Chen F., Fleer M. A Cultural-Historical Reading of How Play is Used in Families as a Tool for Supporting Children’s Emotional Development in Everyday Life
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Chen F., Fleer M. A Cultural-Historical Reading of How Play is Used in Families as a Tool for Supporting Children’s Emotional Development in Everyday Life // Preschool Education Today. 2017, Issue 9 -
p. 58–69.
This work is licensed under a Сreative Commons Atribiution - NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Abstract
Many studies have identified the positive link between imaginary play and emotion regulation in laboratory settings. However, little is known about how play and emotion regulation are related in everyday practice. This article examines how families use play as a tool to support young children’s emotion regulation in everyday family life. Two middle-class Australian families with children aged three years were studied over a six-month period (n = 30.75 hours of video observations and interviews). Findings show how manipulative play was used by parents during every day routines to mediate children’s emotions. Parents and children interact together to create an emotional zone of proximal development (ZPD) through play, suggesting that the development of emotion regulation is not an individual practice as identified in the literature, but collectively constructed. This study opens a new angle for understanding for a dialectical relation between manipulative play and children’s emotional development.
References
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26. Quinones, G. 2013. Vivencia Perezhivanie in the Everyday Life of Children. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Monash University.
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28. Singer, D. G., R. M. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek, eds. 2006. Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth. New York: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304381.001....
29. Tudge, J. 2008. The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
30. van Oers, B. 2013a. “An Activity Theory View on the Development of Playing.” In Children’s Play and Development: Cultural-Historical Perspectives, edited by I. Schousboe, and D. Winther-Lodqvist, 231–250. The Netherlands: Springer.
31. van Oers, B. 2013b. “Is it Play? Towards a Reconceptualization of Role Play from an Activity Perspective.” European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 21 (2), 185–198.
32. Vygotsky, L. S. 1966. “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child.” Soviet Psychology 5 (3): 6–18. (first published in 1933).
33. Vygotsky, L. S. 1987. The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: Problems of General Psychology. Vol. 1 New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1934).
34. Vygotsky, L. S. 1997a. “Self-Control (M. J. Hall, Trans.).” In The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions, edited by R. W. Rieber, Vol. 4, 207–219. New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1931).
35. Vygotsky, L. S. 1997b. “The Structure of Higher Mental Functions (M. J. Hall, Trans.).” In The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions, edited by R. W. Rieber, Vol. 4, 83–96. New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1931).
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37. Vygotsky, L. S. 2005. “Appendix.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 43 (2): 90–97. (first published in 1999).
2. Chaiklin, S. 2012. “A Conceptual Perspective for Investigating Motive in Cultural-Historical Theory.” In Motives in Children’s Development: Cultural-Historical Approaches, edited by A. Edwards, M. Fleer, and M. Hedegaard, 209–224. New York: Cambridge University Press.
3. Cohen, J. S., and J. L. Mendez, 2009. “Emotion Regulation, Language Ability, and the Stability of Preschool Children’s Peer Play Behavior.” Early Education and Development 20 (6): 1016–1037.
4. Elkonin, D. B. 2005. “The Psychology of Play.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 43 (1): 11–21.
5. Fantuzzo, J., Y. Sekino, and H. L. Cohen. 2004. “An Examination of the Contributions of Interactive Peer Play to Salient Classroom Competencies for Urban Head Start Children.” Psychology in the Schools 41 (3): 323–336.
6. Fleer, M. 2008. “Using Digital Video Observations and Computer Technologies in a Cultural-Historical Approach.” In Studying Children: A Cultural-Historical Approach, edited by M. Hedegaard, and M. Fleer, 104–117. London: Open University Press.
7. Fleer, M. 2012. “The Development of Motives in Children’s Play.” In Motives, Emotions and Values in Children’s and Youth’s Development: Advances from a Cultural-Historical Approach, edited by M. Hedegaard, M. A. Edward, and M. Fleer, 79–96. New York: Cambridge University Press.
8. Fleer, M., and M. Hammer. 2013. “Emotions in Imaginative Situations: The Valued Place of Fairytales for Supporting Emotion Regulation.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 20 (3): 240–259.
9. Galyer, K., and L. Evans. 2001. “Pretend Play and the Development of Emotion Regulation in Preschool Children.” Early Child Development and Care 166 (1): 93–108.
10. Gavazzi, I. 2011. “Emotional State Talk and Emotion Understanding: A Training Study with Preschool Children.” Journal of child language 38 (5): 1124–1139.
11. Haight, W., J. Balck, T. Ostler, and K. Sheridan. 2006. “Pretend Play and Emotion Learning in Traumatized Mothers and Children.” In Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth, edited by D. G. Singer, R. M. Golinkoff, and K. Hirsh-Pasek, 1–30. New York: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304381.001.0001/acprof-9780195304381....
