The Role of the Educator
How an educator relates to play determines the degree to which the educator values and develops play as a worthwhile experience for exploring, studying and even inventing the world in the classroom. What is clear is that educators who actively observe and listen to children learn to inquire into the deeper meanings in children’s experience of play. For example, when observing children’s play with dinosaurs, educatorss may realize that the children are actually pondering questions about power, control, strength, or fear. Teachers who “listen” to play can extend and complicate the processes of meaning making along side children.
Elizabeth Wood studied teachers’ perspective on children’s play in the classroom for many years. She critiques the common assumption that children simply learn through play. She says, "while playing with materials in the water tray may enable children to observe that objects behave in different ways, they will not spontaneously learn the concept of floating and sinking, volume and mass with out educative encounters with more knowledgeable others" (p. 125). Wood asks educators to think carefully about the tension between creating a responsive curriculum (often refers to as ‘following children’s play interests’) to more proactive models, where the teacher (while considering children’s interests and curiosities) offers conceptual tools, and creates an inquiry environment or problems to solve. This delicate tension between “Learning to play, or playing to learn” will be explored by Liz Brooker (2010) in one of the readings for this module.
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