitution

a Object substitution

b Imagining absent attributes

c Assigning absent attributes

Although all these hierarchies of collaborative play have some distinctive elements, a common thread runs through all of them There is a strong emphasis on intersubjectivity, negotiation and verbal communication and I used these three characteristics in my research to identify an episode of collaborative play

The importance of collaborative play is a strong belief among early

childhood educators and recent curriculum developers Te Whaariki (Ministry

of Education, 1996), the New Zealand early childhood curriculum is a culturally oriented learning document that emphasizes the place of reciprocal relationships in children’s learning Children’s collaborative play is a key element in this process (Tudge, 1992) However, little is understood about the factors that encourage young children to play together in a collaborative manner (Carr & May, 2000)

socio-There is a reasonably large body of literature related to the benefits of collaborative play within general early childhood textbooks, but little specific research-based literature Most of the research literature is concerned with peer collaboration in specific learning tasks with primary and secondary school students (e.g Fawcett & Garton, 2005; Murphy & Faulkner, 2006)

A significant exception to this is the work of William Corsaro who for thirty years has been researching and writing about the nature of children’s friendships and peer cultures in a range of settings in Italy and the United States (e.g Corsaro 1979; 1992; 2005) Corsaro (1985, cited in Strandell, 1997) defined interactive episodes as, “those sequences of actions which begin with the acknowledged presence of two or more interactants in an ecological area and the overt attempt(s) to arrive at a shared meaning of on-going or emerging activities Episodes end with physical movement of interactants from the area which results in the termination of the originally initiated activity.” Corsaro believes the major function of a children’s peer group is to establish itself in opposition to adult culture (Evalssonn & Corsaro, 1998) A simpler definition of collaborative play was put forward by Garvey (1977, cited in Barnes, & Vangelisti, 1995), “To play successfully requires that the partners communicate to each other [both] that they are playing and what is being played.”

Fantasy play is a complex, representational activity which requires children to negotiate and adopt make believe roles and to jointly enact those roles, while managing two potentially conflicting agendas, their own and the groups (Barnes & Vangelisti, 1995) The spontaneous nature of much fantasy play means that children constantly have to react to and accommodate other children’s desires The benefit of pretend or fantasy play is well established

Vygotsky (1978) saw socio-dramatic play as being an essential element in children’s learning Within this type of play children transform objects and actions symbolically, develop their skill in interactive dialogue and negotiation, and show an adept ability to role play, develop complex scripts, problem solve and goal seeking Research has shown some clear links between social and linguistic competence and high-level pretence (Bergan, 2004) Pretend play encourages children to create elaborative narratives and may facilitate children’s narrative recall and expression

An important aspect of young children’s play is a growth of preference for same-sex social partners This begins first with girls in their third year of life and later with boys after their third birthday By age five this preference for same-sex social partners is more firmly established among the boys (Maccoby, 1998) This clear gender segregation has led some writers to view young children as inhabiting two separate cultures There is a wealth of literature relating to gender differences in children’s play One area of interest is communication strategies Sluss and Stremmel (2004) found that girls’ block play is affected by capability of play partner, but not that of boys They also found that, unlike boys, girls’ communication was influenced by the play partner and that they were more likely to offer assistance than boys Murphy & Faulkner (2006) also identified gender differences with regard to communication in play They found that girl’s communication contained more collaborative speech than that of boys, while that of the boys contained more controlling speech Girls were found to demonstrate more elaboration of peer’s proposals and more responsitivity and mutual coordination than boys Neppi and Murray (1997) believe that preschool boys and girls differ in how they attempt to influence their partner’s behaviour Girls were found to use indirect demands, polite requests, and persuasion while the boys relied on direct demands, commands, threats, physical force, and a greater use of statements that expressed their personal desires and asserted leadership Similarly West (1996) found that all male groups used the loudest language, spoke in the simplest sentences and were the most physical in their play The research of Cook, Fritz, McCornack, and Visperas (1985) indicated that males talked more

to same sex peers than girls Males also made greater use of statements that expressed their personal desires and asserted leadership They found that males made greater use of lecturing or teaching/directing statements

