Playing with a goal in mind: exploring the enactment of guided play in Canadian and South African early years classrooms

ABSTRACT

Guided play, a balanced approach to involvement in play that includes child- and adult-direction in learning activities, holds great promise for children’s effective and engaged learning in education. Recent studies in laboratory settings show benefits for academic and socio-emotional outcomes, while retaining a focus on child-centred exploration. Often, these studies feature an experimenter with one child or a small group. In contrast, educators in early years classrooms often need to support 20 children or more. To realise guided play’s promise, we need to explore the enactment of guided play in classroom settings, and how educators can engage young children in responsive ways to promote opportunities to learn in play contexts. We offer a cross-cultural comparison of guided play that occurred in 12 Canadian and 8 South African early years classrooms. Using a qualitative, thematic approach, we analysed video-recorded observations for: 1) the frequency of educator involvement in play contexts, 2) the role of the educator in those contexts, and 3) learning opportunities that emerged due to this involvement. Based on our analysis, we consider how educators can achieve guided play in classroom settings. Implications are discussed for practice, including barriers and enablers of guided play in culturally diverse settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Guided play
• playful learning
• early years
• pedagogy
• kindergarten

In early education, researchers have long raised concerns about the learning opportunities young children have – how often educators engage children to support their learning and growth, and with what quality (Pianta, Downer, and Hamre 2016). When educators teach in responsive ways, providing emotional and instructional support in well-organised classrooms, children have more opportunities to learn and improve on both developmental and early academic outcomes (Markowitz, Bassok, and Hamre 2018). In practice, however, studies find that young children typically have few interactions where educators build on and challenge their thinking, give feedback, or connect learning activities with children’s lives (e.g. Hamre et al. 2014; Fuligni et al. 2012). A recent study found that the type of activity also makes a difference; for instance, children’s freely chosen activities compared to those directed by adults (Goble and Pianta 2017). In this study, researchers mapped adult-child interactions taking place across free choice and teacher-directed activities, and measured children’s development of language, early literacy, and self-control. Findings revealed that when children engaged with a responsive educator in free choice activities, they had better language and self-control; this combination of benefits did not occur for children spending more time in either teacher-directed or free choice activities without adults present (Goble and Pianta 2017). Importantly, these findings resonate with emerging evidence for the promising practice of guided or adult-facilitated play.

The promise of guided play: effective and engaged learning

Guided play research departs from more traditional debates on whether learning activities should be child- or adult-directed; instead, a continuum of adult involvement in children’s activities is proposed from more direct instruction to a balanced approach in guided play and onto free play with minimal adult direction (Zosh et al. 2018; Pyle and Danniels 2017). In the classroom, guided play can take the form of co-creating play-based learning centres (Pyle and Danniels 2017), adults designing play contexts and children directing play within those contexts (Jensen et al. 2019), or helping children conceptualize and articulate their plans prior to a play scenario (Yang 2000). Several positive outcomes are associated with children’s self-directed play, including socio-emotional skills and self-regulation (Yogman et al. 2018; Whitebread 2017). When playful activities are combined with a responsive adult role, children’s learning of specific academic skills improves, with specific reference to better definitional learning of regular and irregular shapes (Fisher et al. 2013); promoted early math and spatial abilities and increased math-talk (Ramani et al. 2014); improved receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge (Hassinger‐Das et al. 2016). To make causal inferences, many guided play studies take place under controlled laboratory conditions, and often in the United States. This circumstance calls for further efforts to translate findings into real-life classroom settings (Weisberg et al. 2016) and across cultures. One illustrative study demonstrated that guided play was most effective in supporting four- and five-year-old children in grasping key features of geometric shapes compared to direct instruction or free play with the same materials (Fisher et al. 2013). Each condition lasted 15 minutes with one child and adult working together. Children participating in the guided play condition, who played detectives to discover what made the shapes ‘real,’ showed greater learning than those participating in the direct instruction or free play conditions. This activity is not complicated, but it does present a contrast to engaging 20 or more children in a classroom; a challenge that educators often find difficult to overcome (Pyle, Poliszczuk, and Danniels 2018).

