Handbook of psychology volume 7 educational psychology
Learning and Teaching in Early Childhood Education: Art, Literacy, Music, and Play
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- Bu sahifa navigatsiya:
- Music Acquisition and Language Acquisition
- Concluding Thoughts on Music in Early Childhood Education
- Play in Early Childhood Education
- Traditional Theories of Play and Cognition.
- Learning and Teaching in Early Childhood Education: Art, Literacy, Music, and Play 297
- Psychoanalytic Theories of Play.
- Educational Perspectives on Play.
Learning and Teaching in Early Childhood Education: Art, Literacy, Music, and Play 295 they sing less familiar songs out of tune. That may be be- cause they are better able to concentrate their listening, audi- ation, and vocal-production abilities on the music aspects of the song rather than the text, a characteristic that seems to be true of children who possess low to average music aptitude (Gouzouasis, 1987). Children seem to benefit most from singing songs without words because an emphasis on learn- ing the words of the song can distract and detract from their attention to the music content. As a child’s language skills develop, song texts (i.e., lyrics) seem to interfere less with vocal development. A mixture of songs with and without words should be of benefit to older children (Levinowitz, 1987). Parents, caregivers, and teachers may still teach their favorite songs, but they can teach them using a neutral sylla- ble instead of text. The ability of a child to sing one or more short phrases of a song, with or without text and in tune, is evidence that he or she has emerged from the tonal babble stage.
Although music is not a language, it is acquired in a manner and context similar to those in which language is learned (Gouzouasis & Taggart, 1995). The mechanisms that a young child uses to produce sounds are the same for both music and language. The throat, mouth, nose, lungs, and diaphragm are used in a variety of ways to produce meaningful music and linguistic sounds. For both music and language, sounds may vary in loudness, pitch, duration, and stress. When sound (or, technically, phones) in the form of vowels and consonants (segmentals), is organized into morphemes—the smallest meaning-based unit in language—the sound is expressed as a linguistic medium (Jakobson, 1968). Similarly, when sound in the form of pitches and durations is organized into tonal and rhythm patterns, it may be considered a music medium (Gouzouasis, 1987). Young children are encouraged to pro- duce linguistic sounds from the time they enter our world through what psycholinguists have described as motherese, a reciprocal and contingent interaction between parent and infant (Broen, 1972; Cross, 1977; Newport, Gleitman, & Glietman, 1977; Phillips, 1970; Snow, 1977). Motherese is characterized by language that is simplified and limited in vo- cabulary, with words pronounced slowly with careful and ex- aggerated enunciation and in a repetitive manner. Motherese makes use of three different components of language: seman- tics (vocabulary), syntax (the predictability of sentence pat- terns), and pragmatics (the social and instrumental uses of language). Although there appears to be a similar babbling and mimicking stage in music, most young children are not exposed to a corresponding music variant of motherese (Holohan, 1984), perhaps because a shared system of seman- tics, syntax, and pragmatics has not yet been worked out between parent and infant. Research has shown, however, that the music babble stage has at least two parts, rhythm and tonality, which seem to op- erate independently of each other (Gordon, 1990). Although the music babble stage can last essentially from birth until the child is 6 or 7 years old, some children have been observed to leave the babble stage completely as early as 24 months, de- pending on their music aptitude and environmental influ- ences. A child can still be engaged in tonal babble after he or she is out of rhythm babble, and vice versa. On their own, children may babble by singing short patterns and experi- menting (i.e., playing) with their voices. Children who bab- ble on a tonal level seem to be singing in a monotone; that is, it centers in a narrow range around one pitch. The songs that such children sing are often unrecognizable to an adult, and the children may be unaware that their singing is different from that produced by adults. Although tonal babble may sound amusical to an adult, it should be encouraged through parental play and imitation that can begin as soon as an infant begins to produce pitched sounds (Stark, 1977; Stark, Rose, & McClagen, 1975). Many children who babble early and often tend be identified as those who learn to sing with the music syntax of an adult earlier than children who babble considerably less. When a child is at the stage of using tonal babble, rhythm babble, or both, all music instruction should be informal (Gordon, 1990). Children who emerge from the tonal babble stage are able to audiate music with tonal syntax and are able to audiate and sing music with a sense of tonality—with a sense of how patterns are organized. They learn to sing what they audiate and to audiate what they sing (Gordon, 1990). In essence, they learn to coordinate their listening (perception) of music, their audiation (conception), and their vocal pro- duction of music (through their breathing, diaphragm, and vocal chords) in order to sing with a sense of tonality.
