More than ‘just play’: picking out three dimensions of a balanced early years pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the incompletely resolved tension between play-based and direct teaching approaches to early years pedagogy and practitioners’ resultant difficulties in understanding and delivering high-quality practice. Previously, we argued for the importance of infusing playfulness into all classroom interactions and activities in order to assist practitioners in forming a useful mental model of early years practice. Here, we extend the playful image to present a new, coherent framework for early years practice, based on three dimensions: the degree of playfulness in the activity taking place, the locus of control of the action during the activity and the nature of the learning taking place. We lay out the framework and describe its relation to free play as a prelude to discussing how it applies to classroom play and other types of early years classroom activity, illustrated by cameos. It is argued that the full range of each dimension should be well sampled through choosing a variety of activities and that such an approach will preserve high levels of child engagement. The framework provides a useful tool to prompt reflective practice and professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Play-based curricula
• playfulness
• early years pedagogy
• early years professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Liz Sproule http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3019-6062

Glenda Walsh http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7196-8658

Carol McGuinness http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0059-9856

Additional information

Funding

Much of the data for this paper was gathered as part of The Early Years Enriched Curriculum Evaluation Project, funded by the Northern Ireland Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment. There was no number attached to the grant.