Conceptions of play by children in five countries: towards an understanding of playfulness

• Sarah J. Mukherjee ^[4] ; Lucía Bugallo ^[1] ; Nora Scheuer ^[1] ; Teresa Cremin ^[4] ; Virginia Montoro ^[1] ; Martha Ferrero ^[1] ; Marcia Preston ^[2] ; Doris Cheng ^[3] ; Roberta Golinkoff ^[2] ; Jill Popp ^[5]
  1. [1] Universidad Nacional del Comahue

     Universidad Nacional del Comahue

     Argentina

     
  2. [2] University of Delaware

     University of Delaware

     Estados Unidos

     
  3. [3] Tung Wah College

     Tung Wah College

     RAE de Hong Kong (China)

     
  4. [4] The Open University
  5. [5] The LEGO Foundation

  Mostrar afiliaciones +
• Localización: Journal for the Study of Education and Development, Infancia y Aprendizaje, ISSN-e 1578-4126, ISSN 0210-3702, Vol. 46, Nº 1, 2023, págs. 109-153
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1080/02103702.2022.2133401
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Las concepciones acerca del juego de niños de cinco países: hacia un mejor conocimiento de la actividad lúdica
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    A partir de un estudio multicultural de métodos mixtos realizado en 2018 en cinco localidades de Argentina, Dinamarca, Hong Kong, Reino Unido y Estados Unidos, en este artículo se exploran las concepciones acerca de la actividad lúdica de niños de cinco y siete años. Tras una tarea de clasificación de tarjetas, 387 niñas y niños seleccionaron aquellas actividades familiares que consideraban más representativas de juego y aquellas más ajenas al juego y explicaron sus razones. Se realizó una transcripción completa de sus justificaciones y se crearon cinco corpus (uno por localidad). Mediante la lexicometría, se generaron conjuntos de respuestas características por edad en cada localidad. Una interpretación cualitativa detallada de las respuestas reveló nueve dimensiones lúdicas y no lúdicas: disfrute, contexto social, materiales, movimiento, agencia, riesgo, meta, tiempo y focalización. Las coincidencias revelaron que las ideas que los niños albergan en torno al juego no están vinculadas a actividades específicas sino a un sentido de agencia en un contexto físico y social seguro a la hora de realizar una actividad como fin en sí misma. Las implicaciones para las pedagogías lúdicas subrayan la necesidad de incorporar al juego oportunidades de elección e iniciativa para los niños, así como una exploración e inmersión segura en las actividades en las que participan.

