Children's Play and Self-Education

ABSTRACT

Children's instructional play and adult's self-education are both activities which result in learning without conventional teaching by someone other than the learner. Given that play is commonly considered as a form of “curriculum” in early childhood education programs, the concept is examined to determine whether it may be legitimately considered to be a child's counterpart to self-education in adults.

An analysis of the two concepts suggests that, in spite of the fact that they have much in common, the critical difference between the two may be that the playing child does not control the learning enterprise to the same extent as the self-instructing adult, since the adult has relatively more control over the environment with which s/he interacts. In spite of this, when learning does occur from either kind of activity, both the self-instructed adult and the playing child usually perceive that they have learned “on their own.” From this, it is argued that play may serve as an important kind of simulation for later, self-directed learning.