Children's Descriptions of Playing and Learning

• In Event: Preschoolers’ Memory for and Understanding of Learning

Abstract

Previous research has examined how early elementary-aged children develop metacognitive capacities to reflect on their own learning and mental states. Other lines of work have focused on children’s ideas about play at this age, and in particular, what makes playing and learning different from one another. Children often describe play as active, fun, freely-chosen, and social, whereas learning is serious, mandatory, and overseen by adults. But these studies often contrast learning and play, implicitly presenting them as opposites. They do not examine whether children think that learning can take place through play, a topic of considerable importance for early childhood education. In the current study, we asked children to define both playing and learning, and give examples of learning and playing. Our goal was to examine how children conceptualized these activities without presenting them as opposites.

In a structured interview, 81 children between ages 4 and 7 were first asked to define “playing” and “learning.” Their definitions were coded to determine whether they defined each concept as an active process. Older children were more likely to define both playing and learning as processes (Play:  = .24, p = .03; Learning:  = .40, p < .001). Overall, children were more likely to define learning in terms of a process (69% of the time) than playing as a process (43%).

Later in the interview, children were asked to give examples of times in their own lives when they were playing and learning at the same time. The number of examples children gave was correlated with the presence of process definitions of both learning and playing, and these effects held when controlling for children’s age (learning: .253; playing: .208).

Finally, half of the children were asked to give examples of learning from their own lives that involved qualities of playing (being fun, self-selected, and without adults present), and examples of playing that involved qualities of learning (being serious, mandatory, and with adults present). The other half were asked to think of examples of playing and learning with congruent properties. Comparing the two conditions, children were more likely to generate examples of learning than playing that were serious, 2 (N=80) = 5.96, p = 0.02, and where adults were present, 2 (N=80) = 6.11, p = .01, and examples of playing than learning that were fun, 2 (N=80) = 8.96, p < .01. But generally, children were more likely to say that learning could have qualities of play than vice versa. For example, children were more likely to generate an example of learning that was fun (72.09%) or self-selected (76.74%), than to generate example of play that was serious (55.81%) or mandatory (55.81%).

This study shows that children develop an understanding of learning and playing as active processes that can share characteristics, but that children’s understanding of learning may be earlier to develop and more flexible in incorporating qualities of play than vice versa.

Authors

• Susan M. Letourneau, New York Hall of Science

• David Sobel, Brown University