Play and Literacy: Play & Culture Studies

Play and Literacy

Play and Literacy

Play & Culture Studies

Volume 16

Edited by

Myae Han

James E. Johnson

Hamilton Books

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Dedicated to

Jim Christie, my forever mentor

Kern and Minjie, loving family

From Myae Han

Jim Christie, my forever friend

Karen McChesney Johnson, loving wife

From Jim Johnson

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

As noted in the preface to the previous volume in this Play & Culture Studies series, both Play and Curriculum (volume 15) and Play and Literacy (volume 16) are dedicated to the memory of James F. Christie, Past President of The Association for the Study of Play and outstanding scholar known for his research in play and curriculum and in play and literacy. I first met Jim at a TASP meeting in 1980 in Ann Arbor, MI. However, it was three years later in Baton Rouge, LA, at the 1983 annual TASP conference that we became friends. I remember how on a special bus tour of the area sponsored by TASP how we sat together and conversed the whole time about our mutual interests, even outlining a book idea that did come to fruition a few years later. We saw the need to bring together research and practice on play in early childhood education. At the time it seemed that although there were publications dealing with play that were either theory- or research-based, or were practical, how-to books, there was not a single book that did both functions.

Jim also told me on this bus trip about another dichotomy—this one from his brief kindergarten teaching career. His room was split physically, according to the expected practices at the time—one side equipped for play with blocks, dolls, and so forth, and the other side with materials for academic instruction. And never the two shall meet! A half a century has past and we have seen otherwise. Jim has had no small role in this transition. The pages of this book are testimony to this.

All of the contributors show in different ways how much play and literacy go together. Research is reported and discussed in some of the chapters about how play and literacy can catalyze each at different points, from preschool to higher education. The first two chapters are research reviews and commentary that explicitly bring to the forefront the enormous influence Jim Christie has had on the field of play and literacy.

I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Jim over the years since we met way back when. So much has happened. He was a great guy, wonderful collaborator, very special friend. There is really no way with words to sum up what he has meant to us personally and professionally. Hopefully reading this book becomes a good sharing time and provides useful knowledge, opening new vistas. Jim would like this. I think he saw his scholarly mission as primarily a social practice.

James E. Johnson

Play & Culture Studies Series editor

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following people, who reviewed chapters for this edited collection and a graduate student who assisted with this book. They have shared their expertise with us and provided valuable comments for the chapters. This volume couldn’t be completed without their support.

Doris Bergen, PhD, Miami University, Ohio

Gail Boldt, PhD, Penn State University, University Park

Thomas Hendricks, PhD, Elon University

Alison Hooper, PhD, University of Alabama

Michael Patte, PhD, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, PhD, Eastern Connecticut State University

Sandra Waite-Stupiansky, PhD, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania

John Sutterby, PhD, University of Texas, San Antonio

Annette Pic, Doctoral student, University of Delaware

Introduction

Myae Han, James E. Johnson

In 2018 when we solicited a call for papers for Play & Cultures Studies Volume 15, a special topic on "Play and Curriculum," we received an overwhelming number of proposals. This was unexpected for us and it was as if people were waiting for the call on this topic. We expected this topic would attract educational researchers, especially early childhood educators, but we had no idea how many submissions we would receive. After we reviewed the proposals we learned that about half of the proposals were related to play and literacy. This allowed us to plan for a separate volume on play and literacy and that would be published after the Volume 15. Thankfully, all authors in this volume welcomed the idea of having a separate volume on Play and Literacy and have been patient with the delay of Volume 16. We would like to express special thanks to the contributors of Volume 16 for their patience and collaboration. We would also like to thank all authors who submitted their proposals for Play and Curriculum. They are the ones keeping play in the current play -deficit educational environment.

The Play & Culture Studies Volume 16, Play and Literacy, has a special meaning in the history of play and literacy research. It has been approximately 30 years since the first edited book on Play and Literacy was published (Christie, 1991). For the past 30 years, play and literacy research has been a critical part of maintaining play in the curriculum and school environment especially during the political shift toward standard driven education. Play advocates have been defending play for a long time; but it seems that this battle has never ended in the field of education. The evidence of the necessity of play in childhood and over our lives can be witnessed in every previous volume in the Play & Culture Studies series.

But here again we are presenting evidence to show why play is a better way to learn cognitive skills such as literacy. Someday perhaps the academic world will not need to defend play anymore. Defending play should not be necessary. As Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan wrote (2009), "I sometimes compare play to oxygen- it’s all around us, yet goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing" (p. 6).

Before we introduce each chapter we like to clarify one important notion about play and literacy research. Most strategies linking play and literacy are not meant to replace self-initiated free play. Sometimes adults mistakenly think that using strategies linking literacy and play leading to playful learning can replace free play time in the school. The linking of literacy with play or playful learning strategies that are teacher-guided or teacher-directed forms of play are good alternatives to direct instruction or other traditional methods that are often developmentally inappropriate instruction. But they are never meant to replace independent or unstructured free play time for children or adolescents or adults because free play provides opportunity for more comprehensive development or learning during childhood and indeed the entire lifespan of the individual.