Gender differences have also been observed with regard to cooperation and collaboration in play episodes Black and Hazen (1990) found that girls were more likely to join in the activity of playmates and that the play was more likely to involve cooperative, cohesive turn-taking, On the other hand

boys were more likely to pursue their own ideas for play, and it was more likely to be characterized by abrupt shifts of topic, repeated reorganization of play episodes and in general a more dispersive social interaction For boys the degree of liking or friendship with the chosen partner is less relevant in decisions to initiate interaction than the play activity itself (Cook et al, 1985) Other research has indicated that there seems to be some benefit for boys

in superhero, war, and rough and tumble play in early childhood settings Parsons and Howe (2006) claim that boys have a higher frequency of character/fictive and exploration/negotiation role in super hero play, than when playing with other representational toys Reed and Brown (2000) found that boys use rough and tumble to express care for one another and to develop friendships, and recommended that early childhood educators should encourage rough and tumble, provide outdoor space for it, and give children time to play rough and tumble Marsh (1999, 2000) has suggested that there is also value in superhero play for girls Holland (2003) suggests that the prescription of aggressive play impacts on the self-esteem of boys, and also affects the self-confidence of girls to engage in active and boisterous play scenarios

Socio-dramatic play is another facet of play in which gender differences have been observed Girls engage in fantasy play both more frequently and at more sophisticated level than do boys (Maguire & Dunn, 1997; Pellegrini & Smith, 1998) Both sexes enact roles related to their gender Stereotyped themes occur in fantasy play with girls focusing on domestic items and domestic and maternal dramatic themes, dolls, dress up clothes while the boys tend to be more fantasy inclined and physically vigorous The boys play often co-occurs with play fighting and superhero themes, adventure, villainy, danger, cops and robbers, fire, police and superheroes and is predominantly focused on action (Neppi & Murray, 1997; Pellegrini & Smith, 1998; Rogers

& Evans 2006) Neppi and Murray (1997) indicate that a gender preference for sex-typed toys appears at age two and remains stable Girls preferred soft toys such as stuffed animals and dolls, bead bracelets, art materials, dressing up and dancing while the boys preferred manipulation objects, blocks, transportation toys, guns and to play in the sandpit When boys play with female-preferred toys, such as dolls, the play is less sophisticated than it is with male-preferred toys such as blocks (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998)

Differences in the nature of gendered social interactions have also been noted Neppi and Murray (1997) found that in social play, the girls played in small groups, most often in pairs Their play was cooperative, usually organised in non-competitive ways, and constructive in nature However they

found that boys played in larger, more hierarchically organised groups and that status within the group was manipulated in their interactions with their peers Boys also tended to indulge in functional play Ostrov and Keating (2004) observed that girls displayed more relational aggression than boys, and that the children tended to receive more relational aggression from female peers The boys however displayed more physical and verbal aggression than girls and the children received more physical and verbal aggression from male peers Girls seek power by commanding the role of mother, teacher etc while boys seek power by commanding the role of superhero (Jordan & Cowan, 1995) Cullen (1993) has also observed differences in girls and boys play in outdoor settings She believes that parents and teachers interactions with children are gender stereotyped and that this affects children’s outdoor play Girls prefer to be where teachers are and Cullen notes that teachers prefer indoor activities, and even when girls play in the sandpit it is quieter, home-type play as compared to the boys more physical forms of play such as digging

in sandpit Cullen suggests that boys are more active and spend more time outdoors where they perform more fantasy play, making use of large open spaces and apparatus

However recent research in the field of peer relationships does not support two culture claim that girls friendships are more intimate and exclusive than boys friendships (Goodwin, 2006), nor does it support two culture claim that boys networks are larger and more hierarchically organized and that boys networks exert more influence over members to engage in deviance and rule breaking (Underwood, 2004) However, Underwood does accept that the peer relationship data partially supports the claim that the different cultures have different values and may sanction different behaviours and that children strongly prefer to play with peers of the same gender Two cultures and peer relations researchers agree that children’s peer relations have important consequences for future adjustment Thorne (1993) provided an earlier critique and rejection of the two culture theory

