Cultural Affordances as Guiding Preschool Play: Designing Preschools to Support Multilingual Play Encounters

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: Supporting Young Children's Learning and Development

Abstract

This paper suggests how preschool teachers can provide children with affordances for play on cultural themes. The paper synthesizes data from two ethnographic projects at preschools in low-SES areas with a majority of bi- or multilingual children. Two forms of guided play were found, direct and indirect. The direct form of guided play is when teachers arrange play activity or enter into children’s play sessions to provide scaffolding interaction. The indirect form of guided play is when teachers design the preschool environment to enable play on common cultural themes. It is suggested how both cultural and environmental affordances are functional in guided play and can usefully be taken into account by both researchers and practitioners.

Author

• Robin Samuelsson, Sodertorn University