In many ways babble is an elemental form of play in music. Play, imagination, and creativity are naturally rooted in music activities in early childhood. In fact, one may consider music itself as a form of play. Humans play music. Young children play in a variety of activities while listening to music, and they play musically in a variety of contexts—with their voices, with their bodies, with props, and with music in- struments. Observational research reveals that children spon- taneously accompany their play with music. It is a simple form of multitasking, in that young children possess the
296 Early Childhood Education abilities to attend to more than one activity while engaged in conscious and unconscious music making. Music play may be child initiated or caregiver initiated. Both forms are equally as diverse, rich, and valuable in learning. Moreover, music play may occur in both structured and unstructured and formal and informal settings (Gouzouasis, 1991, 1994). An understanding of the multifaceted relationships between play and music is central to both theories of music acquisition and learning. Moorehead and Pond (1981), Pond (1978), and Littleton (1999) provided brilliant insight to this topic, which sadly has been neglected by education researchers and psychologists.
A child who is developmentally delayed in music learning de- serves the same type of specialized instruction that a child re- ceives who is developmentally delayed in some other aspect of learning. Although it seems that various forms of media made positive contributions to the proliferation of music in the twentieth century, the developmentally detrimental as- pects and negative influences of electronic and digital media are too numerous to mention in this chapter (Gouzouasis, 2000). One may begin by scrutinizing the use of music in children’s television programming and the lack of quality music for young children on radio, recordings, and new forms of digital media (e.g., the Internet). Much of what is marketed as music for young children is actually developmentally ap- propriate for older children and is composed to appeal to par- ents and caregivers. Those factors are compounded by the gross commercialization of early childhood music instruction by corporate early childhood music trainers. From a perspec- tive informed by both research and praxis, it is arguable that any music instruction is better than none at all. Play in Early Childhood Education “The play of children may strike us at times as fragile and charming, rowdy and boisterous, ingenuous, just plain silly, or disturbingly perceptive in its portrayals of adult actions and attitudes” (Garvey, 1977, p. 1). A plethora of scholars have focused on these and other aspects of play’s characteris- tic forms, which has led to a proliferation of theories to ac- count for the origins, properties, and functions of these forms. Thus, to begin to understand play, in all of its ambiguities, re- quires multiple perspectives. This section provides a brief review of selected theories and research on children’s play, highlighting the paradoxical nature of the phenomenon. Defining Play Given the protean nature of play, defining it has proven prob- lematic in the literature. In Western cultures, our understand- ing of play has been influenced most significantly by shared attitudes about what play is not; for example, “play is not work, play is not serious, play is not productive—therefore, play is not important” (Schwartzman, 1991, p. 214). Caillois (1961) argued that “in effect, play is essentially a separate oc- cupation, carefully isolated from the rest of life and generally, is engaged in within precise limits of time and place” (p. 6). Denzin (1980a), on the other hand, proposed that the world of play is not distinct from everyday taken-for-granted reality, but that it occurs in the immediately experienced here and now. He also stressed that on an a priori basis play cannot be distinguished from other everyday interactions, including conversation and other activities of habit. Other definitions of play include that play is pleasurable and enjoyable, has no ex- trinsic goals, and is spontaneous and voluntary (Garvey, 1977); that play is free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, and full of make-believe (Caillois, 1961); and that play is a story that children tell themselves about themselves (Geertz, 1973). The ambiguity of these defini- tions reflects Western society’s struggle over how to concep- tualize and value play. Perspectives on Play The diversity and ambiguity inherent in definitions of play have resulted in broad conceptualizations of the forms and functions of the phenomenon. These conceptualizations in- clude play and cognition, psychoanalytic theory, educational perspectives, play and literacy, and play as communication, among others.