In summary therefore, although the nature of play is still a disputed area there is a consensus that collaborative play is the most complex and developmentally advantageous form of play for young children Although a number of different taxonomies of collaborative play have been developed there is a core element revolving around intersubjectivity, negotiation and verbal communication that enables an identification of collaborative play to be made These three elements were the basis on which my investigation of collaborative play was founded

Based on the literature the most obvious differences in the nature of children’s play appear to be related to gender and include play themes, leadership styles, conflict resolution strategies and communication styles

an internationally respected national curriculum Te Whaariki (Ministry of

Education, 1996) that provides the curriculum framework for the educational programmes in all government subsidised early childhood settings In July

2009 New Zealand had 4, 890 early childhood services, 4,123 of which were Licensed and/or chartered services (Ministry of Education, 2009) These Licensed and/or chartered services were led by a trained, registered teacher and met the New Zealand Government regulations regarding the physical environment, adult-child ratios and health and safety issues They catered for

180, 910 children, 112, 047 (59%) of which were aged three and four Approximately 90% of all three and four-year-old children in New Zealand attended an early childhood service The official figures indicate that 60% of all children under the age of five attended an early childhood service in 2009 The most marked increase in the last five years has been in children aged less than three There has been a marked increase in the number of early childhood centres and children attending them since the introduction of 20 hours government subsidy to parents in 2007 In July 2009 there were 14, 607 full-time and 3, 790 part-time staff in teacher-led services Just over 62% of teachers have a three-year qualification and teacher registration Slightly over 50% of the non-qualified staff was in study for a qualification that would lead

to teacher registration

The introduction of 20 hours subsidy is one of a number of government initiatives to improve the quality and availability of early childhood education

in New Zealand in the last decade In 2002 a ten year plan was established (Ministry of Education, 2002) which laid down three main goals The subsidised hours is one innovation aimed at meeting the goal of increased participation particularly for children of lower socio-economic status and ethnic minorities Providing early childhood facilities on the grounds of all new primary and secondary schools is another element of this policy

The second goal was to create a more seamless education system in New Zealand by creating a greater understanding of the work and pedagogy between early childhood and lower primary school teachers It was intended that this would be an important focus of the material within the revised compulsory sector national curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) but this did not eventuate

The final goal was to improve the quality of early childhood programmes and facilities A key element of this was a target of having a totally qualified and registered teaching workforce by 2012 This created a major upheaval among early childhood teachers of whom less than 20% had a three-year teaching qualification in 2002, but who were therefore faced with either upgrading their qualifications or moving out of the early childhood work force Increasing demand for teachers and the inability of the pre-service teacher educators to provide sufficient places to meet the demand has led to a lowering

of the target to 80% by the end of 2012 and no date has now been set for the achievement of a fully qualified and registered teaching force In 2008 new regulations relating to teacher: child ratios, minimum indoor and outdoor space provision, hygiene and sleep provisions were introduced as part of the move to improve quality within the sector The government also commissioned a Best-Evidence synthesis of quality early childhood pedagogy (Farquhar, 2003) which identified seven characteristics of effective quality teaching that have been used inform pre-service and in-service education programmes

Within the New Zealand early childhood sector there are a number of different types of Licensed and/or chartered services About one-quarter of the children attend kindergartens These are fully staffed by qualified and registered teachers and cater for either 60 or 90 three and four year old children, with a staff: student ratio of 1:15 They are sessional in nature and traditionally have had five three-hour morning sessions for the older children and three two-hour afternoon sessions for the younger children With the introduction of 20 hours of subsidised payments for three and four year olds in

2007 an increasingly large number of kindergartens are moving to one longer daily session catering for fewer children Regional kindergarten associations

are responsible for employing staff, managing the property and allocating resources Although no fees are charged parents are expected to pay a small hourly donation towards the cost of the service

Over 60% of the children attend either privately owned (60%) or community run (40%) services The number of trained and registered teachers

in these services is rising due to a Government policy to have all teachers in early childhood settings to have a three-year teaching qualification by 2012 In