Taking guided play into classroom settings

From research on effective classroom practices, we find that a responsive adult role and children’s engagement are key to learning (Hamre 2014; Reeve 2012). Becoming engaged translates into children being focused, putting in effort, and persisting – they feel more interested, curious, and enthusiastic, and think in more elaborative ways, connect ideas, and seek a deep, conceptual understanding (Halliday, Calkins, and Leerkes 2018). When children perceive a learning activity as play, this changes how they act, think, and feel in similar ways. One study framed a task, a near-impossible fishing activity, as either role-play or as a task for which children could earn a sticker; results showed that children in the first playful condition persisted for longer, trying to master the challenge (Sawyer 2017). In another study, four- and five-year-olds achieved more complex structures when playing and building together in pairs than when the same materials were used in an adult-directed task (Ramani 2012). That said, simply calling an activity ‘play’ is not enough to make it playful and engaging for children. Research shows that children read subtle cues from adults, and in order to perceive a learning activity as playful, children need an element of choice and sharing of control (McInnes et al. 2013). As a learning context, guided play combines support for children’s choice and autonomy with an intentional and responsive adult role. In this paper, we explore how early educators enact guided play in their teaching contexts, comparing two diverse cultures: South Africa and Canada. We explore the roles educators assume, focusing on instances where they built on and extended children’s efforts, without disrupting the play.

Methods

The analysis presented in this paper was conducted using data from studies in Canada and South Africa, to determine the current implementation of guided play cross-nationally. In these two countries, early years programmes focus on the productive implementation of play-based practices to support both developmental and academic learning goals (Canada, Pyle and Danniels 2017; South Africa, Excell 2016). Ethical approval in the Canadian context was provided by the University of Toronto and relevant school boards. In South Africa, ethical approval was obtained from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Participants

Canada

Twenty-four educators from 12 kindergarten classrooms in Ontario participated in the Canadian portion of this study. These educators were recruited as part of a larger study investigating the connection between play-based learning and literacy development. Educators included certified teachers (mean = 12.5 years’ experience) and Registered Early Childhood Educators (mean = 10 years’ experience). Kindergarten classes in Ontario are taught by an educator team consisting of one teacher and one early childhood educator, and each classroom had between 25 and 30 four- and five-year-old children (mean = 26.5 children). Use of a play-based pedagogical approach is mandated in these classrooms to encourage child-centred, developmentally appropriate programming (Ontario Ministry of Education 2016).

South Africa

Eight educators from eight reception grade classrooms (Grade R) in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal participated in the South African portion of this study. These educators were recruited as part of a larger study exploring changes in educators’ perceptions and enactment of play-based practices. This study was carried out in partnership with researchers from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in the context of a professional development programme for early educators. Participants were employed as early childhood practitioners (mean = 11.6 years’ experience) and each classroom had between 16 and 48 five- and six-year-old children (mean = 27.8 children). Play-based practices are mandated in Grade R; the reception year was introduced to support school readiness among children still affected by inequities stemming from Apartheid and its legacy; training and qualifications vary greatly among Grade R educators (Richter and Samuels 2018). In this study, six out of eight participants held a vocational degree at National Qualification Framework level 4.

Data collection

Canada

Researchers collected educator and parent consent to conduct approximately 10 hours of observation in each classroom. The focus of these observations was on the implementation of play-based learning, presence of literacy learning within play, and child and educator interactions within the play environment. Observations were recorded through videos, photos, and field notes. Individual video recordings lasted between 10 seconds and 30 minutes.

South Africa

Researchers collected educator consent to observe and record teaching practices. The focus of these video recordings was on educator roles in play and their style of engaging with children. The educator was asked to select two activities for recording: (1) children playing and (2) the educator teaching new content. Only videos of play activities are included in this analysis. Recordings of play activities started approximately two minutes after the educator announced the activity, lasting for 15 minutes or until the play activity ended. Individual video recordings lasted between 7:40 minutes and 15:06 minutes.

Data analysis

Video recordings were initially classified as being play or not play activities using Pyle and Danniels (2017) play-based learning continuum, which classifies play-based learning on a continuum ranging from child-directed activities (i.e. free play) to educator-directed activities (i.e. learning through games). The next step in the analyses was to determine which of the play activities were guided play activities. In the context of the continuum, guided play can be described as any play activity that involves some level of educator involvement, since, in guided play activities, educators enter children’s play to build on their interests and extend their learning (Jensen et al. 2019); this classification encompasses all play activities on the continuum except free play. For the purpose of the analyses, the following criteria were used to determine guided play in the videos: a) adult involvement in the play scenario, b) child autonomy in play activity, and c) adult extended play activity beyond that which would have occurred in the absence of the adult (see Weisberg, Hirsh‐Pasek, and Golinkoff 2013; Weisberg et al. 2016; Pyle and Danniels 2017). After meeting these criteria, 44 of 602 (7%) Canadian videos (totalling 0.67 hours, 40:40 minutes) and 14 of 21 (67%) South African videos (totalling 3.27 hours, 196:18 minutes), were included in the analyses. Within the 44 Canadian videos, specific instances of guided play were exhibited 49 times. For the 14 South African play activity videos, 62 specific instances of guided play were observed.

Videos were analysed thematically using a method of constant comparison (Patton 2015). First, videos from South Africa and Canada were coded separately using descriptive codes derived through emergent coding (e.g. extending, open-ended questions, proximity to play, supporting children’s play, social development). Descriptive codes were then clustered into categories, and subsequently grouped thematically based on recurring patterns between codes and categories. At this point, researchers compared emerging themes for the two countries. While the distribution of codes differed between countries across themes, thematic analysis resulted in three consistent themes occurring for both South African and Canadian videos: initiating play, managing play and extending play.

Results

Observational data revealed that educators often engaged in a variety of strategies to facilitate children’s play, including managing and guiding play contexts. In managing play, educators helped to sustain children’s existing play. In guided play, educators both initiated and extended play activities. Observations revealed both productive and less productive examples of initiating and extending play. Examples of less productive practices illustrate potential challenges for educators when implementing guided play in their classrooms.

Managing play

Although managing play is not a form of guided play (i.e. enriching the play context), it was a common form of play facilitation in both Canadian and South African contexts. In both educator-initiated involvement, and responses to requests from children themselves, educators in Canadian and South African classrooms used a variety of effective strategies to manage children’s play. For instance, in Canadian Class 4 (C4), the educator managed a conflict between two children to support positive, social play:

Child 1:

Can I play?

Child 2:

[shakes head]

Child 1:

[walks towards educator] Ms., she said no!

Educator:

Molly, may I see you for a moment please? So, Lucas mentioned twice now that he asked to play, and you said no. May I ask why you said no?

Child 1:

(inaudible)

Educator:

Is there maybe something else that Lucas can help with?

Child 1:

[nods]

Educator:

So, could you maybe ask him if he would like to help?

Child 1:

[nods]

Following this interaction, both children proceeded to play together at the building centre. The child sought support from the educator to help manage a conflict during the play period; the educator responded by involving both children in a problem-solving strategy. From this example, we can see that the educator was proximal to the children during the play period, so the child could seek support.

In South African classrooms, educators often managed children’s play by circulating around play centres and asking children about their activities. These educators posed questions to support on-task behaviour:

Educator:

What are you doing here?

Child:

It’s a tower.

Educator:

It’s a tower? OK, continue building. Let me see your tower. Can I please see your tower? (South African Class 6 [SA6])

Circulating the room meant the educator remained proximal to the children and supported their continuation of play. Educator questions served to support the children in continuing their play activities – they did not extend or enrich the content of the play. To further support children’s play, educators in both settings also validated children’s suggestions and experiences. In Class C9, a child wrote the word ‘hotel’ on her page:

Educator:

A hotel, that’s an interesting one! We haven’t done that before. Have you ever stayed in a hotel?

Child:

[nods]

Educator:

So, you have a lot of knowledge about hotels. That’s a good one!

