Play and problem solving

Most developmental psychologists treat play as either one, or some com- bination of three things:

1. Play as an exploration of the object environment

2. Play as an experience of an experimental and flexible nature, and

3. Play as a facilitator of the transition from concrete to abstract thought.

(Adapted from Pepler 1982)

Exploration in this sense may be considered a necessary preamble to play, or as an initial stage within play. It may represent an integral part or a separate, although closely related, activity. In experimenting, the child moves beyond discovering the properties of objects, to determine what s/he can do with the object. This fits in well with Bruner’s notion of ‘mastery’. The importance here of the child being left free from the ten- sions of instrumental goals is often stressed. This allows for more novel, less inhibited, responses and applications of the objects of play. Play provides the opportunity for children to consider objects abstractly and this is an adaptive mechanism that facilitates problem solving. The folded paper that signifies for the child an aeroplane soaring through the sky becomes

EMERGENT SCIENCE AND ICT IN THE EARLY YEARS

‘a pivot’ for severing the meaning of ‘aeroplane’ from real aeroplanes. The focus of attention becomes what it is that the object signifies and can do, its properties and functions rather than its representation in the ‘real’ world. The objects of symbolic play thus provide important precursors for representational thought.

The importance of all this shouldn’t be understated; pretend play has a major role in early cognitive development. The symbolisation that begins with objects goes on to be shared with the parent, then with peers and, as Piaget argued, the reciprocity in peer relations provides foundations for perspective taking and decentring. This in turn provides a model for symbolising ‘the self’ and the ‘other’ and supports the development of the child’s ‘theory of mind’. In the circumstances it isn’t at all surprising that children’s preference for socio-dramatic play has been shown to be correl- ated with intellectual performance (in terms of both IQ and ability scales).

Sylva et al. (1976) showed us that play facilitated problem solving. Divergent thinking is central to both play and creativity and longitudinal studies have also shown that creativity in pretend play is predictive of divergent thinking over time (Russ et al. 1999). As Edwards and Hiler (1993) argued in their teacher’s guide to ‘Reggio Emilia’ (which is based in Italy and champions a particular approach to early years education), young children are developmentally capable of all the high-level thinking skills. We should therefore encourage them in their day-to-day practices of analy- sis (e.g. seeing similarities and differences); synthesis (e.g. rearranging, reorganising); and evaluation (e.g. judging the value of things).

In an evaluation of the Northamptonshire LEA Foundation Stage ICT programme (Siraj-Blatchford and Siraj-Blatchford 2006), we found that, given appropriate training, Reception teachers were able to make enor- mous progress in expanding the opportunities in their classrooms for play using ICT. In one example, Chrissie Dale, a Reception teacher at King’s Sutton School, used Granada’s Learning at the Vets software to support science and to encourage emergent writing (Figure 8.1).

and demonstrating it on the whiteboard was a very effective way of

1.11.04: The children have all been desperate to have a go at this one

showing the children how to use the program. However, when trying to use the program on the PC the children needed a lot of support. For each child to have a turn took a long time and has tended to initially interrupt the role play that has been established.

(Chrissie Dale, King’s Sutton School) This application was also developed further to incorporate a Listening

Station (Figure 8.2) as an Answer Phone at the vets: Some of the children have started pretending to write the messages

down but I have not yet observed them taking these messages into their

JOHN SIRAJ-BLATCHFORD

Figure 8.1 Children working with Learning at the Vets.

play. I need to rerecord the messages as the volume levels are uneven and they need more careful thinking out to vary the play that they might develop. I need to buy a tape with the shortest running time that I can find or might even buy a cheap answering machine or ask parents to donate an old one.

(op cit)

Play and problem solving