Developing a pedagogy of play: toddlers’ conceptual learning in a PlayWorld

ABSTRACT

Empirical research shows that adults’ role in play with infant-toddlers is to provide children with play materials, observe from a distance, and control the surrounding dangers. An international trend to increase children’s cognitive skills at a very early age has established a need to better understand toddler’s conceptual learning and how this is supported by the joint play between toddlers and educators. This paper draws upon a cultural-historical perspective, and discusses the concept of play and pedagogical practices of a Conceptual PlayWorld approach to investigate how educators and toddlers generate a Conceptual PlayWorld that supports their conceptual learning and development. We argue that conceptual learning of children at a very young age should be promoted in our institutional practices as it might benefit future scientific learning at school. The educators’ affective engagement is the key to developing a powerful collective play environment to strengthen children’s conceptual thinking.

KEYWORDS:

• Toddlers’ conceptual PlayWorld
• toddlers’ educators
• affective engagement
• collective play

Acknowledgments

Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project ID:  0413) and the Department of Education and Training (Project ID: 2017-003278) granted approval for the project, A study of adults’ engagement in babies-toddlers’ play. Special thanks to research assistance from Dr Judith Gome, Dr Junqian Ma and Dr Victoria Minson. Thank you to the cooperative long day care centre educators, children and parents for giving permission to undertake this research and their participation in the project. The author is very grateful to the reviewers and editors for their meticulous reading of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by Monash University, Faculty of Education, Dean’s Early Career Researcher Funding Initiative (2017) and Monash Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant (2016).