The educator’s validation of the child’s experience communicated to her that her play was valuable. Compared to traditional forms of praise (e.g. ‘Good job!’), which may inform the child that their play is appreciated, targeted validation may offer the child more motivation to continue with their play. Managing play in the classroom is useful for handling minor disruptions in children’s play and lengthening their engagement to maximize children’s learning. Whilst managing at a classroom level, educators also found opportunities to engage in guided play by initiating and extending children’s learning in play-based contexts.

Guided play

Initiating play

Initiating play refers to activities that were initiated by an educator, and then actively directed by children. Initiating play also refers to an educator introducing a new element to an existing, child-initiated play scenario. In the Canadian context, we observed the educators initiating guided play 22 times within the video data. This amounts to an average rate of three instances, per classroom, per hour. In the South African context, educators initiated guided play 10 times in the video data, amounting to an average of less than one instance (0.35) per classroom, per hour.

Productive

Educators in Canadian and South African classrooms enhanced children’s learning experiences in play by introducing both adult-initiated play activities and new elements to child-initiated play scenarios. In Class SA4, the educator initiated a play activity by distributing sets of six LEGO® Duplo bricks to all children in the classroom, stating: ‘Build whatever you want and tell me what it is.’ While building with the bricks was an adult-initiated activity, the play process was in the hands of the children; they were free and encouraged to choose what to build. Similarly, in Class C12, the educator introduced a simple literacy game using paper plates and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words to practice recognition and reading of common sight words. As children sat together in a large circle on the carpet, the educator held up a paper plate with a single CVC word written on it. The children were instructed to wait until the count of three to call out the word on the plate. While educators initiated some guided play activities in whole class contexts, they were much more likely to do so with smaller groups of children.

In Class SA6, the educator initiated children’s play by announcing free choice time. This was a period where children could choose among play activities, such as block building, dress-up, quiet reading, toy cars, kitchen sets, and drawing with coloured pens or painting. She then assisted individual children by asking about play preferences and helping them to understand their options:

Educator:

You want to read books? Take your chair and move there [points to reading corner in the classroom and turns to another child]. You also want to read? Join them. Those who like to read can go read (…)

Educator:

Where do you want to go, my friend, where would you like to work? No, don’t fight over toys. Do you want to read or play with puzzles here? (…)

Child:

[speaks softly]

Educator:

You want to be there? Okay, move to that side so we can have space (…)

In her brief exchanges with children, the educator leaned in, listened to their responses, nodded, and smiled. When children seemed unsure, she made suggestions and pointed to different areas, rather than dictating where children should go or what they should play. Similarly, in Class C2, the children created a terrarium to house plants and small animals. While this playful activity was initiated by the educator, the children determined and collected the natural elements to be included in the terrarium and planted them where they saw fit. During this activity, children decided that they wanted to act as the tour guides of the terrarium and invite friends to visit. The educator suggested that they create tickets to distribute to their friends, supporting the writing of relevant text on these tickets by helping the children sound out the words they wanted to write. In this guided play context, the educator initiated the play by planning the activity. The children subsequently assumed control of the play context by designing and planting the terrarium, and becoming the tour guides. The educator further enriched the play by initiating the creation of tickets, thus introducing activity to promote a new learning goal – the development of writing skills. As illustrated in these examples, in initiating play, educators must be mindful that the locus of control of the play is in the hands of the children while actively initiating new learning possibilities within the context of the play activity.

Less productive

While educators enriched children’s play by initiating activities, offering new learning goals, or co-playing, it was sometimes challenging to find the balance between being a co-player and ‘hijacking’ children’s voluntary engagement in play. In Class SA8, the educator asked each child in turn which activity they would like to engage in during the free choice period. One child moved to the area of the classroom with cleaning equipment. The educator began by asking the child an open-ended question, ‘What do you want to do there?’, but then pointed to the block centre and said, ‘I’d rather you go there and build like a man.’ The child lost his agency in the play, as the educator made a decision on his behalf, instead of supporting and enriching the child’s choice. In addition, the educator’s comments enforced stereotypical gender roles, discouraging the male child from cleaning and encouraging him to build instead. As mentioned by Mayeza (2018) in a study conducted in South Africa, educators play an important role in supporting children to challenge gender norms in free play.

