Playing the system: Advocacy for play equity in early childhood education

ABSTRACT

This article explores advocacy practices that support teachers’ integration of play and playful learning in their classrooms. Activism is a well-documented transformative aspect of the teaching profession (e.g.), which is recently experiencing heightened political pressures. At the same time, COVID-19 exacerbated existing inequities in early childhood education. For example, in underserved communities, the “learning loss” discourse increased accountability for narrowly defined academic outcomes as well as the expectations of student obedience and compliance. This article forefronts access to play and children’s agency as an equity issue and offers early childhood educators strategies for advocacy and activism to infuse play and playful learning in their educational contexts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional Resources

1. DeLuca, C., Pyle, A., Valiquette, A., & LaPointe-McEwan, D. (2020). New directions for kindergarten education: Embedding assessment in play-based learning. The Elementary School Journal, 120(3) , 455-479.

This article reports the results of an empirical study on the integration of assessment with play-based learning from 20 kindergarten classrooms. Results of this study demonstrate the various ways assessment and play can operate within kindergarten education to support student learning. Teachers can use this empirical data as leverage for play equity in their communication with school leadership.

2. Ottesen, K. K. (2019). Activist: Portraits of courage. Chronicle Books.

This book is based on stories of 40 uniquely different activists (e.g., Billie Jean King, Bernie Sanders, Angela Davis, Edward Snowden) who share their journey from belief to the first action and what kept them going after. This inspirational complication of activists’ voices which reshaped American society can inspire teachers who aim to integrate play in settings of heightened emphasis on learner compliance.

3. Project Zero and Reggio Children (2001). Making learning visible: Children as individual and group learners. Harvard Graduate School of Education.

This vivid well-illustrated book showcases the culmination of a research collaboration between researchers from Project Zero and teachers and pedagogues from Reggio Emilia. This collaboration highlights how documentation fosters individual and group learning, creating a relationship between the 2. Teachers can learn helpful strategies to enable them to capture and reflect on the learning process of children as well as those of adults.

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms.