Pedagogical Play: Supporting Playful Dispositions in Teacher Education

• In Event: Playful Possibilities of the #playrevolution: Narrating Necessary Stories of Literacies in Play

Abstract

Objectives
A renewed emphasis on play in elementary classrooms requires a focus on how teacher educators in literacy prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to be both playful and support play in their own enactments of teaching. This paper draws upon communities of practice and rhizomatic analysis to consider the ways undergraduate coursework in elementary literacy education at a public university is mindful of play, how play amongst adult learners shifts and can morph into play with elementary learners, and how an ethos of playfulness may manifest in teaching enactments with PSTs and elementary students.

Theoretical Framework←→Methods
Teacher education is often theorized as a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), as novices work with teacher educators through coursework and clinical experience to become competent in the practices of teaching. There are no linear pathways as novices move from the margins of a community of practice toward center; rather, progress comes in fits and starts. Drawing upon rhizomatic analysis (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983; 1987), this project seeks to understand ways play manifests in a school-based literacy education course through interactions between teacher educator and PSTs and between PSTs and elementary students.

This paper draws from a three-year action research study of teacher educators supporting PSTs in school-based literacy education coursework at a Midwestern urban university. Data analyzed includes video from class sessions, instructional rehearsals by PSTs, and literacy instruction enactments by PSTs with elementary students. Interviews with PSTs occurred once at mid-semester and once at semester’s close. Videos and interviews were transcribed and coded using Transana to identify fissures and connections across a longitudinally wide data set.

Findings
Play, despite being a value of and valued by the teacher educator in this coursework, took time to take hold as a pedagogical approach. Rehearsals were salient instances of play as PSTs sought to make sense of instructional routines they would enact with students. Being playful within rehearsals, according to PSTs, made them feel less threatening and impacted their improvisation based upon potential student responses to teaching. Instances of verbal play within the rehearsals did appear in PSTs’ enactments with students, though often not immediately after the rehearsals themselves. Recreating play moments from rehearsals occurred weeks or months after(?) the initial rehearsal and often correlated with a PST developing a sense of play within their enactments.

Significance
Preparing teachers to be playful and to encourage play in the classroom life of their students requires teacher educator programs to be explicit about its value, much like teacher education programs assert how they value teaching for equity. However, the question of play’s value in learning how to teach literacy remains unanswered, though is hinted at within this study. If we, as researchers, are asking play to be considered part of the already complex process of supporting PSTs in learning how to teach, we must be clear about the benefits not only for elementary, middle, and secondary students, but also the PST and Teacher Educators themselves.

Author

• Nicholas Edward Husbye