The Intersection of Literacy and Play in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review of the Literature

• In Event: Play in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Considering the necessary ingredients of early childhood education, play and literacy are often the focus of research, instruction and experiences, and policies that shape early care classrooms. It is critical to understand the ways in which play and literacy interact and are conceptualized in the literature. In this paper, we present an early childhood play-literacy framework that privileges both play enactments and literacy enactments within varying contexts as well as the shifting nature and co-occurrences of these relationships. This framework emerged as a part of a systematic review of the early childhood literature base related to play and literacy intersections. Reconceptualizing the play-literacy relationship could impact teacher practice and future directions of early childhood research and policy.

Authors

• Rebecca Rohloff, Georgia State University

• Margaret Quinn, University of Tennessee - Knoxville