Keeping this notion in mind, this volume introduces a collection of chapters showing the link between play and literacy that works synergistically to foster a variety of positive outcomes that support school readiness skills as well as learning at other points along the life course. These chapters provide research reviews and historical background as well as evidence and commentary from the contributors’ own empirical studies about why and how play is a better way to learn and to teach language and literacy skills for both children and adults. This volume is organized into four sections: Part I, Foundation of Play and Literacy; Part II, Play and Books; Part III, Classroom Dynamics; and Part IV, Teacher and Adult Education.

Foundations of Play and Literacy

The first chapter by Myae Han, The History of Play and Literacy Research: Contribution of Dr. James F. Christie, provides a history of play and literacy research accomplished by Jim Christie and his colleagues from 1980 to 2015. While the 1980s saw the genesis of research that brought play into literacy studies, subsequent decades were when Jim and others who worked with him did a variety of studies that advanced the new field. There were empirical articles that probed more deeply the nature of literacy outcomes from play activities during the early years. Seminal reviews and edited books by Jim in the early 1990s and the new millennium ushered in new waves of investigations on the play-literacy nexus. In productive partnership with Kathy Roskos, the field was enriched considerably as a result of their important methodological and theoretical reviews and contributions to understanding the processes involved in the relation of play with literacy.

Chapter 2, The Book-Play Paradigm in Early Literacy Pedagogy written by Kathleen A. Roskos, provides the history of book-play paradigm tracing back to Smilansky’s and Saltz’s work on sociodramatic and thematic-fantasy play as forerunners of the current book-play model. Roskos discusses early effective and evidence-based strategies linking play and literacy and provides a set of recommendations for the book-play paradigm as a promising evidence-based practice for all early educators. She discusses the future of the paradigm in a digital learning environment and suggests future researchers to explore links between digital books and play.

Play and Books

The chapters in this section show the link between the books and play. The books can be used as a means to play or as an outcome of play.

Chapter 3, ‘I Wrote a Mona Lisa!’ Preschoolers’ Play During Traditional and Digital Writing written by Renée Casbergue and Julie Parrish, presents the examples of how play can be manifested in e-book writing. As our society becomes more digital, the need to study the impact of digital materials during childhood is crucial. Based on play motivation theory, digital materials-novelty of new objects, can serve as a motivation to do more object play. Authors of this chapter show that apps like Book Creator on Ipad can encourage children to do writing on their own with their choices and intentions and actions different from traditional book making activity. This chapter reports the cases of how children's play inside their heads (mind play, imagination) can be expressed in the digital form of e-book. Children play everywhere even in the virtual world. Casbergue and Parrish provide positive ways to use digital media to encourage children’s play and creativity.

Chapter 4, Children’s Literature as a Means to Provide Time for Playful Learning While Meeting Academic Standards written by M. Angel Bestwick, introduces many examples of high quality children’s literature depicting various play activities. Bestwick identified and discussed eight types of play presented in these books and provided a plethora of cross-curricular applications for playful learning. She claims that literature is storytelling, and thus imaginative play. This chapter is a great resource for teachers’ wanting to encourage children play while they are reading. While providing ideas for using books to promote play, the chapter also addresses standards in multiple subjects such as social studies, science, reading/writing, art, and math.

Chapter 5, Responsive Play: Exploring Language and Literacy Through Play as Reader Response by Tori K. Flint, introduces a study conducted in a first-grade classroom in which young children’s play is taken as a form of reader response. Children bring play spontaneously to each book reading experience often also with a touch of humor, imagination, or singing. Vignettes of children’s dialogue in this chapter are well worth reading. The chapter’s author coins the term responsive play as children’s play as a form of reader response. Children transform the written text into different media of expression such as storytelling, dramatic play, pantomime, puppetry and gesture. In the case of children, much of these creations cannot be separated from play. These types of explicit negotiations, or metaplay that is out-of-play talk in which children propose new ideas or suggest modifications of their play—allow children to clarify story structure and story comprehension.

Classroom Dynamics

Chapter 6, Play and Emerging Literacy: A Comparative Analysis of Kindergarten and Mixed-Age (K–2) Children’s Scaffolding During Symbolic Play Transformations written by Sandra J. Stone and Brian A. Stone, discusses a mixed-methods research study comparing classrooms (same age or cross age peers) with respect to scaffolding symbolic play transformations. Observations focused on the ‘home center’ dramatic play area in both the age- homogeneous and the age -heterogeneous classrooms. Age admixtures in the social context of play emerged as a favorable attribute in providing increased opportunities for peer scaffolding and engagement in collaborative pretense.

In chapter 7, Preschool Teachers’ Responsive Interactions With Children in Dramatic Play and the Children’s Vocabulary Outcomes by Sohyun Meacham and Myae Han, reports and discusses the results of their mixed-methods study of 11 Head Start classrooms that focused on the teacher responsiveness to children’s pretend play and children’s verbal productivity during play and subsequently assessed vocabulary outcomes. Based on Vygotskian and Bakhtinian theoretical perspectives, and a review of recent relevant research in this area, this chapter provides a careful and useful discussion and study of the teacher’s roles in play, with special attention to teacher responsiveness levels when interacting with young children at play. Teacher sensitivity to children’s interests and being flexible and spontaneous are valuable qualities to bring to interactions, as opposed to directiveness, when the goal is to advance oral language in preschoolers.