  • English

    Drawing on a mixed-methods cross-cultural study undertaken in five locations in Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, England and the United States in 2018, this paper explores how children (aged five and seven) conceive of playfulness. Following a card-sorting task, 387 children selected familiar activities that they felt were most representative of play and not-play and explained their reasons. The children’s justifications were fully transcribed, and five corpora were created (one per site). Lexicometry was applied, generating sets of the characteristic responses per age in each site. In-depth qualitative interpretation of these modal responses revealed nine dimensions across play and not-play: pleasure, social context, materials, movement, agency, risk, goal, time and focus. Commonalities revealed that children’s ideas around play are not aligned with specific activities but with the sense of agency in a secure physical and social context when carrying out an activity experienced as an end in itself. Implications for playful pedagogies highlight the need to open up play with opportunities for children’s choice and initiative, confident exploration and immersion in the activities in which they participate.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Baccalá, N., & Montoro, V. (2008). Introducción al análisis multivariado. UNComahue, 51, 138. [Google Scholar]
  • Barnett, L. A. (2013). Children’s perceptions of their play: Scale development and validation. Child Development Research, e284741. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/284741...
  • Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Chandler Pub....
  • Bécue-Bertaut, M. (1991). Análisis de datos textuales. Métodos estadísticos y algoritmos. CISIA. [Google Scholar]
  • Bécue-Bertaut, M., Lebart, L., & Rajadell, N. (1995). El análisis estadístico de datos textuales. La lectura según los escolares de enseñanza...
  • Benzécri, J. P. (1976). L’Analyse des données. Tomo II: L’analyse des correspondances. Dunod. [Google Scholar]
  • Breathnach, H., Danby, S., & O’Gorman, L. (2018). ‘We’re doing a wedding’: Producing peer cultures in pretend play. International Journal...
  • Chapparo, C. J., & Hooper, E. (2002). When is it work? Perceptions of six-year-old children. Work, 19(3), 291–302. [PubMed], [Google Scholar]
  • Chick, G. (2015). Anthropology and the study of play. In J. E. Johnson, S. G. Eberle, T. S. Henricks, & D. Kuschner (Eds.), The handbook...
  • Cremin, T. (2020). Apprenticing authors: Nurturing children’s identities as writers. In H. Chen, D. Myhill, & H. Lewis (Eds.), Developing...
  • De la Cruz, M., Scheuer, N., Echenique, M., & Pozo, J. I. (2011). Niños de educación inicial y primaria hablan sobre la enseñanza de la...
  • Echenique, M., Márquez, S., & Scheuer, N. (2014). What helps most in learning how to draw a human figure? A study of children’s epistemological,...
  • Farver, J. A. M., Kwak Kim, Y., & Lee-Shin, Y. (2000). Within cultural differences: Examining individual differences in Korean American...
  • Gaskins, S. (2014). Children’s play as cultural activity. In L. Brooker, M. Blaise, & S. Edwards (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of play and...
  • Gaskins, S., Haight, W., & Lancy, D. F. (2007). The cultural construction of play. In Göncü, Artin & Gaskins, Suzanne (Eds.) Play...
  • Göncü, A., Mistry, J., & Mosier, C. (2000). Cultural variations in the play of toddlers. International Journal of Behavioral Development,...
  • Goodhall, N., & Atkinson, C. (2017). How do children distinguish between ‘play’ and ‘work’? Conclusions from the literature. Early Child...
  • Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the ways of words. Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Haight, W. L., Wang, X.-L., Fung, H. H.-T., Williams, K., & Mintz, J. (1999). Universal, developmental, and variable aspects of young...
  • Harris, P. (2000). The work of the imagination. Blackwell. [Google Scholar]
  • Hilppö, J., Lipponen, L., Kumpulainen, K., & Virlander, M. (2015). Sense of agency and everyday life: Children’s perspective. Learning,...
  • Howard, J. (2002). Eliciting young children’s perceptions of play, work and learning using the activity apperception story procedure. Early...
  • Howard, J., Jenvey, V., & Hill, C. (2006). Children’s categorisation of play and learning based on social context. Early Child Development...
  • Howard, J., & McInnes, K. (2013). The impact of children’s perception of an activity as play rather than not play on emotional well-being....
  • Howe, S. (2016). What play means to us: Exploring children’s perspectives on play in an English year 1 classroom. European Early Childhood...