2009 this figure was 60% The major difference between these two types of service is that the community-based services are essentially non-profit and often use community facilities while the privately owned services are commercial enterprises with their own premises

The third largest type of early childhood setting is the Playcentre, which about 8% of children attend These are parent cooperatives in which the parents both act as the educators of the children and administrators of the Playcentre In July 2009 there were 6, 960 adults on duty at Playcentres, 79% holding a Playcentre qualification The vast majority are Licensed and/or chartered and thus receive government funding Parents pay a small fee per session Regional Playcentre associations are affiliated to a National Association, which is responsible for administering the Playcentre teaching qualification, which all Playcentre parents are expected to work towards Kohanga Reo (Language Nests) also are parent/whanau cooperatives the aim of which is to foster young children’s and parent’s knowledge of te reo Maaori (language) and tikanga Maaori (culture) Kohanga Reo has their own national curriculum and teacher training programmes Te Reo Maaori is the main language used and parents participate in the daily programme (Education Review Office, 2007) and about 6% of enrolments are in Kohanga Reo,

The other main type of service is the home-based network where individuals provide education and care in their own homes for between one and four children They have to meet a particular set of government regulations in order to receive funding but the individuals are not required to have formal teaching qualifications

New Zealand produced its first national early childhood curriculum Te

Whaariki (Ministry of Education, 1996) in 1996 Prior to that each different

group within the early childhood sector developed their own programmes Te

Whaariki was unique in New Zealand as the first bi-cultural curriculum

document It is a socio-culturally based document that has four fundamental principles that underpin all programme planning These are Empowerment, Holistic Development, Family and Community, and Relationships These principles are put into practice through five strands, which are closely related

to the principles The strands are Well-being, Belonging, Contribution, Communication, and Exploration The curriculum is non-prescriptive and does not specify content that must be learned Although three developmental stages are identified (infants, toddlers, and young children) they are seen as overlapping in terms of beginning and endpoints It also recognized that individual children might move back and forth within these general categories depending on the particular element of their learning and development that is occurring at the time As the curriculum was implemented in the late 1990’s a new credit-based narrative assessment process, Learning Stories (Carr, 2001) was developed to meet the need for an assessment method appropriate for a socio-cultural pedagogy International interest and adoption of this narrative based assessment method has been a consistent factor in the last decade

It is the international acclamation (e.g Anning, Cullen, & Fleer, 2004; Miller, Cable, & Devereux, 2005; Wood & Attfield, 2005) of the New Zealand

early childhood curriculum document Te Whaariki (Ministry of Education,

1996) and the narrative assessment process of learning stories (Carr, 2001) that suggests the collaborative play experiences of children in New Zealand and the implications for early childhood educators arising from the study of that play may have a wider audience

Creswell, 2007) The first site, in 2007, was a daylong privately owned centre

and involved 22 three and four-year-old children The second site, in 2008, was the morning session of a kindergarten and involved 47 children four-year-old children In both cases I spent one morning a week from the beginning of March until the end of November in each early childhood setting When an episode of collaborative play began I recorded it As discussed in chapter two I used a synthesis of a number of hierarchies and taxonomies of play to identify those episodes that I considered to represent independent collaborative play The key indicators were intersubjectivity, negotiation and verbal communication

My role was purely as an observer and I did not participate in any of the episodes observed, nor did I interact with any of the children involved in the play My aim was to find the “well-placed bench” (Smith, 1998, pp 50-51) Only those episodes that arose from the children’s own interests were observed I did not record any collaborative play episodes occurring around activities the teachers had set up, and I stopped recording any episode whenever a teacher intervened in the play in any way During 2007 85 episodes were observed in the daylong centre During 2008 69 episodes were

observed in the sessional public kindergarten The episodes were documented using a mix of field notes, videotape and audiotape recordings, and digital photographs Not all episodes that occurred were recorded While observing inside I could not monitor play that was occurring in the outside area, and the reverse also was true Where two episodes were occurring simultaneously in the same setting normally the episode involving the more complex themes and interactions was more closely observed, and the other episode monitored to record the main themes and direction of the play

