Role of Children's Play in Developmental Process

Early childhood researchers have regarded children's play as highly valuable in the developmental process. Theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Parten, and Smilansky have all stressed the importance of allowing children, in essence, to "practice" for later developmental stages by acting out what may appear to be inconsequential play; in reality, children are rehearsing for more complex developmental roles. In addition, play has been strongly linked to creativity, which, in turn, has been linked to intelligence. Clearly, then, an analysis of the value of children's play, whether it be dramatic play, group play, individual play, or creative play, is an investigation into an essential component of the process toward later development.

A broader definition of learning is necessary if play is to receive the credit it deserves in the classroom. As Stone (1995) points out, "We must not succumb to the narrow notion of learning that undervalues or eliminates play as a curricular tool in the classroom" (Bergen, 1988, cited in Stone, p. 45). When children are playing--a process which appears random and chaotic--some observers would be inclined to ask, "When is learning going to begin?" The question can best be answered that learning has already begun--although it may be unscripted, amorphous, and independent of a teacher's plans. The truth is that the children are acting out an internal script--one that is as essential as it may be mysterious.

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ory, games with rules, emerges, as children play games such as hide-and-seek, tag, board games, or today's electronic games. Stone (1995) failed to mention electronic games in her examples of games with rules (p. 47). Such an omission was conspicuous in its absence, and probably intentional. After all, electronic games, although fixed with rules, are solitary pursuits, and not in keeping with the emerging social nature of increasingly complex developmental tasks. Stone (1993) writes, "Games with rules support a child's development as she organizes her world for consistency, fairness, stability, and predictability" (cited in Stone, 1995, p. 47). Electronic games may give children a false sense of fairness, however, since human-enforced rules are not as immutable as those of electronics. Monighan-Nourot (1987) has questioned Smilansky's (1968) categories, by noticing that some categories may contain elements of the others. Solitary play, for example, might be functional in nature, "as when a child pours sand repeatedly through a funnel and sings to herself as she plays" (p. 68). Such a blending of one category with another is short-sighted, however. Clearly, there is no functional purpose to perpetual sand funnelling. To col

Category: Psychology - R