Article review - Book Report/Review Example

These issues are important because they show that researchers and educators still do not fully understand what exactly children are doing when they play, and this has implications for the way that education is planned and organized. A better understanding of the links between different types of play and different learning outcomes will enable educators to make the best use of play opportunities so that children gain maximum benefit from them. Ideas covered in class, textbook, and current theories This paper relates to child development and the way that environment, including formal educational environment, can influence the way children acquire key skills and negotiate vital stages and dimensions of in their emotional and cognitive ability.

The theories of Vygotsky are mentioned several times in the paper, and it seems that the authors aim to use Vygotsky’s views on play (Vygotsky, 1978) and build on these with new insights gained from later theorists such as Sternberg (1985) and from new fieldwork observation. In particular, Vygotsky’s views on the importance of pre-school habits such as talking to the self while engaged in make-believe play are expanded, and linked with another of his ideas, namely self-regulation. This ties in with modern approaches on children’s discourse and socialization which view the child’s speech within a whole social context.

How the facts, opinions or research add to our understanding of children, and critique of method, with alternative explanations The main contribution of this article is not so much to understand what children are doing when they play, since this has been very widely researched in the past. There is in this article a focus on why they are commentating on their own play, and making up imaginary play scenarios, or in other words what the purpose is of these key activities in terms of the overall development of the child.

By breaking down the aspects of play in to smaller chunks, the researchers are able to see detailed effects of the different behaviors. This exploration helps resolve the debate about how valuable taught sessions are for pre-school children, as compared to more free-flowing play sessions. The method involved reviewing a long term (two year) project with 32 carefully selected foundation stage practitioners which is a very large undertaking. Two immediate issues arise from this format: there is no random sampling, and so to some extent findings may depend upon variables in the educator sample, and not on children’s learning, and there is going to be inevitably a great deal of researcher selection in the “events” that are chosen for closer examination.

These weaknesses are compounded by the extent of variation in coding and reporting “events” between researchers (between 74.8 and 96.1 intercoder reliability). This means, in effect, that up to a quarter of the findings can be explained by different coding practices rather than any difference in child behavior. In the second experiment, older children participated in the tests, which begs the question how comparable it is with the first investigation. New Terms and Concepts None of the terms were completely new to me, but I did gain a deeper understanding of the concept of self-regulation.

The story about the child putting on the jacket, with verbal encouragement from an