Re: [xmca] Play and more..

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

Artin and all,

Thanks for notice of your paper on unstructured play and learning.  
I'll be interested to learn what features seem critical to you in  
defining "unstructured". The phrase almost seems self-contradictory,  
in that play must be at least self-organizing, must come to have a  
meaningful form for the participants, in each moment, with some  
relation (maybe short-range in time) to other moments.

So I suppose the issue is self-organizing and spontaneous vs.  
externally controlled or fixed-by-rules? Clearly I would expect that  
when play is more open-ended that there is more ample opportunity to  
learn how to engage in open-ended activity! and that is a kind of self- 
regulation, if we can so use the term, that seems very different from  
learning to play a role in someone else's game. Both are useful social  
skills, but the first would seem to me to be the one where the  
creative and critical potential is stronger.

Did you find that there were particular kinds of learning that were  
better supported by spontaneous/unstructured play?

JAY.

Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke





On Sep 29, 2009, at 7:21 AM, Goncu, Artin wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I am writing in response to the recent post about the use of  
> structured
> dramatic play in early childhood education.  We recently wrote a  
> paper in
> which we argued and illustrated with some examples that spontaneous  
> and
> unstructured play can be used as an effective educational activity as
> well.  The paper is now in press.  (The reference is below).   
> However, I
> am willing to send a prepublication copy as an e-mail attachment.   
> If you
> are interested, please send me a note off the net.
>
> Göncü, A. Abel, B. & Boshans, M. (in press).  The role of attachment  
> and
> play in young  children’s learning and development. In K. Littleton,  
> C.
> Wood, & J. K. Staarman (Eds.) Handbook of Educational Psychology: New
> Perspectives on Learning and Teaching, Elsevier.
>
> Artin Goncu, Ph.D
> Professor,
> Educational Psychology
> College of Education M/C 147
> 1040 W. Harrison St.
> Chicago, IL 60607
> http://education.uic.edu/epsy/browseour%20faculty.cfm
> (312) 996-5259
>
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