Assessing children’s play: reality or illusion? The case of early years foundation stage in England

ABSTRACT

Since the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England in 2008, assessment of children has taken a formal and standardized measurable approach. Such an approach goes against most findings of play-oriented research. Thus, the project reported here employed participatory action research with practitioners in order to identify elements of child-initiated play, strategies which allowed practitioners’ participation as partners and ways (if any) of assessing such an approach. It was found that practitioners should be concerned to explore meaningful possibilities of assessing children’s play as it is impossible to separate or to distinguish functions that appear in children’s initiated play for assessment purposes. Instead, practitioners’ concern should be on the creation of environments that encourage play and offer opportunities, experiences, expectations and motivation which empower children to make choices and decisions based on polyphony, interactions, commitment, confidence and expertise.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• assessment
• play
• participatory action research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ioanna Palaiologou is an Academic Associate at the Institute of Education, University College London and works as an independent researcher and psychologist specialising in cognitive development of young children and in early childhood education.