In Class C11, a child was observed looking through cards that each displayed a block pattern that could be constructed with wooden blocks. The educator approached and sat with the child; she then took all the cards and placed a select number of them in front of the child to choose from. After he chose a card, the educator asked, ‘Which blocks do we need?’ Before the child responded, the educator proceeded to pull the four blocks that were needed to build the pattern on the child’s chosen card. While the educator made some positive attempts to involve the child (i.e. asking him which blocks were needed), the child essentially lost his agency, the power to decide his own actions within the play, as the educator made play choices on his behalf (i.e. choosing the blocks).

Educators in Canada and South Africa initiated play in their classrooms by introducing both new play activities to the children and new elements to existing play scenarios, such as academic learning goals. In less productive instances of initiating play, educators struggled with their role as a co-player, often ‘hijacking’ the play by being directive and taking over the activity. In guided play, educators are instead encouraged to scaffold children’s learning while ensuring that children retain their agency.

Extending play

Extending play refers to situations in which children were engaged in learning processes within their play, and educators scaffolded and enriched these processes, supporting children’s efforts to reach their goals. In the Canadian context, instances of extending play occurred 40 times within the video data, amounting to an average rate of five instances per classroom, per hour. In the South African context, instances of extending play occurred 52 times within the video data, amounting to an average of two instances per classroom, per hour.

Productive

In many of the Canadian and South African classrooms, educators extended children’s play by asking open-ended questions and helping children explore and make use of materials. In Class SA6, children were playing various outdoor activities, such as digging with shovels, playing tennis, and riding scooters. During this time, the educator engaged in tennis with four children; first, the children kept passing the ball to the educator, rather than to one another. Through a combination of prompts, gestures, and modelling, the educator guided children to keep the ball going between all members of the group; she demonstrated how educators can follow children’s lead in play while also challenging them to progress – in this case, towards mastering collaborative forms of peer play.

In Class C12, children were constructing a tower on the carpet with plastic cups. The educator then approached and suggested that the children compare their individual heights to the height of the tower, to further their learning (e.g. Sarama and Clements 2006). She prompted one of them to stand by the tower and counted the rows of cups from the base of the tower to the child’s head: ‘Let’s count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You are eight cups tall.’ Other children observed, then joined the play, counting the rows of cups to measure their heights. Prior to the educator’s entrance to the play scenario, the children were engaged in free play (building); the educator then initiated the mathematical learning process by modelling the behaviour (measuring child’s height); finally, the children directed their own discovery (measuring each other’s heights).

In Class SA1, children were sitting on the floor in pairs and groups putting together puzzles, and taking turns placing puzzle pieces. The educator sat next to them, putting together a puzzle herself.

Educator:

Help each other, do not take puzzle pieces away from each other.

Child:

Ms., look at this head. Where is the head, Ms.?

Educator:

The head? The head must be black because our hair is black, isn’t it so?

Child:

I am done.

Educator:

You are done? How can you finish when you still hold a piece in your hands? You see, with puzzles, if you still have pieces, you are not done.

The educator extended the child’s use of strategies for putting together puzzles by modelling reasoning about how pieces fit together; she encouraged the child to use knowledge gained from real-life experiences (i.e. a piece showing a head must be black hair because our hair is black) to attach puzzle pieces similar in colour. The child could then apply the same strategy to the remainder of the task. In addition, the educator modelled on-task behaviour by remaining engaged with the puzzle throughout their play and communicating the rules of the activity. Finally, the educator did not dictate the child’s activities – while she shared her knowledge on how puzzles work, it remained up to the child whether she wished to continue with the task. It is essential that educators ask children open-ended questions to extend their learning and promote self-exploration and enrichment. In Class C6, a group of children were sitting in the corner of the classroom playing with trains and blocks when a disagreement occurred:

Educator:

Boys, can you take a pause for a minute? (Child 1) would like to share something with you.

Child 1:

Stop pushing my train off the track and my cars off the track.

Educator:

Now (Child 1), I have a question for you. Is this just yours?

