Designing play: Young children’s play and communication practices in relation to designers’ intentions for their toy

This article looks at the way in which changes in technology, as well as wider social and cultural patterns, bring about new materials in the landscape of young children’s communication practices and play. This is done in relation to a new form of screen-less digital toy known as Avakai. Avakai are a set of digitally interactive wooden dolls that combine set movements and sounds. The study had two parts that focused first on the toy’s design and second on how it was used in combined play and communication practices by seven 4- to 6-year-olds. This was to ascertain the extent to which the design and children’s use aligned. Data were gathered through conversations and email exchanges with the toy designers and observations of the children’s play and communication practices with the toy. All data were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Three key findings are discussed in relation to the alignment of these two areas: (1) children’s customisation of the toy design, (2) designing to produce emotional narratives in play and (3) the use of a compartment in the toy’s base. Each finding is described in relation to the designers’ backgrounds and intentions for the toy, and then the children’s use in terms of play and communication. In doing so, the extent to which the child and the toy’s design influenced play and communication practices is shown. These findings make a contribution to the field of materialities in young children’s communication practices when playing. This is ever important given the evolving speed of new materials and technologies for play and communication. In particular to how non-visual modes of communication are foregrounded in the absence of screens. In addition, it adds to prior research that has taken an object ethnographic approach by uniquely considering the toy in relation to primary data about the toy designers’ backgrounds and design decisions rather than from what can be inferred from the object.

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Designing BioSim

Advances in Game-Based Learning - Handbook of Research on Serious Games for Educational Applications ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-0513-6.ch007 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 149-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Naomi Thompson ◽

Kylie Peppler ◽

Joshua Danish

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Complex Systems ◽

Army Ants ◽

Design Decisions ◽

Children's Play ◽

Game Mechanics ◽

Children’S Play ◽

Games And Simulations ◽

Participatory Simulations ◽

Important Design

In this chapter, we discuss the design decisions made when creating the game mechanics and rules for BioSim, a pair of game-like participatory simulations centered around honeybees and army ants to help young children (ages kindergarten through third grade) explore complex systems concepts. We outline four important design principles that helped us align the games and simulations to the systems thinking concepts that we wanted the students to learn: (1) Choose a specific and productive focal topic; (2) Build on game mechanics typically found in children's play; (3) Purposefully constrain children's play to help them notice certain system elements; and (4) Align guiding theories to game rules, and vice versa. We then highlight how these guiding principles can be leveraged to allow young children to engage with complex systems concepts in robust ways, and consider our next steps and goals for research as we continue to iterate and build on these games.

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Vygotsky's theories of play, imagination and creativity in current practice: Gunilla Lindqvist's “creative pedagogy of play” in U. S. kindergartens and Swedish Reggio-Emilia inspired preschools

Perspectiva ◽

10.5007/2175-795x.2014v32n3p919 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 919-950 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Monica Nilsson ◽

Beth Ferholt

Keyword(s):

The United States ◽

Reggio Emilia ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Central Component ◽

Children's Play ◽

Theoretical Support ◽

Creative Pedagogy ◽

Children’S Play ◽

New Form

The ideal of modern western childhood, with its emphasis on the innocence and malleability of children, has combined with various social conditions to promote adult's direction of children's play towards adult-determined developmental goals, and adult's protection of children's play from adults.However, new forms of play, in which adults actively enter into the fantasy play of young children as a means of promoting the development and quality of life of both adults and children, have recently emerged in several countries (Sweden, Serbia (the former Yugoslavia), Finland, Japan and the United States). In this paper we discuss the theoretical support for this new form of activity:we argue thatGunilla Lindqvist's reinterpretation ofVygotsky's theory of play, with its emphasis on the creative quality of play, is unique amongst contemporary Western European and American theories of play. And we describe a series of formative interventions that are both instantiations of this new form of activity and an investigation of its theoretical support, which are being conducted in theUnited States and Sweden. Researchers at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, SanDiego have implemented and studied Lindqvist's creative pedagogy of play in U.S. early childhood public school classrooms. Over the past year the central component of this pedagogy, playworlds, has been introduced and studied in three Swedish Reggio-Emilia inspired preschools. In conclusion, some of the findings from these research projects are presented.

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