Making Play Smarter, Stronger, and Kinder: Lessons from Tools of the Mind (original) (raw)
Related papers
Early Education and Development, 2019
Make-believe play has been theorized to promote self-regulation skills and other positive child outcomes. In this study, we examine the make-believe play approach featured in the Tools of the Mind (Tools) early childhood curriculum, which identifies students' self-regulation cultivation among its core programmatic aims. Using data from 42 classrooms in the United States, we specified latent growth models to investigate the association between Tools make-believe play and children's self-regulation development throughout pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade (N = 646 students aged between four and seven years old). We found that higher implementation frequency and fidelity of Tools play predicted less selfregulation growth. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. During a lecture in 1933, Vygotsky asserted that children achieve their "greatest self-control in play" (p. 13). In explaining this claim, Vygotsky argued that in play "the child is faced with a conflict between the rule of the game and what he would do if he could act spontaneously" (p. 13), thus necessitating the child's regulation of his or her impulses. Sixty years after that lecture, psychologists Bodrova and Leong created the Tools of the Mind (Tools) curriculum (Bodrova & Leong, 2007), which aims to capture Vygotsky's theories through an early childhood program. As with Vygotsky, Tools identifies "mature" make-believe play as the key driver of children's selfregulation development (Bodrova & Leong, 2013). In the Tools context, "mature" make-believe play signifies that children plan and negotiate roles in a play scenario (e.g., a patient, nurse, and doctor in a hospital), use role-specific props (e.g., a stethoscope for the doctor), and adhere to the roles they choose (e.g., the patient does not try to become the doctor during the play scenario). The Tools developers assert that whereas immature, or unstructured, play does not promote selfregulation, "the best way for children to practice self-regulatory behaviors is to engage in mature make-believe play" (Bodrova & Leong, 2015). Despite these claims, the association between Tools make-believe play activities and children's self-regulation development has never been directly investigated in the literature. This research gap is especially surprising given Tools recent expansion. Since its creation in 1993, Tools have been increasingly implemented in the United States, Canada, and South America (Blair & Raver, 2014), now reaching a total of over 30,000 students. Washington DC is one case study of Tools' proliferation, where Tools expanded from a two-school pilot in 2010 to having 38 out of the city's 60 preschools implementing Tools by the 2016-2017 school year (District of Columbia Public Schools, 2016).
THE POWER OF PLAY A Research Summary on Play and Learning
Dr. Rachel White earned her doctorate in Child Psychology at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Dr. White's research focuses on how children can benefit from play and imagination in early childhood. She has also studied young children's creation of imaginary companions, and how pretending relates to early social understanding, cognitive development, and school readiness in diverse populations of preschool-aged children. Research for this paper was collected in fall 2012.
The role of pretend play in children's cognitive development
Early years education: major themes in education, 2006
Noting that there is a growing body of evidence supporting the many connections between cognitive competence and high-quality pretend play, this article defines the cluster of concepts related to pretend play and cognition, and briefly synthesizes the latest research on the role of such play in children's cognitive, social, and academic development. The article notes that there is growing evidence to suggest that high-quality pretend play is an important facilitator of perspective taking and later abstract thought, that it may facilitate higher-level cognition, and that there are clear links between pretend play and social and linguistic competence. The article also notes that there is still a great need for research on the relationship between high-quality pretend play and development of specific academic skills. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges and potential policy directions suggested by the research findings. (Contains 44 references.
Play it high, play it low: Examining the reliability and validity of a new observation tool to assess children’s make-believe, 2019
The authors consider mature make-believe play a critical component of childhood that helps children develop new skills and learn to communicate. They argue that, although theoretical accounts of play have emphasized the importance of make-believe play for children to achieve social and academic competence, the absence of a reliable and valid measure of children's mature make-believe play has hampered the evaluation of such claims. They seek to address this shortcoming with a review of the psychometric characteristics of existing assessments and with their findings from a new assessment using the Mature Play Observation Tool (MPOT), which they administered during a multiyear longitudinal study of twenty-six early-childhood classrooms. They found that children in classrooms scoring well on the MPOT better perform such skills as self-regulation, literacy, and numeracy.
