"Monsters Are Coming!" The Social Work of Playing Repetitive Games in Kindergarten

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

Abstract

Objectives
There are recent trends to push down more traditional, teacher directed pedagogies into early childhood contexts in countries like Australia. Often linked to improved outcomes for young children, such systemic moves ignore the large body of research that attests the social, emotional and academic benefits of children having time to play and to experience educational programs founded in play-based pedagogies.  In this poster presentation, I focus on the social competence of young children attending kindergarten, as I analyse their use of child-led play and routines to organise the social order of their outside play area. The purpose of the poster is to demonstrate the opportunities for learning made available when children are allowed to play.

Framing
Children can be understood as competent players in their own worlds and indeed in the worlds of others. So a researcher can think-with as much as about young children (Despret, in Haraway, 2015). In this paper I am particularly focused on the spatial and material, as I conceptualise play as always undertaken in places that are made meaningful through relationships with and between people, non-human beings, materials, spaces and texts.

Methods
The data presented was collected as part of a large multi-site, qualitative study across eight early childhood education contexts in Australia and Finland. Here I focus on one group of 22 children, aged between three and four who are attending one suburban community kindergarten in Australia. The study has involved an approach to observe, or when invited visit with children and their play, and to focus with intuitive interest on children as they are now, and not just as they may become (Holloway & Vallentine, 2000). Sustained, regular field work has been undertaken at the site, over a period of more than 12 months. The inquiry focuses on centring the children’s concerns, interests and movement.

Data includes still and moving images, field notes and jottings made during field visits, artefacts of texts produced by children, and records of conversations had. The focus is on a child-led game, which the children repeatedly play over many months – Monsters are Coming! The poster will track  what is achieved by the children as they play with the game.

Findings
The analysis of social action engaged by the children, uncovers concepts of repetition, and what is achieved by returning to spaces and interactions over time. The results demonstrate how children’s bodies, their talk, and their movement frames and is framed by the outside spaces where this game is undertaken. Grosz’s (2008) notion of territory and its production allows for findings of what the children allow to be included, what is excluded and how the patterns of intra action enable this outside play space to become a place where monsters live.

Significance
With increasing calls for highly defined pedagogical approaches in early childhood contexts, investigations that foreground the competence of young children and their capacity to interact within their worlds are significant.

Author

• Annette Woods, Queensland University of Technology