‘If I am not doing my own playing then I am not able to truly share the gift of play with children’: using poststructuralism and care ethics to examine future early childhood educators' relationships with play in adulthood

Abstract

The current sociopolitical context of schooling is positioning play as incongruous with children's academic learning. As a result, teacher educators must increasingly guide future early childhood professionals to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to become effective play advocates. This includes articulating the value of play across the lifespan to a variety of stakeholders. Yet, ironically, many adult women entering the early childhood profession report that a wide range of barriers prevent them from including play in their adult lives. Two case studies highlight how early childhood graduate students use their experiences with play across the lifespan as a foundation for becoming play advocates. Nel Noddings's care ethics and feminist poststructural critiques of the construct of care inform the analysis and discussion of the findings. Implications suggest the importance of guiding early childhood professionals to acknowledge self-care as a component of care and play as an essential expression of self-care.

Keywords:

• women's play
• advocacy
• early childhood
• teacher education
• care ethics
• poststructuralism

Notes on contributors

Julie Nicholson, PhD, is an associate professor of practice in the School of Education at Mills College. A former preschool and elementary school teacher, she has a master's degree in Developmental Psychology from San Francisco State University and a master's and PhD in Early Childhood Education from the University of Michigan. She works on several local and state level policy committees addressing child care and early care and education. Her research examines play across the lifespan, leadership development for early childhood professionals, the use of social networking tools in higher education coursework and, most recently, early childhood system building efforts (prenatal eight years) within a large urban school district.

Priya Mariana Shimpi, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Mills College. As a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow, she received a PhD in Developmental Psychology in 2006 from the University of Chicago. In 2009, she completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she examined the role of cultural and environmental experiences in children's attention and learning. Her current research focuses on the role of experience in children's social and cognitive development, including the role of play in children's learning. At Mills since 2009, she teaches in the Early Childhood Education MA and undergraduate Child Development programmes.

Colette Rabin, Ed.D, coordinates and teaches in the Critical Research Academy in elementary education at San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Her area of interest and the focus of her research are in care ethics and education. Colette has several publications examining care ethics within a K-12 theatre arts programme, storytelling curricula across elementary classrooms and within a teacher education programme in a private college preparing educators to work in urban school settings.