American Journal of Play 6:1 (Fall 2013), pp. 55-81.
An article by Angeline S. Lillard and others in the January 2013 issue of Psychological Bulletin comprehensively reviewed and criticized the existing body of research on pretend play and children's development. Nicolopoulou and Ilgaz respond specifically to the article's critical review of research on play and narrative development, focusing especially on its assessment of research-mostly conducted during the 1970s and 1980s-on play-based narrative interventions. The authors consider that assessment overly negative and dismissive. On the contrary, they find this research strong and valuable, offering some solid evidence of beneficial effects of pretend play for narrative development. They argue that the account of this research by Lillard and her colleagues was incomplete and misleading; that their treatment of relevant studies failed to situate them in the context of a developing research program; and that a number of their criticisms were misplaced, overstated, conceptually problematic, or all of the above. They conclude that this research-while not without flaws, gaps, limitations, unanswered questions, and room for improvement-offers more useful resources and guidance for future research than Lillard and her colleagues acknowledged. Key words: narrative skills; pretend play and child development; research assessments Angeline S. Lillard and her coauthors (2013a) have produced a comprehensive critical review of research about the effects of pretend play on various dimensions of children's cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional development. This article has already generated some useful discussion (in the commentaries that accompanied it), and it will undoubtedly have a significant impact on a wide range of ongoing debates about the role of play in children's development 55
American Journal of Play, 2013
An article by Angeline S. Lillard and others in the January 2013 issue of Psychological Bulletin comprehensively reviewed and criticized the existing body of research on pretend play and children's development. Nicolopoulou and Ilgaz respond specifically to the article's critical review of research on play and narrative development, focusing especially on its assessment of research-mostly conducted during the 1970s and 1980s-on play-based narrative interventions. The authors consider that assessment overly negative and dismissive. On the contrary, they find this research strong and valuable, offering some solid evidence of beneficial effects of pretend play for narrative development. They argue that the account of this research by Lillard and her colleagues was incomplete and misleading; that their treatment of relevant studies failed to situate them in the context of a developing research program; and that a number of their criticisms were misplaced, overstated, conceptually problematic, or all of the above. They conclude that this research-while not without flaws, gaps, limitations, unanswered questions, and room for improvement-offers more useful resources and guidance for future research than Lillard and her colleagues acknowledged. Key words: narrative skills; pretend play and child development; research assessments Angeline S. Lillard and her coauthors (2013a) have produced a comprehensive critical review of research about the effects of pretend play on various dimensions of children's cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional development. This article has already generated some useful discussion (in the commentaries that accompanied it), and it will undoubtedly have a significant impact on a wide range of ongoing debates about the role of play in children's development 55
The Impact of Pretend Play on Children's Development: A Review of the Evidence
Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to positive developments (equifinality), and pretend play is an epiphenomenon of other factors that drive development. Evidence from several domains is considered. For language, narrative, and emotion regulation, the research conducted to date is consistent with all 3 positions but insufficient to draw conclusions. For executive function and social skills, existing research leans against the crucial causal position but is insufficient to differentiate the other 2. For reasoning, equifinality is definitely supported, ruling out a crucially causal position but still leaving open the possibility that pretend play is epiphenomenal. For problem solving, there is no compelling evidence that pretend play helps or is even a correlate. For creativity, intelligence, conservation, and theory of mind, inconsistent correlational results from sound studies and nonreplication with masked experimenters are problematic for a causal position, and some good studies favor an epiphenomenon position in which child, adult, and environment characteristics that go along with play are the true causal agents. We end by considering epiphenomenalism more deeply and discussing implications for preschool settings and further research in this domain. Our take-away message is that existing evidence does not support strong causal claims about the unique importance of pretend play for development and that much more and better research is essential for clarifying its possible role.