23/09/2020
For my critical summary, I decided to focus on play in the curriculum. While researching I came across the work of Margaret Latta. Latta is a Canadian teacher that holds her Bed (University of Lethbridge), MA, and Ph.D. (University of Calgary).
The article I decided to focus on is, “Accessing the Curricular Play of Critical and Creative Thinking”. This article talks about the importance of teachers incorporating play into their lessons, and the need to create a more aesthetic curriculum. Play carries such a huge role in a child’s education. Through play, children are better able to understand concepts, communicate with others and problem solve. In Latta’s article “Accessing the Curricular Play of Critical and Creative Thinking”, she quotes another author, Nussbaum (2010) “play teaches people to be capable of living with others without control; it connects the experiences of vulnerability and surprise to curiosity and wonder, rather than to crippling anxiety”. Since play is so important in the development of children, Latta explains that every classroom should have play incorporated into it.
After doing some more research I found Bert Van Oers and Debbie Duijker’s article, “Teaching in a play-based curriculum: Theory, practice, and evidence of developmental education for young children”. This article focuses on the importance of the play but also gave ideas for how a teacher could incorporate play into their classroom. One of these suggestions was for a pre-school age group where they took on a theme for the classroom and children took on roles that fit the said theme. “Every 6–8 weeks the teacher chooses a new theme that is translated into a sociocultural practice (activity) in which children can adopt roles, employ the role-bound tools, and learn about the rules and tools within the context of that play. The choice of the theme can have different bases: a significant event in the community (e.g. one child got involved in a car accident), events in the year (e.g. going on vacation), or specific interest of the children (e.g. dinosaurs, or World Championship Football). In the transformation and elaboration of the theme-related practice, children are involved as much as possible: they help in setting up the situation (e.g. the travel agency office), and the main topic of the current script. Children are important co-actors in the choice of the significant tools, set-up of specific goals, definition of relevant rules, story to be played out, etc.” This is a unique way to incorporate different experiences into the classroom well playing. It teaches children about possible experiences they may have to face in the future and also shows the appropriate ways of handling the experience. This also can be related to Latta’s article when she quotes Nussbaum because the action of this play, takes away from the “crippling anxiety” some children may face in these new experiences because they have already had a sense of what the new experience will be like.
My next steps for my critical summary is to find a third article that fits into the importance of play in the curriculum and to begin finding more connections between the articles to build my summary.
Van Oers, Bert, & Duijkers, Debbie. (2013). Teaching in a play-based curriculum: Theory, practice and evidence of developmental education for young children. Journal of Curriculum Studies,45(4), 511-534.
Margaret Macintyre Latta, Kelly Hanson, Karen Ragoonaden, Wendy Briggs, & Tamalee Middleton. (2017). Accessing the Curricular Play of Critical and Creative Thinking. Canadian Journal of Education,40(3), 191-218.