Challenging Play

Preface
Introduction: from challenging to engaging play
Reconceptualising the play-pedagogy relationship: from control to complexity
Whose goals and interests? The interface of children's play and teachers' pedagogical practices
Learning to play, or playing to learn? Children's participation in the cultures of homes and settings
Reflecting the child: play memories and images of the child
The significance of teacher conceptual and contextual intersubjectivity for affording concept formation in children's play
The productivity of desires: doing girl otherwise
Co-constructing knowledge: children, teachers and families engaging in science-rich curriculum
Postdevelopmentalism and professional learning: implications for understanding the relationship between play and pedagogy
Who gets to play? Peer groups, power and play in early childhood settings Framing play for learning: professional reflections on the role of open-ended play in early childhood education
Powerful pedagogies and playful resistance: role play in the early childhood classroom
Using power on the playground
Let the wild rumpus begin! The radical possibilities of play for young children with disabilities
Children's enculturation through adult guidance in the context of play activities
Playing with some tensions: poststructuralism, Foucault and early childhood education
Afterword

This book takes a detailed look at the complex area of young children's play as it is understood in the early twenty-first century, and in particular at the relationships between play, learning and teaching which are enacted in early childhood settings, across countries as different as England and the USA, Sweden and the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. It examines contemporary thinking about the role of play in the early years from a range of perspectives, and offers new ways to understand and define the relationship between learning and play. Its contributors bring together theory, practice and research evidence to make their arguments, which are illustrated through a range of international, cross-cultural examples.

Contributors: Jo Ailwood, Joy Cullen, Brian Edmiston, Marilyn Fleer, Helen Hedges, Barbara Jordan, Anna Kilderry, Annica Lofdahl, Alex Moran, Andrea Nolan, Bert van Oers, Ann Merete Otterstad, Jeannette Rhedding-Jones, Sue Rogers, Annette Sandberg, Tuula Vuorinen.