Teacher participant feedback was obtained by means of a weekly meeting

to discuss the data If children approached me during a play episode to tell me what was happening I recorded this, but I did not break into the play, or interrupt the play that followed to question them about the episode I had just recorded I would make available to the children photos taken of previous play episodes for them to talk about if they wanted to

SAMPLE AND SETTING

The research took place in two Auckland early childhood settings Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand with a population of 1,303,068 (Statistics New Zealand, 2007) It is home to one third (32.4%) of the national population It is a very multi-cultural society with just over a third of the inhabitants (37%) being born overseas The four largest ethnic groups are European /New Zealand (55%), Asian (19%) Pasifika (15%) and Maaori (11%)

Although geographical separate within Auckland City the two early childhood settings were very similar with regard to the ethnic and socio-economic composition of the children and the qualifications and teaching experience of the three staff responsible for the children at each centre The privately owned setting was open from 7.30am until 6pm and catered for children from six months of age up to five years of age It was licensed for 10 children under two years and 27 children over two years, but as not all children attended every day there were actually 50 children enrolled in the centre The children were predominantly of New Zealand European ethnicity from middle-class families There were 31 boys and 19 girls on the roll, the ethnic composition being 44 NZ European/Paakehā children, 2 Maaori (NZ Indigenous people), and one Cook Island, Malaysian, South African, and Swedish child The children in the centre were organised into three separate

groups, babies (0-18 months), toddlers (18-36 months) and children aged three and four

The research in this centre involved the three and four year old group At various times in the privately owned daylong setting 22 children were participants in the research project Initially there were 15 children (6 girls, 9 boys) in the group During the year three children left to go to school as they turned five, and 6 children moved up into this group from a younger-age group within the centre In November there were 18 children in the group (8 girls, 10 boys)

The kindergarten had a separate morning and afternoon session A group

of 45 four-year-old children attended five mornings a week for a total of seventeen and a half hours A different group of 45 three year olds attended for three afternoons in a two and a half hour session Children entered the afternoon session at about three years, two months of age and moved into the morning session at about four years two months The roll was made up of 50 boys and 40 girls Although still heavily weighted toward European/Paakeha children, there was a more varied ethnic group within the kindergarten than in the privately owned centre The ethnic composition was 68 NZ European/Paakehā, 2 Maaori, 10 Chinese/other Asian, 3 Indian children, and one African, Fijian, Iraqi, Italian, Samoan, Tongan/Niuean, and Turkish child The research in the kindergarten involved the morning group Only between 66-78% of the children who attended the session were participants in the research at any one time There were originally 35 children (23 girls, 12 boys) in the participant group During the year 25 children left the group and

18 children entered it By November the participant group consisted of 28 children (16 girls, 12 boys)

ANALYSIS

All field notes, audiotapes and videotapes were transcribed and the 154 episodes over the two settings yielded a considerable amount of data for analysis Originally analysis was done using categories of gender, theme, type, and play area (e.g blocks, home area) Other categories emerged from analysis

of the data itself Examples of these were leadership roles, friendship groupings, communication strategies, and successful/unsuccessful strategies for moving into other’s play episodes

The data is reported in regard to the episode it occurred in The letter D or

K indicates whether the episode occurred in the daylong centre (D) or the

kindergarten (K) The number following the letter is the number of the episode that was coded chronologically as the research proceeded during the year The research had ethical approval from the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee Pseudonyms are used for all children in this book

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Research with young children poses a number of important ethical issues that need to be addressed There are a number of ethics principles that apply to all research projects involving human participants These are respect for persons; minimization of harm and maximization of benefits; informed consent; voluntary participation; respect for privacy and confidentiality (or credit where appropriate); avoidance of unnecessary deception; avoidance of conflict of interest; social and cultural sensitivity; and justice (Cullen, Hedges

& Bone, 2009) However where young children are concerned there are greater ethical challenges than is the case with teenagers and adults

