Thinking Play and Learning dialectically : Play-based Didactics in ECE

Abstract

In our context, we observe the gradual disappearance of free play at preschool and that teachers’ practices imitate more and more the ones of primary school. These changes shed light on the traditional tensions between the social-pedagogical and the preparation-for-school traditions, between play and learning, and, in a vygotskian perspective, between spontaneous and reactive learning (Vygotski, 1935/1995). To overcome these tensions, we defend the need to develop a third way, a dialectical way (Author, 2016), a play based didactics. At preschool age, the child experiments cultural tools according to his own interests. To do it, free play seems the most conducive activity. However, development cannot be considered as the only result of a maturation’s process nor learning as only experiences where children are expected to discover established knowledge on their own (Pramling, Doverborg & Pramling Samuelsson, 2017). We try to better understand: 1) how children reinvest curriculum knowledge during free play; 2) how teachers promote the link between this knowledge and the activities initiated by children; 3) how this knowledge makes free play evolve. We analysed two situations (puppet theater and “semolina handling”) during which the teachers’ interventions support the evolution of free play, and therefore permitted a better experiment of knowledge as tools of the mind (Bodrova & Leong, 2012). In this communication, we will present the results of this analysis from 2 points of view: the implemented teaching practices on one hand, the changes in children’s play on the other.