Teacher and Adult Education

Chapter 8, Re-Learning to Play: Mediating Pre-Service Teachers’ Exploration of Drama-Based Instruction written by Timothy M. Vetere and Matthew E. Poehner, draws attention to the importance of play and playfulness in older learners, in this case teacher candidates who partook in a drama based workshop prior to a field experience devoted to second language learning. As part of a longitudinal project informed by Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian theoretical lenses, one student teacher in this study one was chosen to be highlighted in this chapter. The chapter describes the use of play-based pedagogy in a second language learning in an elementary classroom. The benefits and challenges and struggles involved in employing theoretically informed play pedagogy are discussed.

Chapter 9, The Element of Play and Dynamics of Interaction in an Adult L2 Classroom With the Communicative Language Teaching Approach by Marine Pepanyan and Sohyun Meacham, investigates the value of play pedagogy in adult second language learning. The exploratory case study presented in this chapter was done from within the Communicative Language Teaching paradigm that stresses authentic, meaningful communication and used three robotics activities to achieve a playful and safe learning situation. The study’s methods and procedures using Beebots in three activities made it possible to explore the value of the play component in teaching and learning for low to intermediate English Second Language Learners. The study yielded data supporting the value of play-based education for adult learners of English for positive affect, attitudes of self-confidence, and vocabulary retention and retrieval.

These chapters demonstrate a certain depth and breadth of scholarship and research on the play-literacy nexus across a variety of topics and age groups—but they represent only the tip of the iceberg. Since research began in this field many years ago, coinciding with the beginning of Jim Christie’s academic career, we have learned a great many things about the ways play and literacy interconnect, and now also something about how these two incredibly important processes influence each other.

There are, to change the metaphor, many islands to this archipelago that inter-relate and form the play and literacy entity, islands of research with many wonderful beaches with empirical pebbles of so many published and unpublished studies, theses and dissertations, and conference proceedings. Areas of this beach now also show new signs of recent integrative and theoretical work. We see Jim walking along these beaches, because he has had such an influence, and also because we want to honor him for what he accomplished and how he related to us while doing his scholarship and research on play and literacy—as a social practice. Let us embrace and celebrate a long sunset with him, as these beaches shift and transform our study of play and literacy and how to use the results of our study in applied settings to enrich communities, families, schools, and lives.

References

Christie, J. (Ed.). (1991). Play and early literacy development. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Brown, S., & Vaughan, C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York: Penguin Group.

Part I

Foundation of Play and Literacy

Chapter 1

History of Play and Literacy Research: Contribution of Dr. James F. Christie

Myae Han

Play and literacy have been the subjects of intensive research for the past several decades although these two fields of research have been conducted in isolation from one another for a long time. These two subject areas are commonly conceived as having a critical difference: play is a natural activity of children while literacy is something that needs to be taught. However, the links between play and literacy were soon recognized by researchers like James Christie, a professor at the Arizona State University who passed away in 2015 at 68 years.

He authored/co-authored or edited/co-edited 16 books and published scores of peer-reviewed articles; and he mentored many students during his lifetime. Professor Christie had an outstanding academic career and was a terrific person who cared about his colleagues and students. I was fortunate to be one of his doctoral students in the late 90s.

Perhaps, the best way to understand the history of academic research on play and literacy is to trace the work of this most well-known scholar in the field. Jim Christie was a living history of play and literacy research along with other colleagues with whom he worked. His first article on play was published in 1980 and the last article in play and literacy appeared in 2015, the year he passed away. This chapter provides only a snapshot of his published works. Since Jim has published numerous articles and book chapters. it is impossible to include all of them in this chapter, or to discuss any of them at length. Thus, I will only focus on his major publications in play and literacy here. I hope to provide adequate coverage of the ones selected. As a pioneer and leader of play and literacy research in the US and abroad, Jim Christie’s work has influenced many scholars, inspiring them to continue this line of work today, including myself.

In order to prepare for this chapter, first I traced his scholarly works between 1980s to 2015; and then I examined the others who have cited his work in their play and literacy publications to select significant publications of his works. I also examined references Jim frequently cited in his writing. The ERIC [ProQuest] database helped make this approach possible.

I had a lively scholarly moment while I was working on this chapter and I truly felt, History is a conversation between the past and present.

1980s. Claiming Play and Birth of Play and Literacy

In the 1970s, Jim studied syntax and syntactic structure of texts in relation to reading comprehension (Christie, 1978, 1980a) and then he shifted the research to children’s play. I wondered why and how? It is my hypothesis since he focused on children’s oral reading errors during the study, and he might have realized that there is a bigger factor in children’s construction of learning.

In 1980, his first article on play appeared in The Journal of Education titled ‘The cognitive significance of