Play as a Basis for Scholarship in Curriculum Studies

• In Event: 29.022 - The Making of an Educational Researcher: Life Experiences From Different National and Disciplinary Backgrounds

Abstract

Dr. Schubert will sketch a perspective that play in childhood and youth can be seen as a basis for becoming an educational researcher and theorist. Particularly, the focus is on autobiographical reflections about instances of play that have contributed to differing dimensions of my 40 years of work in the area of Curriculum Studies. A central idea to be conveyed is that play is the serious work of children and youths. The theoretical framework is built upon roots in philosophy of John Dewey philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead, Rabindranath Tagore, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, and Joseph Schwab’s practical inquiry, narrative theory that builds upon Schwab’s perspective, and autobiographical and story-oriented literary modes of theory. The methodology is similarly an eclectic variation of inquiry derived from philosophical analysis, autobiographical reflection, the speculative essay, and narrative inquiry. The paper (as are the other papers for this session) is derived from the chapter, Play: A Basis for Becoming an Educational Researcher, published in the above mentioned book. Data sources in this eclectic brand of inquiry are the stories or vignettes themselves. The significance is not scientific in the sense of broad nomothetic generalizations but in the idiographic (derived from work by Wilhelm Windelband, Gordon Allport, and others, including Dewey and Schwab in certain variations) notion of developing a heuristic source of precedent which can be used by others to compare with their own autobiographical stories. In that sense the significance of this work resides more within the humanities than in the sciences as applied to education generally and to curriculum studies specifically. Thus, the presentation will not be a power-point overview, but instead it will entail the telling of illustrative stories and discussing their long-term impact on my work on the history of curriculum books, intellectual genealogies of curriculum scholars, curriculum history as precedent for contemporary curriculum problems, collection of and reflection on teacher lore, collection of and reflection on literary and artistic sources of insight for curricularists, pursuit of the central curriculum question about what is worthwhile, uses of theatrical portrayals of differing orientations to variations on that curriculum question, and a sense of justice that guides the elusive pursuit of what is worthwhile. The presentation will conclude with by urging others to consider the roots of their own experiences in their experiences of play as a serious basis for educational research and scholarship.

Author

• William (Bill) H. Schubert, University of Illinois at Chicago