For many adults, the facilitation of play is about providing activities, themes, events and even designated play areas. Play, however, involves a far more complex set of processes than can be provided for by such simple measures. It requires an in-depth understanding of the human condition and an even deeper understanding of the interactions between players, environment and inanimate objects, and all this operating on psychological, social, cultural and interpersonal levels.
Play cannot be timetabled, artificially created or even assumed, not without enforcing a sense of educational value upon it and socially engineering any given 'play' situation to satisfy some outcome unattached to the child at play in the here and now. In addition, the processes involved feature best in environments established specifically for the purposes of play, such as schools, home or organised clubs.
Playwork is not about setting outcomes for children's play; it is about ensuring that play is the core value and starting point of all that the playworker does. To some extent this can be achieved by rethinking how we plan, monitor and evaluate play within the setting, the sorts of methods and strategies we use, the types of roles we adopt and the kinds of relationships we create to satisfy a 'play-centred' approach.
PLANNING PLAY
In many childcare sectors the planning process starts with the child, hence the term 'child-centred'. Although this approach is also important to the playwork perspective, we are primarily concerned with how we can plan and facilitate play for all children who subscribe to our play environment, thus making their play needs our top priority.
A simple planning strategy, which supports keeping play at the centre of our work, uses the 16 play types as a 'play type menu'. Children require a balanced diet of play types, each of which provides distinctive ingredients (perhaps play behaviours) while collectively maintaining the 'playful nutrients' required for optimum development and survival.
Planning using play types involves the interactions, relationships and considerations made between the play type, the child, the playworker, the environment and the resources to support the play type. These key elements, when brought together, give us a simple formula for planning play.
If we take, for example, locomotor play as our starting point, we know that to provide for this type of play we may require a series of environments that are appropriate for a variety of physical activities - grass areas, adventure playgrounds, trees, hills, pools and so on. In our planning we may also need to consider what resources may support this play type, such as balls, hoops, climbing frames and sports equipment. We will no doubt think about the child's age and capabilities, and how the playworker can support the development of these in a non-intrusive and facilitative manner. In this way the playworker is not setting up an artificial play environment based on themes, events or activities, but merely providing the 'opportunity' for children to explore a range of locomotor capabilities.
MONITORING PLAY
Monitoring need not be a complex process. When monitoring I usually narrow the process down to three leading questions. As the monitoring diagram on the left shows, the first question regards establishing which play type you are monitoring, so follow the red arrow to the second column, which is locomotor play in this example.
The next step requires you to ask how you are providing for this play type.
Following the blue arrow identifies the type of environment and type of resources you can provide that are likely to encourage children's engagement in this particular type of play.
Finally, ask how you know you are providing for this play type. The last column identifies the types of behaviours associated with this play type, so if you see children demonstrating these behaviours you can be satisfied that you are providing for this type of play.
This is a simple but effective monitoring system based on individual play types. It does, however, have some limitations. For example, it tells you nothing about the nature of how you provide the environment and resources, or of the relationships children have with each other or with you during this type of play. For answers to these types of questions you may require a variety of evaluation strategies.
EVALUATING PLAY
When assessing the value of something you will often find you need some form of scale or measurement. For example, in the case of locomotor play you may decide to count how many children climb a tree during a single session and note who they are - their ages, gender and so on. In this way you can build up a picture of tree-climbing in your setting.
You may gather this information a number of times and use some form of comparative analysis to look for patterns between the sets of data you have collected. For example, are there particular days when tree-climbing always happens? Are these dry or wet days? Are certain children present on these particular days?
You may take the data you collect, share it with colleagues during meetings and then make recommendations to adjust the environment, the resources, playworkers' values, or the planning of this play type to enhance the opportunity for all children to climb the tree. Alternatively, you may take your evaluation further and ask children questions about their tree-climbing habits to enable a richer understanding. You may ask the children, either verbally or through a less formal and perhaps more creative medium, why they enjoy or do not enjoy climbing trees. You may be surprised to discover issues about tree-climbing that you had not considered. For example, younger children may feel unsupported if they cannot reach the branches or prefer to have fixed equipment that they can climb.
INVOLVING CHILDREN
Whatever method you use to evaluate, monitor and plan for play in your setting, the main priority is to involve children wherever possible. We must remember that play belongs to them, so children are the experts in their own play.
We can only create play opportunities by using what we know about play from research and shared wisdom, and by drawing on the expertise of the players.
This is a partnership that is primarily in the hands of children, with types of play at the centre and playworkers on the outside but occasionally invited in.
In most cases playworkers ought to be aiming to provide the same kind of play that children engage in when adults are not present, something which can often be better facilitated using play types than activities, themes or events.
Philip Waters is a lecturer and researcher in playwork, based in Cornwall
Recommended reading
J Hughes, B (2002) A Playworker's Taxonomy of Play Types, 2nd edn. London: PLAYLINK.