Child 1:

But (Child 2) was playing here, and (Child 2) and (Child 3) were playing here but they left.

Educator:

Now (Child 4) I’ve been watching you trying to play with (Child 1). You wanted to play here too?

Child 4:

Yeah, I wanted to play with this (holding a toy dinosaur).

Educator:

Okay, so when you come over and you decide to change to play with (Child 1), what do you need to remember to say to him? You’re going to have to remember to ask, and say, ‘Can I join on your game?’

In this example, the educator extended children’s socio-emotional development through scaffolding the conflict resolution. They asked questions that could help children better understand the intentions of their classmates and provided all involved parties an opportunity to share their thoughts to effectively resolve their conflict.

Less productive

Educators in some classrooms were observed making attempts to extend children’s play, but the strategies fell short of enriching the play context. For example, in Class C7, the educator asked children yes or no questions about what can be taken through the security gates at airports that did not result in reciprocal conversations:

Educator:

If it’s just a zipper is that OK?

Children:

Yes!

Educator:

If it’s metal and it’s a weapon is that OK?

Children:

No!

While the educator tried to engage children in an activity relevant to their real-life experiences, the use of yes or no questions did not facilitate rich conversation among the children or allow them to explore their play environment in different ways. Open-ended questions could better facilitate children’s reflections of real-life airports and support the integration of existing knowledge (e.g. ‘What is something that you can safely take through security at the airport?’). Likewise, in Class SA3, the educator joined a group of children playing with a kitchen set and directed the play by assigning children roles and tasks: ‘Please make me tea mothers,’ and ‘Go buy bread if you don’t have bread.’ In doing so, she began controlling the direction of the play instead of co-playing with the children. To extend the play using a guided play approach, the educator could have listened to what the children were engaged in before entering their play. By tuning in to children’s interests and states of mind, educators are in a better position to spot moments in the play where their presence can enrich without disrupting. For example, in Class SA7, the educators entered children’s play by knocking on a ‘door’ near the kitchen area, asking what children were cooking. Following their response (‘tea’), she expressed an enthusiastic wish for tea, acting as a co-player to enrich the play.

Educators in Canada and South Africa extended children’s play in various ways, including asking open-ended questions and supporting children’s exploration of materials and play contexts. In less productive instances of extending play, educators struggled to ask questions that would enrich children’s learning and became directive in the play, such that the locus of control was often removed from the child.

Discussion

Guided play lies midway between instruction and children’s self-directed play, integrating the benefits of both practices and allowing children to learn essential skills in a developmentally appropriate manner. Despite selecting and analysing video data where educators were present and interacting with children during play, instances that met existing criteria for guided play were rare in our analysis; there were only eight instances of guided play per hour in Canadian classrooms and less than three instances per hour in South African classrooms. In both contexts, educators spent a fair amount of the observed time managing children’s play to ensure that children were safe, engaged, and playing in a respectful and inclusive manner. As such, the availability of educators to observe and listen to children’s play in order to thoughtfully extend their learning in play is complicated by the sheer number of children present in the classroom who were often observed playing independently or in small groups. The differing ratios in the Canadian and South African classrooms (i.e. 2 CA educators per classroom vs 1 SA educator) did seem to have an impact on the frequency with which guided play was implemented, indicating that the number of children may impact educators’ abilities to realise guided play in classroom contexts.

When engaged in guided play, educators in this analysis were observed extending play almost twice as often in Canada, and more than five times as often in South Africa, than initiating play. When considering the challenges of observing children’s play and finding extendable moments, this division of time is rather surprising. One of the central challenges to the implementation of guided play, which is discussed in previous research, is the lack of structure inherent to periods of play; because educators cannot always predict the storylines and materials that children will integrate in their play, they struggle to plan the integration of academic skills through extending the learning that emerges organically in play (Pyle, Poliszczuk, and Danniels 2018). Accomplishing this integration requires both in-depth knowledge of learning trajectories and the ability to observe and recognise these opportunities. With this knowledge, one might expect that the initiation of play scenarios would more easily provide the opportunity to plan the integration of play and the learning of academic skills. Why, then, did the observational data reveal this strategy to be less commonly implemented by the participating educators?