  • Huizinga, J. (19381970). Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Maurice Temple Smith. [Google Scholar]
  • Kahyaoǧlu, H. A. (2014). Play as seen by children and pre-school teachers in Turkey. Social and Behavioural Sciences, 152, 149–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.172...
  • Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity. A developmental perspective on cognitive science. The MIT Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Karrby, G. (1990). Children’s conceptions of their own play. Early Child Development and Care, 58(1), 81–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/0300443900580110...
  • King, N. R. (1979). Play: The kindergartners’ perspective. The Elementary School Journal, 80(2), 80–87. https://doi.org/10.1086/461176 [Crossref],...
  • Lebart, L., & Salem, A. (1994). Statistique textuelles. Dunod. [Google Scholar]
  • Lebart, L. (1982). L’analyse statistique des réponses libres dans les enquêtes socio-économiques. Consommation, 1, 39–62. [Google Scholar]
  • Lebart, L., & Salem, A. (1998). Analyse statistique des dones textuelles. Dunod. [Google Scholar]
  • Lebart, L., Salem, A., & Bécue-Bertaut, M. (2000). Análisis estadístico de textos. Milenio. [Google Scholar]
  • Lehrer, J. S., & Petrakos, H. (2011). Parent and child perceptions of grade one children’s out of school play. Exceptionality Education...
  • Marín, C., Pérez-Echeverría, M.-P., & Scheuer, N. (2013). Conceptions of woodwind students regarding the process of learning a piece of...
  • Moreno, I. (2005). El juego y los juegos. Lumen hvmanitas. [Google Scholar]
  • Morín, E. (2002). Los siete saberes necesarios para la educación del futuro. Nueva Visión. [Google Scholar]
  • Piaget, J. (1952). La formation du symbole chez l’enfant [play, dreams and imitation in childhood]. W. W. Norton & Co. [Google Scholar]
  • Pramling, I. (1983). The child’s conception of learning (Göteborgn Studies in Educational Sciences 46). Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis....
  • Pramling Samuelsson, I., & Carlsson, M. A. (2008). The playing learning child: Towards a pedagogy of early childhood. Scandinavian Journal...
  • Robson, S. (1993). ‘Best of all I like choosing time’: Talking with children about play and work. Early Child Development and Care, 92(1),...
  • Roopnarine, J. L. (2011). Cultural variations in beliefs about play, parent-child play, and children’s play: Meaning for childhood development....
  • Roopnarine, J. L., Yildirim, E. D., & Davidson, K. L. (2018). Mother–child and father–child play in different cultural contexts. In P....
  • Rothlein, L., & Brett, A. (1987). Children’s, teachers’, and parents’ perceptions of play. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2(1), 45–53....
  • Ryall, E., Russell, W., & MacLean, M. (2013). The philosophy of play. Routledge. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Scheuer, N., de La Cruz, M., Pedrazzini, A., Iparraguirre, M. S., & Pozo, J. I. (2012). Children’s gendered ways of talking about learning...
  • Scheuer, N., de La Cruz, M., & Pozo, J. I. (2002). Children talk about learning to draw. European Journal of Psychology of Education,...
  • Scheuer, N., de La Cruz, M., Pozo, J. I., Echenique, M., & Márquez, S. (2009). Kindergarten and primary school children’s implicit theories...
  • Scheuer, N., de La Cruz, M., Pozo, J. I., Huarte, M. F., & Sola, G. (2006). The mind is not a black box: Children’s ideas about the writing...
  • Scheuer, N., Pozo, J. I., de La Cruz, M., & Baccalá, N. (2001). ¿Cómo aprendí a dibujar? Las teorías de los niños sobre el aprendizaje....
  • Ventura, A. C., Scheuer, N., & Pozo, J. I. (2020). Elementary school children’s conceptions of teaching and learning to write as intentional...
  • Vygotsky, L. S. 19672004. Voobrazhenie i tvorchestvo v detskom vozraste [Imagination and creativity in childhood]. Journal of Russian and...
  • Whitebread, D., Basilio, M., Kuvalja, M., & Verma, M. (2012). The importance of play: A report on the value of children’s play with a...
  • Wing, L. A. (1995). Play is not the work of the child: Young children’s perceptions for work and play. Early Childhood Research Quarterly,...
  • Winnicott, D. W. (19712005). Playing and reality. Routledge Classics. [Google Scholar]
  • Wong, S. M., Wang, Z., & Cheng, P. W. D. (2011). A play-based curriculum: Hong Kong children’s perception of play and non-play. International...
  • Wu, S.-C. (2015). What can Chinese and German children tell us about their learning and play in kindergarten? Journal of Research in Childhood...
  • Zosh, J. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Hopkins, E. J., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Neale, D., Solis, L., & Whitebread, D. (2018). Accessing the inaccessible:...