Framing and Interpreting Children’s Play

Abstract

This chapter offers an account of the process of documenting children’s play and the approaches explored in seeking to develop credible interpretations of particular play events. School playgrounds are sites where the number of fast moving, disparate and often opaque activities unfolding simultaneously can significantly challenge the intention to observe, record and classify. Those adults who are most familiar with school playgrounds, the teaching and learning support assistants routinely on duty through both short and the longer midday breaks, know them well but watch, on the whole, with the priorities of safety and social harmony in mind. The details of what children do, and why, and what the meanings of their play might be, are not, mostly, a focus of concern for them. For this research project identifying both the variety of forms of play and their significance for the children enacting them entailed a different kind of watching. Often much more selective — without the responsibility to constantly sweep the playground space with a mildly inquisitorial gaze — we were able to choose what to watch and for how long. Watching occupied a substantial proportion of our time in the playground. We had discussed but rejected approaches involving, for example, radio microphones attached to particular children.