In North America and Europe, play has traditionally been defined as a child-directed activity with little to no adult involvement, a definition that continues to be used in research that explores the development of social, emotional, and self-regulatory skills in the context of play (Pyle, DeLuca, and Danniels 2017). When educators subscribe to this definition of play, they are reluctant to structure or involve themselves during play in their classrooms (Pyle and Danniels 2017). In southern African contexts, numerous notions of play co-exist and siblings often have a prominent role to foster young children’s play and learning of traditional games; playtime is rarely scheduled or directed by adults (Marfo and Biersteker 2010; Nyota and Mapara 2008). Both contexts highlight the importance of sociocultural factors in play, such as through exploring the relationship between play and gender in early years classrooms, and the role of educators in challenging gender norms in play (e.g. Mayeza 2018 in South Africa; Prioletta and Pyle 2017 in Canada).

Despite diverging notions of play in the two cultures addressed in this analysis, educators seemed to embrace definitions of play that allowed them to successfully extend the learning possibilities of play. They tended towards extending children’s existing play scenario, and interjecting suggestions, rather than initiating play activities themselves; in a sense, theirs was an opportunistic approach to learning in play, as opposed to one of intentionally creating the conditions. From a planning perspective, designing and initiating play activities to promote the learning of specific skills is more straightforward, but it does require educators to greatly expand their notions of play. In South Africa, researchers investigating play-based practices in Grade R point to the professional lenses educators use to spot learning opportunities in playful moments as one critical issue; concerns for keeping order and discipline, as well as finding indicators of learning that corresponded with the curriculum, created barriers to children’s capacities to act, choose, and develop (Shaik and Ebrahim 2015). Research concerning Canadian educators’ perspectives of play-based learning also demonstrates the barriers presented by the perceived importance of achieving curricular standards and the challenges of integrating this learning in play, while also communicating the challenges presented by constraining definitions of play as being a child-directed activity (Pyle, Poliszczuk, and Danniels 2018; Pyle and Danniels 2017). As such, efforts to implement effective and engaging guided play practices in early education will need to address educators’ professional ‘lenses’ – the beliefs and perceptions they hold about children’s learning, play, and effective teaching approaches, in addition to helping them to realise their essential role as play facilitators.

The training and professional development of early years’ educators in South Africa and Canada differ in many ways. Working as an educator in Canada requires an undergraduate university degree, an additional post-secondary degree in education, and certification by a governing body; educational programming for five-year-old children has been freely accessible for decades and four-year old children have had universal access for almost a decade. By contrast, the South African Grade R was envisioned in 2001; since then, enrolment has expanded rapidly with 79% of children aged five attending Grade R in 2011 (Richter and Samuels 2018). Efforts to professionalise the Grade R workforce are ongoing but remain a serious challenge in the country (Harwood et al. 2013). Interestingly, these systemic differences are not evident in the data. Educators in both countries experienced similar successes and struggles with the implementation of play-based learning in their classroom contexts, including the implementation of guided play as a pedagogical approach. As a next step to realising guided play’s potential in early education settings, we suggest that educators need support to resolve the paradox of meeting learning goals in children’s self-directed play, to become designers of guided play activities, and to extend and deepen children’s learning in tactful ways. Even with this support, we are mindful that factors influencing children’s opportunities to learn through engaging play contexts are not confined to issues of class sizes and professional development. A monumental barrier to children’s engagement and playful learning in education settings is that of pervasive false dichotomies: play versus learning and free play versus instruction (Toub et al. 2016). Articulating playful practices along a continuum, with each practice lending itself to important and complementary learning purposes, can help professionals move beyond entrenched perspectives and doubts towards playful learning opportunities for children.

Acknowledgments

Our warm thanks go to participating educators and children. The first author also thanks David Whitebread, Ros McLellan, Jane Kvalsvig, Myra Taylor, Snehlanhlan Sibisi, Vanesssa Scherman and Hasina Ebrahim for supporting the South African study.

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant 430-2014-00926 and by the LEGO Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the LEGO Foundation;Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [430-2014-00926].