Child de- velopment theorists and researchers have attempted to ex- plain the relationship between play and children’s cognitive development. Two major theorists, Jean Piaget and Leo Vygotsky, are perhaps the most noted for furthering our un- derstanding of this relationship. Piaget (1962) believed that children gain knowledge through the dual processes of as- similation and accommodation. In assimilation, children take in information from their experiences in the external world, which is then integrated—assimilated—into existing mental structures. Because children’s cognitive structures are often inadequate to incorporate new information, they must learn to change or accommodate their mental structures to better accept information that is inconsistent with what they already know. Typically, the opposing forces of assimilation and Learning and Teaching in Early Childhood Education: Art, Literacy, Music, and Play 297 accommodation must work in tandem to reach a state of equi- librium. The activity of play, however, is unique because children are able to suspend reality and make the world adapt to them; thus, assimilation assumes primacy over accommo- dation (Saracho & Spodek, 1995). Piaget (1962) offered an account of children’s unfolding cognitive process by identi- fying three stages of play: sensorimotor, symbolic, and games with rules. According to Piaget, each stage is part of a sequential order in a child’s development. The first stage in- volves repetitive actions that focus on physical activity. In the second stage children use their symbolic abilities to create and act out stories. The final stage involves the social conventions of rules in games. The cross-cultural applicabil- ity of Piaget’s theory, however, has been widely questioned because his data are based primarily on observations of White, middle-class children in Western society (see, e.g., Denzin, 1980b). Vygotsky’s view of the relationship between play and development differs significantly from Piaget’s. Vygotsky (1976) argued that children’s play extends their cognitive de- velopment. Specifically, children have a “zone of proximal development,” a range of tasks between those that can be completed independently and those that can be mastered only through the mediation of adults or more competent peers. Vygotsky believed that social interaction with more compe- tent others is critical to a child’s cognitive development be- cause it is the social context of socialization experiences that shapes the thought processes of the young child. The empha- sis on social interaction renders Vygotsky’s theory of play and cognition applicable across social and cultural contexts.
Freud (1909) used the pretend play of children as the medium for understanding their conscious and unconscious wishes and fears. His theory of play was based on the idea of internal conflict, and he pos- tulated that play is cathartic for children because it allows them to resolve negative feelings that may result from trau- matic experiences. For instance, a child who has experienced the trauma of an accident and must be taken to the hospital, away from the safety and familiarity of home, may later play and replay various hospital scenes in order to cope with feel- ings of fear and pain. Other theorists have modified Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and have related play to wish fulfill- ment, anxiety, and ego processes (see Takhvar, 1988, for a review). Erikson, in contrast, believed that children use play to dramatize the past, present, and future, and to resolve conflicts that they experience in each stage of their develop- ment. Peller (1952) thought that children’s imitations of life in their play were caused by feelings of love, admiration, fear, and aggression. Educational Perspectives on Play. Since the early nineteetn century, educators have observed the transition from play to learning as children struggle to leave the world of play at home to enter the world of learning at school. The idea that play could be used as an articulation of teaching practices and curricula was first put into practice by Pestalozzi (1827), who believed that young children could be educated to develop an inquiring approach to things and words. He developed a pedagogy that encouraged the devel- opment of children’s activity that was built on their potential for moral and aesthetic discernment through reflection. It was Froebel’s modification of Pestalozzi’s theory, how- ever, that became a medium for learning within the context of schooling. Froebel proposed that “play is the purest, most spiritual activity, and at the same time, typical of human life as a whole—of the inner hidden natural life of [human be- ings]” (Froebel, 1885, pp. 86–87). Froebel also suggested that children attempt to maintain continuity in their lives by bringing playful activity to their formalized learning experi- ences. For example, he argued that play allows children to achieve mastery over many aspects of themselves and their environment through symbolic enactment of roles, explo- ration of feelings, and interaction with others (Garvey, 1977). Such themes are typically repeated during several play episodes, which suggests that play is also cathartic for chil- dren because it allows them to reexperience and thereby re- solve or master a difficult situation. Froebel observed that the way in which children play often reveals their inner struggles (Adelman, 1990) and that play is often the primary means for children to learn social expectations, attempt to understand culturally appropriate be- haviors, struggle to learn to manage emotions, and gain ac- cess to the techniques and skills of the world in which they live (Michelet, 1986). According to Froebel, it is essentially the child’s whole personality that can be seen to be involved in play. He in fact contended that to understand the whole child, it is crucial to understand that the inextricable link between the inner and the outer parts of children’s play have a visible and metaphysical aspect (Adelman, 1990). All of Froebel’s activities and materials symbolized spiritual mean- ings that he wanted children to gain (Saracho & Spodek, 1995), and the activities he developed were based on obser- vations he made of German peasant children. Maria Montessori (1965) also conceptualized her teaching methods from the natural play activities of children. She de- veloped her methods by bringing into the classroom materi- als she was designing. She watched children play freely with them and then abstracted what she considered the essential elements of the play. Free play, however, was discouraged after she decided how the materials could be used best
298 Early Childhood Education (Montessori, 1965). Montessori contended that by using her materials, “children could sharpen their abilities to gather and organize their sensory impressions in order to better absorb knowledge” (Saracho & Spodek, 1995, p. 130). It was the advent of the progressive kindergarten move- ment, however, that provided the basis for contemporary educational uses of play (Saracho & Spodek, 1995). The movement was spearheaded by Dewey, who broke from the colonial view that children should avoid play to become more work oriented as they matured (Hartley & Goldenson, 1963). Dewey argued that play could be used to help children construct their understanding of the world, and that through play, children would learn to function at higher levels of consciousness and action (Saracho & Spodek, 1995). Play in Dewey’s terms, however, was still not a free activity. Instead, teachers were to use play to create an environment to nurture and enhance children’s mental and moral growth (Dewey, 1916).
