Play Pedagogy Assignment on Play-Based Learning and Development

This assignment delves into the concept of play pedagogy, highlighting its crucial role in fostering children's social, psychological, and cognitive development. It emphasizes the importance of play in promoting imagination, creativity, and problem-solving skills, particularly within early childhood education settings. The assignment explores the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), its principles, practices, and learning outcomes, and how educators can use it to design effective curricula. It also examines the significance of creating environments that encourage children's exploration, engagement, and positive interactions. The document references several key theories and frameworks, including Foucault's theories of power and knowledge, and provides practical examples of play-based activities and the role of educators in facilitating them. The assignment underscores the importance of monitoring children's progress, adapting teaching methodologies, and promoting cultural competency to ensure inclusive and effective learning experiences.

Assignment on Play pedagogy
Assignment on Play pedagogy
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Introduction
Play and learn is a vital part of a child’s brain development. It fosters the children’s social and
psychological development. Including play, in the subject teaches the child about the risk taking
and problem solving skills. The most important thing about it is that it promotes imagination,
independence and creativity.
Play translates play pedagogy as collective educational interventions that combine educators,
students, and consultants. Educator tries to cultivate their knowledge of and experience with
Act, cognitive and arts (Davis, Torr & Degotardi, 2015). Children are motivated to engage in the
activities of play and artistic creation, and to gain experiences with the involvement of adults.
To understand some important development of study, such as child development, early
childhood education or their communication teachers use Play pedagogy. In Finland, Play is all
about exploration of intersection between play and school learning. The important concern is the
proceeding from preschool to formal schooling, where play minimizes and segregated from
learning. Pedagogy of play examines the critical and holistic approaches by centering
importance of play, that contains respect for the other, connecting mind, body, and spirit, as well
as personal and social transformation (Adam, Barratt-Pugh & Haig, 2019).
Foucault’s (1982) theories of power and knowledge are about education, the pedagogical
insights of his concept of truth games, that supports the play theory and education. He tried to
develop a strategy where the students of young age learn the interdependent relationship
between rules, roles, truth, knowledge and players. Social engagement is only meaningful when
taught with the help of a subject. The subject orient play also brings the inner self of the student
out. They are able to recognize the normal from abnormal (White & Fleer, 2019). That brings the
powerful recognition with the play and the present activities. Play is also considered as practice
learning by the kids initiated with the form of some activities.
Early childhood education including play and learning are often major activity in most of the
schools. Whereas when the students grow and go into higher classes the play and activity
squeezes to only 1/4th of the total school activities. The major part if occupied by the literacy
hours, and exams. The leisure is minimized to only one class throughout the day. Most of the
time resulted into low productivity and intelligence of maximum number of students.
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As per Krecker (1977) , earlier German Kindergartens separated work from play by creating a
limit between both. Work is all about kitchen and outdoor cleaning while children played with
the Froebel gifts alone or with other kids (Knaus, 2015). This approach, differentiated between
play and learning, at the same time signifies importance about play as necessary part of
learning and education. There are examples of pedagogies in which the teachers play a scripts
along with children and in this way distributes information that children may pick up later.
Games like jig saw puzzles for kids, the puzzle is designed to teach the student about shape,
size and fitting. The kids of age 3 to 6 play it in alone or in a group. They try to locate the
missing piece and in this search they start to develop their cognitive and mental balance. They
are becoming sharp at recognizing stuffs. While playing with other friend the kids associate with
each other and talk to each other about their imaginations of what they think about each piece
and how they see it. This game can be considered as one of most engaging activity along with
other games. Educator and children in group can play it while learning.
The Early Years Learning Framework consists Principles, Practices and five main Learning
outcomes with their sub outcomes. These are based on finding the identity, understanding the
community, importance of goodhealth, learning and communicating. The main learning are
reflected upon the children learning and focus what one can achieve and not on what they cant
achieve. The EYLF is designed to develop a foundation for learning so that they become a
better learner (Sumsion, Harrison & Bradley, 2019). The purpose is of setting to enrich
children’s learning by providing opportunities to form a strong base for learning. It is a
foundation of many principles that focuses on the learning outcomes to only assist educators in
developing a curriculum and it is not a curriculum in itself. It can be used by educators to mould
a practical curriculum that has goals to achieve by using the Principles and Practices to about
early education, care and learning. The EYLF also teaches about the programming and
documentation for the planning, contributing and evaluating children’s learning. It can be
method of interpretation for the educator for their understandings while formulating the EYLF
pattern for children (Shepherd, 2018).
The framework is designed to get the outcome to be where children learn to have strong sense
of identity, they not only connects but contribute to the society. The framework works on
developing confident and effective communicators.
The framework is about understanding and instilling the lesson on Belonging, Being &
Becoming. This refers to the relationship child develops from their birth and from here the
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learning is taken up to another level (Tremblay et al. 2015). How the child is linked with family,
community, culture and place. Through this child learning takes place how they explore, create
and develop interest. They try to understand their own identity and try to associate people with
them while learning.
