A Unique Child: Practice in pictures - Role play

Christopher, Vicky and Megan (all aged four) are in the writing corner, which has become their factory office. They make good use of all the writing resources, telephoning and writing things down. Christopher cuts out trouser shapes to display in the factory window. They measure the trousers against themselves. Other children come and interact with them then leave, but Christopher and Vicky continue the game for a long time.

GOOD PRACTICE

1. The children are pretending to work in an office in a factory. Pretence is something that we generally start to see emerging in children well into their second year, when they start to 'hold' objects and people in their minds even when they are not there.

This 'object permanence' means that a child can link their imitative play with symbolic activity, such as using a banana as a telephone. As Sue Rogers and Julie Evans describe in Inside Role Play in Early Childhood Education - Researching the child's perspective, children around two years old begin to get an 'understanding of two worlds - the world in which the banana is just a banana, and the world in which the banana can also become a telephone.'

As they get older, their pretend play becomes more complex. By the age of four, children like Christopher and Vicky are increasingly engaging in sophisticated, co-operative pretend play. Their game involves devising alternative realities and action plans where they assign roles to each other and decide story plots.

2. It is generally accepted that nursery home corners and role-play areas are important for children's creative and social development, and that they can provide meaningful ways for children to explore literacy and mathematical concepts.

The research by Rogers and Evans focused particularly on reception-age children and their perspectives on role play in school. Their findings throw up important questions about the nature of genuine pretend play, and about how we provide for it in settings.

When asked 'what is role play?', the children showed an impressive grasp of the essential elements of pretend play and a deep understanding of the distinction between what is real and what is 'just pretend'.

They also asked children what they liked about role play. They talked about how they enjoyed 'pretending' and being in roles and about having the time to play and have fun. But when the children were asked why they thought there was a role-play area in their classroom, they had a very different perspective.

The children's answers didn't refer to pretending at all, but focused much more on learning and on topics and specific themes. 'We're learning things in school and then we play in there with them' was one comment.

The language they used to respond to the question was much less elaborate and there was no mention of having fun and enjoying themselves. Rogers and Evans suggest that 'Role-play in school is often prescribed by real-world learning and curriculum objectives rather than the interests and inclinations of the children.'

3. Christopher and Vicky developed their role play in the writing corner, but they might just as easily have begun playing this game anywhere in the setting.

The availability of the resources and the 'office' style lay-out might have prompted some of the initial ideas, but genuine pretend play can't be defined by a 'corner'. It was important for Christopher and Vicky that the resources were presented in an open-ended way so that they were free to use their imaginations to develop and extend the play in ways that were meaningful to them.

Despite this supposed lack of external structure, we can see evidence of many areas of learning - imagination, creativity, communication, physical dexterity with scissors, measurement and comparison, as well as their growing understanding of the adult world.

They showed perseverance and concentration by sustaining the play for a long time. This can only happen when children are allowed long uninterrupted opportunities for activity and when role play is valued and honoured, so that adults don't come along and insist children 'come and read' or do other work regarded as more important.

4. The chance to be with their friends was another significant theme to emerge from the Rogers and Evans research and the desire to be with others and maintain a friendship was as important for some children as the content of the role play.

Like adults, children need the emotional stability and comfort that friends can provide. Making friends and learning how to keep them is an important part of children's social development and contributes to the acquisition of the interpersonal skills that will make a big difference to them in later life.

Role play is an ideal context for children to build social skills and cement relationships. Sometimes in settings, children's access to their friends is limited because adults mostly control the groupings. Several earlier research studies have suggested that children's social skills development could be affected by classroom practices.

Very prescriptive and highly structured environments don't allow children the kinds of peer group activity they need for building friendships.

5. Children often like to transport toys and resources around the setting, or to extend the boundaries of the space defined (by the adults) for role play.

Equally, their urge to play mummies and daddies or have a tea party is not limited by the role-play area becoming a travel agent's or an underwater cave!

Rogers and Evans describe how adults seek to control and contain pretend play, and how children often like to use role-play areas as private spaces.

The drive to 'escape adult gaze' is an important one and is linked to the urge that children have to build dens and hiding places.

It can be hard to provide opportunities for all these kinds of activities when space is an issue. Many settings now use the outdoors more effectively in allowing children the freedom to develop elaborate role-play themes where noise and physical activity aren't an issue.

6. Listening to children's views and using space flexibly and creatively make a big difference to the quality of play experiences.

Sometimes the urge to resource a room with all areas of provision doesn't take into account the specific needs of groups of children at specific times. Involving children in resourcing and layout decisions is an opportunity to make it meaningful here and now.

As Rogers and Evans say, 'role-play offers a particularly powerful context for developing pedagogy with, rather than separately from, children.' They encourage us to challenge ways of working that talk about the value of role-play, but seek to limit and control it. It is more than just a way of meeting curriculum objectives, or something that happens in a corner when the 'real work' is done.

Rather than talk of learning or teaching through play, they suggest thinking about 'teaching for play', so that children have real involvement in the way that role play is presented in the learning environment and to help break down those perceived divisions between what is work and play.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Sue Rogers and Julie Evans, Inside Role Play in Early Childhood Education - Researching young children's perspective (Routledge)

Further information

The stills are taken from Siren Films' 'Pretend Play'. For more information, visit Siren Films at www.sirenfilms.co.uk or call 0191 232 7900

LINKS TO THE EYFS GUIDANCE
- UC 1.1. Child Development
- PR 2.3 Supporting Learning
- EE 3.3 The Learning Environment
- L&D 4.4 Areas of Learning - creative development