The first challenge is the degree of informed consent that children are capable of giving Children are potentially more vulnerable to unequal power relations with an adult research than other groups (Einarsdottir, 2007) To achieve informed consent the participants need to given enough information at

an appropriate language level for them to clearly understand the purpose of the research, what it involves and what is expected of them They also need to fully understand any risks involved and how the data will be used Awareness that participation is voluntary and that they are free to withdraw at any time is also important for the participants to understand Because of the unequal power relations involved young children may find it difficult to tell an adult researcher if they no longer wish to participate (Einarsdottir, 2007)

Traditionally parents or caregivers have given informed consent by on behalf of the child In recent times early childhood educators image of the child has changed Children are now seen as rich, capable and competent learners who are able to exercise greater agency in their lives than previously thought Early childhood researchers increasingly are seeking authentic ways

of also gaining the child’s on-going assent to participating in the research as well as gaining the parent/caretaker’s consent, This entails the researcher constantly monitoring the child’s reactions and knowing when to remove themselves from the situation (Punch, 2002)

Ethical research with young children will also ensure that the research topics and questions and the data gathering methods are appropriate for the age group Time needs to be taken to build a relationship with the children to ensure authentic findings

There will be on-going negotiation and sensitivity with regard to consent/assent and voluntary participation Ethical researchers are also take care to have as little affect on the teaching and learning environment as possible (Cullen, Hedges & Bone, 2009)

Another challenge facing researchers working with young children is to ensure that the views and beliefs ascribed to the children are valid The point has been made very clearly by Carlina Rinaldi, who said,

When you take a picture or make a document, in reality you don’t

document the child but your knowledge, your concept, your idea You

show not who the child is but your thought You don’t show the child, but the relationship and the quality of your relationship with the child (Rinaldi, 2006, p.196)

With this in mind I took great care to develop a relationship with the children that was greater than that of a pure researcher In both settings I personally greeted all the children and listened to anything they wanted to tell

me or talk about before starting the data collection, and I also said goodbye to the children and again gave them the chance to talk to me before leaving the centre

Although the children, aged three and four-years-old were not able to give fully informed consent, which was gained from the parent/care giver, care was taken to explain to the children in terms that they could understand what was being observed and to make clear that they could ask not to be observed at any time I also looked for non-verbal indications that children were withdrawing their consent As parental consent was gained for all children in the privately owned setting the exclusion of non-consenting children was not normally a concern when collecting data However this became more problematic in the kindergarten setting where parental consent varied from 78% to 66% of the children during the year If non-participating children were playing with participant children then only field notes were used to record the play event, and the field notes only related to the participant children Care was also taken

to ensure that non-participant children were not captured in any video footage

or digital photographs Ethics approval for the study was obtained from The University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee, and in the case

of the kindergarten also from the Auckland Kindergarten Association Ethics Committee

S ECTION T WO –

Chapter 4

F AMILY R OLES

Socio-dramatic play can be seen as children’s attempts to categorise and make sense of their world (Corsaro, 2003) Role-play allows children to explore and to begin to understand the complex nature of relationships and to gain a sense of control over their world Evaldsson and Corsaro (1998) see this

as a process in which children are contributing to the reproduction of adult

society through their activities in their own peer culture

The family role-play was the most conducive to the emergence of mixed gender play The two most explicit and frequent roles in socio-dramatic play are father and mother, and children appear to be acutely concerned about portraying the roles accurately (Matthews, 1981) By acting out adult roles, the children play at and practice male and female gendered behaviours and come

to acquire them as their own (Maccoby, 1998) The appropriation of adult behaviours and attitudes may not be the only purpose of family role-play It has been suggested that family role-play may be an area where children may challenge and critically comment on the forms of adult language and behaviour (Duncan & Turalli, 2003)

As the play themes reflected the children’s interests and were not the result of teacher provocations or interactions then the content of the children’s play may be seen as reflecting the funds of knowledge learnt in home and community settings (Gonzalez et al., 2005) One area of fundamental inquiry focused around exploring what it means to be part of a responsible family and community This was reflected in the high incidence of domestic scenarios acting out family responsibilities such as caring for babies and pets, preparing meals and ensuring that naps were taken by those participants taking the role

of children within the group play Preparing for and enjoying parties and