Vygotsky: The Importance Of Play In Children

If an individual has ever interacted with children, or reflected on their own childhood, they will know that play is a key characteristic that defines the early years of life. In fact, it is such an important characteristic of childhood that countless research has been devoted to understanding it (Bartlett, 2011). One cannot talk about play, and it’s importance in childhood, without mentioning Vygotsky. He stated that “play is the leading source of development in the preschool years” (1967, p.6). However, it is not any kind of play that Vygotsky, and other influential developmental theorists such as Piaget and Elkonin, are interested in. Active free play – that is, unstructured, child-driven, physical play (Weisberg, Zosh, Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, …show more content…
Andresen (2005) hypothesised that children who often participated in role-play behaviour (typical of mature free play seen in preschool aged children) would utilise more complex language than children who did not. Andresen (2005) found that in role play children typically establish a scenario – or – play frame, and collaborate to create it. Children then ascertain rules, take on roles, and negotiate tasks (Weisberg, et al, 203). Vygotsky initially discussed this idea – he stated that role play was an essential tool for children to develop language skills (Vygotsky, 1967). Acting as adults (which is highly typical i.e. playing schools, doctors, and house) expands their use of language (Bodrova, Germeroth, & Leong, 2013). This idea is supportive of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development model (Bodrova, Germeroth, & Leong, 2013; Vygotsky, 1978) - children are using language beyond their actual development level, and, by using these advanced actions, the child shows their potential development. Andresen (2005) conducted observational research on 48 children at three preschools, and found that children who participated in role play used more complex language then children who did not. Interestingly, gender differences were found in that girls participated in strict role play where as boys were more likely to be involved in parallel play. Unlike Fekonja and colleagues, Andresen (2005) …show more content…
The tasks included the following: Delay tasks (children given candy and instructed not to eat it until an instructor tells them too), gross motor control tasks (children asked to slow down their speed walking a line), fine motor control tasks (children asked to speed up and slow down when drawing lines), and suppress/initiate behaviour tasks (children asked to describe a toy without touching it). The children were also observed in a free play situation at the conclusion of the study. The strengths of this study were immediately apparent as the depth to which the ability for children to self-regulate was widely tested. The researchers had two groups: half the children received self-regulatory training, and the other half spent the same time in free play. The findings were consistent with the hypothesis in that children who were in the free play condition performed better in the post-test self-regulation examination. Despite the strengths in the research methodology, there were a number of crucial limitations. Firstly, there was no control group. Therefore, we don’t know if the children improved because of time and maturation factors, or if, over the course of the study, the free play in their normal preschool day contributed to their overall performance. Furthermore, whilst the researchers controlled for bias by ensuring inter-rater