Early childhood settings implement play based learning environments that evaluates on the
Daily Diary basis (McClintic & Petty, 2015). The role of the educator is to document children’s
learning through observations, testing and reading on children’s interests.
Principles of EYLF
 To teach respectful and reciprocal relationships.
 To teach the importance of Partnerships.
 To maintain High expectations and equity.
 To teach and exercise respect for diversity in the ecosystem.
 To work in a reflective practice.
To instill all the principles in the children properly it’s important for the educator to see to a
child’s physical, social & emotional, cognitive and spiritual wellbeing of learning. They should
foster children by teaching in an open environment and the bringing connections between the
human and environment. Like taking them to park on weekly basis and play there in a safe
environment groups. Organizing activities in which parents can also take part along with the
children. It’s the purpose of an educator to develop the child’s strengths, abilities and interests
so that they grow in all dimensions.
Learning while playing is the best way to create a strong footprint for all the students. This
method also provides an endless amount of enthusiasm in the children to explore and create.
Play helps in children’s thinking and promotes a creative learning. Create an environment which
encourages children to gain positive ways. The best way of teaching is to making teaching
purposeful and thoughtful. We have to promote childrens learning, understand their challenges
and work together to win over every single challenge (Brooker, 2017). This will work only by
mutual interactions and also by problem solving strategies in way in which as an educator we
demonstrate, explain and question.
It has been seen that both indoor and outdoor activities promote child’s ability to questions, and
interests and encourage children’s ideas. They also understand the responsibility to care for
their environment. To teach about the benefits of diversity and acknowledging the difference is
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called cultural competency. The educator should talk with children, parents and members of the
community across cultures, to get knowledge and to develop a positive attitude towards other
cultural. To build a base of the past and put the brick for the present not only makes the children
feel secure but also confident. They learn to connect between time, event and situations. They
feel familiar in all the instances. The basic responsibility is to prepare them for the challenges of
the life so that they can get better opportunities in life. Ultimately as a part of learning process,
the educator has to monitor the performance of the students time to time. This is done by
collecting evidence, analyzing information, documenting and evaluating each child’s progress. If
they lack it will be the responsibility of the teacher to draw a new learning methodology so that
no one is left behind (Baron et al, 2019). This included variety of method to teach them learning
in various ways.
Play based teaching and learning is best suited for children’s understanding, skills and abilities.
It is important that educator not only teaches as per all the principle and framework of the EYLF
but also personally adopt it. They need to prepare the working environment accordingly. The
classes should be decorated with the picture of what they want to teach. For an example they
should put picture of animals, plants and activities of respect, care environment and things that
childrens are taught. The activities should also be designed accordingly where the child is given
a lot of exposure in practical. They are involved together in activities and are given chance to
express them self (Boynton-Jarrett, 2019). They are learning while playing and observing the
surrounding environment for all round growth.
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Reference
Adam, H., Barratt-Pugh, C., & Haig, Y. (2019). “Portray cultures other than ours”: How children’s
literature is being used to support the diversity goals of the Australian Early Years
Learning Framework. The Australian Educational Researcher, 1-15.
Baron, A., Malmberg, L. E., Evangelou, M., Nesbitt, K., & Farran, D. (2019). The Play’s the
Thing: Associations between Make-Believe Play and Self-Regulation in the Tools of the
Mind Early Childhood Curriculum. Early Education and Development, 1-18.
Boynton-Jarrett, R. (2019). Healthy Places to Play, Learn, and Develop. Urban Health, 102.
Brooker, L. (2017). Learning to play, or playing to learn? Children’s participation in the cultures
of homes and settings. In Young Children's Play and Creativity (pp. 14-25). Routledge.
Davis, B., Torr, J., & Degotardi, S. (2015). Infants and toddlers: how visible are they in the Early
Years Learning Framework?. International Journal of Child Care and Education
Policy, 9(1), 12.
Knaus, M. (2015). ‘Time for Being’: Why the Australian Early Years Learning Framework opens
up new possibilities. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 13(3), 221-235.
McClintic, S., & Petty, K. (2015). Exploring early childhood teachers’ beliefs and practices about
preschool outdoor play: A qualitative study. Journal of early childhood teacher
education, 36(1), 24-43. Athey, I. (2018). Contributions of play to development. In Child's
play (pp. 8-28). Routledge.
Shepherd, W. (2018). Upholding Children’s Rights in a Landscape of Legislation, Regulations,
Curriculum Frameworks, Accreditation, Teacher Standards and Policies. Pedagogies for
Children's Perspectives, 53.
Sumsion, J., Harrison, L. J., & Bradley, B. (2018). Building a knowledge base about the impact
of early learning frameworks for infants and toddlers. Early Child Development and
Care, 188(6), 651-664.
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Tremblay, M., Gray, C., Babcock, S., Barnes, J., Bradstreet, C., Carr, D., ... & Herrington, S.
(2015). Position statement on active outdoor play. International journal of environmental
research and public health, 12(6), 6475-6505.
White, A. D., & Fleer, M. (2019). Early childhood educators’ perceptions of the Australian Early
Years Learning Framework (EYLF): Engaged professional learners. Australasian Journal
of Early Childhood, 1836939119832083.
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