By Jane Perry
Teacher and Research Coordinator, Harold E. Jones Child Study
Center, UC Berkeley
My research highlights how children independently organize themselves as a peer group in the preschool classroom. One very good place to notice peer relations is in the play yard. As any teacher in a play yard will attest, it is outside that the most vivid cultural manifestations of the peer group can appear: in hierarchical rankings of members, in possession of stationary and non-stationary objects, in claiming and relinquishing of territory and friendships, just to name a few. This repetitive, ritualized and often fast-paced play is not frivolous, but serves an important function in cementing interactions when players are seeking out more experience or skills...
I describe the play yard as a set of discrete expectations and cues for learning within which children grapple with complex social and communicative demands. I show how teachers can create and preserve outdoor areas for play, sustain interactions without interfering with the children's self-direction, and use the children's fantasies to cultivate the child's learning perspective.
I present procedures and methods for teachers to use when conducting research that focuses on how children and teachers make sense of the learning environment. I highlight the interactive play episode as a distinct event that teachers can use to cultivate autonomy from the children's perspective. I use episodes of peer play to analyze the progression of play from both the perspective of the children's peer play culture and the classroom teaching culture. I provide numerous examples of how children signal and negotiate "this is pretend" from "this is real" and show how the teacher can support the children's interpretation of playmate intentions and need.
I identify three overriding teaching strategies in this project:
- creation and preservation of areas for separate play events to occur,
- attention to ruptures in the progression of the peer play episode,
- attention to the perspective of the child.
Promoting independent play, particularly outdoors, is especially important when children’s lives are increasingly regulated by the company of adults. Outdoor play settings may be the one place where children can independently orchestrate their own negotiations with the physical and social environment. In independent play, children gain the selfhood necessary to read the social landscape of whatever classrooms they encounter in their future.