In this issue, we are honored to include a lead off essay by Professor David Whitebread of the Play in Education, Development, and Learning (PEDAL) research centre at the University of Cambridge. He documents how ‘play is back in fashion,’ both academically and clinically, although for readers of this journal, play never went out of style. The interesting question he raises, why the resurgence of interest in play, now? And we add, how might we expand upon ‘the new renaissance’ of play? We look forward to future conversations with the PEDAL centre and welcome Professor Whitebread’s contributions to our journal.
As so much of our description of play reflects social play, this issue’s Memories and Reflections of Play brings Jing Tang’s moving description of growing up under China’s one-child policy. Do consider writing your own ‘Memories and Reflections of Play.’ Descriptions of play from understudied communities are particularly welcome.
Dr. Leon R. de Bruin offers ‘Musical play, creativity and metacognitive processes in developing improvisational expertise: Expert improvising voices.’ Using a deceptively simple framework, the author documents the playful scaffolding of Australian music teachers as they gently co-construct playful exaggeration. The connections between ‘playing music’ and ‘musical play’ merit our attention, not only for the benefit of music education, but also for understanding the co-creation of vibrant learning through playful processes. Dr. Lisha O'Sullivan and Dr. Emer Ring present their study of Irish preschoolers and the transitional evaluation of school readiness in ‘Play as learning: Implications for educators and parents from findings of a national evaluation of school readiness in Ireland.’ They call for an inclusion of playful readiness for school, rather than a ‘formal pedagogical approach.’ Both articles put forth the idea of playful learning as central, rather than peripheral to education.
Drs. Helen Breathnatch, Susan Danby, and Lyndal O’Gorman have invited us to a wedding- a pretend wedding that is, in Queensland, Australia. ‘“We’re doing a wedding”: Producing peer cultures in pretend play.’ They document not only the peer cultural references to the larger adult culture of what constitutes a wedding there, but of the interesting interjections made by the teacher, raising questions about the layering of cultural contexts as we document play’s unfolding.
Dr. Laura Camas Garrido of the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, argues forcefully, ‘In education, we have disinherited the cultural meaning of play, relating it to a profoundly psychological and normative meaning, which implies the loss of free will and freedom in the right to play in early childhood.’ In her article, ‘Children’s play and democratic culture,’ culture’s frames are the children’s own, one that schools misunderstand. How might we expand upon our understanding of children’s cultures, within the overlapping worlds of adult cultures – plural?
Your co-editor humbly offers ‘Play signals, play moves: A gorilla critique of play theory’ based on my multi-year study of two play-fighting adolescent gorillas at the Philadelphia Zoo. Head Gorilla Keeper Kristen Farley-Rambo and I examined videotaped play dates of these two bachelors, and raise questions about how animal play challenges many assumptions we hold dear in the research world of play.
Professor Elizabeth Tucker has graciously agreed to take on our column ‘Books Worth (Re) Reading,’ a project started by our previous co-editor Professor June Factor. This issue, Tucker examines Alice Morse Earle’s Child Life in Colonial Days and Jeanne R. Chesanow’s Honeysuckle Sipping: The Plant Lore of Childhood. In this day where children have less and less time out of doors, the image of plants as toys invites us to reexamine and document the changing material culture of childhood, its space, its time, and the frames we craft.