12. Hedegaard, M. 2005. “Strategies for Dealing with Conflicts in Value Positions between Home and School: Influences on Ethnic Minority Students’ Development of Motives and Identity.” Culture & Psychology 11 (2): 187–205.
13. Hedegaard, M. 2008. “Principles for interpreting research protocols.” In Studying Children: A Cultural-Historical Approach, edited by M. Hedegaard, and M. Fleer, 46–64. London: Open University Press.
14. Hedegaard, M. 2012. “Analyzing Children’s Learning and Development in Everyday Settings From A Cultural-Historical Wholeness Approach.” Mind Culture and Activity, 19: 1–12.
15. Hedegaard, M., and Chaiklin, S. 2005. Radical-Local Teaching and Learning: A Cultural-Historical Approach. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
16. Hedegaard, M., and Fleer, M. 2013. Play, Learning, and Children’s Development: Everyday Life in Families and Transition to School. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
17. Hoffmann, J., and S. Russ, 2012. “Pretend Play, Creativity, and Emotion Regulation in Children.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 6 (2): 175–184.
18. Holodynski, M. 2009. “Milestones and Mechanisms of Emotional Development.” In Emotion As Bio-Cultural Processes, edited by B. Rцttger- Rossler, and H. J. Markowitsch, 139–163. New York: Springer Science+Business Media.
19. Holzman, L. 2009. Vygotsky at Work and Play. London and New York: Routledge.
20. Kaugars, A. S., and S. W. Russ. 2009. “Assessing Preschool Children’s Pretend Play: Preliminary Validation of the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool Version.” Early Education and Development 20 (5): 733–755.
21. Kuczaj II, S. A., and K. M. Horback. 2012. “Play and Emotion.” In Emotions of Animals and Humans: Comparative Perspectives, edited by S. Watanabe, and S. Kuczaj, 87–112. Japan: Springer. http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-4-431-54123-3/page/1.
22. LaFreniere, P. 2011. “Evolutionary Functions of Social Play: Life Histories, Sex Differences, and Emotion Regulation.” American Journal of Play 3 (4): 464–488.
23. Lowenstein, L. ed. 2010. Creative Family Therapy Techniques: Play, Art, and Expressive Activities to Engage Children in Family Sessions. Toronto: Champion Press.
24. Milteer, R. M., K. R. Ginsbrug, and D. A. Mulligan. 2012. “The Importance of Play in Promoting Health Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bond: Focus on Children in Poverty.” Pediatircs, 129 (1): e204–e214.
25. Philipp, D. 2012. “Reflective Family Play: A Model for Whole Family Intervention in the Infant and Preschool Clinical Population.” Infant Mental Health Journal 33 (6): 599–608.
26. Quinones, G. 2013. Vivencia Perezhivanie in the Everyday Life of Children. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Monash University.
27. Sallquist, J., N. Eisenberg, T. L. Spinrad, B. M. Gaertner, N. D. Eggum, and Zhou, N. 2010. “Mothers’ and Children’s Positive Emotion: Relations and Trajectories across Four Years.” Social Development 19 (4): 799–821. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9507.2009.00565.x
28. Singer, D. G., R. M. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek, eds. 2006. Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth. New York: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304381.001....
29. Tudge, J. 2008. The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
30. van Oers, B. 2013a. “An Activity Theory View on the Development of Playing.” In Children’s Play and Development: Cultural-Historical Perspectives, edited by I. Schousboe, and D. Winther-Lodqvist, 231–250. The Netherlands: Springer.
31. van Oers, B. 2013b. “Is it Play? Towards a Reconceptualization of Role Play from an Activity Perspective.” European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 21 (2), 185–198.
32. Vygotsky, L. S. 1966. “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child.” Soviet Psychology 5 (3): 6–18. (first published in 1933).
33. Vygotsky, L. S. 1987. The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: Problems of General Psychology. Vol. 1 New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1934).
34. Vygotsky, L. S. 1997a. “Self-Control (M. J. Hall, Trans.).” In The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions, edited by R. W. Rieber, Vol. 4, 207–219. New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1931).
35. Vygotsky, L. S. 1997b. “The Structure of Higher Mental Functions (M. J. Hall, Trans.).” In The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions, edited by R. W. Rieber, Vol. 4, 83–96. New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1931).
36. Vygotsky, L. S. 1997c. “Genesis of Higher Mental Functions (M. J. Hall, Trans.).” In The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions, edited by R. W. Rieber, Vol. 4, 97–119. New York: Plenum Press. (first published in 1931).
37. Vygotsky, L. S. 2005. “Appendix.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 43 (2): 90–97. (first published in 1999).