Understanding the connection between children’s knowledge and use of literacy and their play behavior is a focus of current research. Research in the area of play and literacy is grounded in the theoretical work of Piaget (1962) and Vygotsky (1976). Both theorists compare the use of symbols in symbolic play and literacy. Piaget described play as being largely assim- ilative and viewed it as a reflection of the child’s cognitive development. He maintained that during play children demonstrate a mental distancing from what is real in the here and now through their symbolic representations of people, places, things, and actions. Moreover, he suggested that play may serve as a catalyst for the child’s emerging literacy skills. Vygotsky (1976) described how children represent literacy— from the gesture to the written word—as a unified process. He also believed that the social meaning of marks on a piece of paper is rooted in how a child’s indicatory gestures are re- sponded to during play. Unlike Piaget, however, Vygotsky proposed that play is the primary factor in fostering children’s development, liberating their thoughts from specific contexts and from the literal meanings of concrete actions and uses of objects. He also theorized that the ability to engage in sym- bolic play enables children to develop a variety of represented (symbolic) meanings that serve as the basis for later success in literacy. Other theorists have also hypothesized about the relation- ship between play and literacy. Bruner (1983), for example, advised that children’s early literacy development should be an integral aspect of play-based experiences that support children’s ideas, purposes, and social interpretations. He cautioned, however, that structuring and organizing play for educational purposes often results in “taking the action away from the child” (p. 62). Others, such as Donaldson (1978) and Heath (1983), pointed out that engaging in play and learning to read and write demand similar cognitive abilities; that is, through interacting with print, the learner moves from episodes of the here and now to settings that are decontexual- ized within text. Theoretical studies on the play-literacy connection have provided the impetus for a number of empirical studies. There are two main strands of research in this area, both of which focus on the parallel representational processes involved in literacy and play. One strand of research exam- ines how to enhance literacy use and knowledge through symbolic play (see, e.g., Jacob, 1984; Miller, Fernie, & Kantor, 1992; Neuman & Roskos, 1992, 1993; Roskos, 1988). Schrader (1991) and others (see, e.g., Roskos & Neuman, 1993) have been interested in the ways that children pretend to write as part of their dramatic play. Michaels (1981) examined children’s sharing-time narrative styles and differential access to literacy. Dyson (1997) studied the reci- procal relationship between children’s writing and the super- hero dramas and discussions that followed in the classroom and on the playground. A second strand of research has emphasized children’s use of language in symbolic play. Much of the research in this area has demonstrated that when teachers and parents be- come involved with children’s pretend play, there are positive increases in children’s literacy, language, reading, and writ- ing (Bloch & Pellegrini, 1989; Christie, 1991; Galda & Pellegrini, 1985; Goelman & Jacobs, 1994; Pellegrini, 1984; Pellegrini & Galda, 1998). Play as Communication It was Bateson (1955, 1972) who first suggested that play was a paradoxical form of communication. He argued that play is socially situated and characterized by the production and exchange of paradoxical statements about people, objects, activities, situations, and the relationships among these. Bateson (1972) saw play as an ancient form of communica- tion, which was based on his notion about animals’ play fight- ing. He argued that because animals have no negatives (i.e., they cannot say “no”), negative behaviors such as “biting must be illustrated positively by not really biting” (Kelly- Byrne, 1989, p. 246). Playful nipping must be communicated as not really biting, even though it stands for biting. Thus, play is not merely play, but is also a message about itself. In Bateson’s words, “these actions in which we now engage do not denote what these actions for which they stand |
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