Play as Authoring: A Dynamic Pathway of Becoming

ISCAR 2014Sydney Australia

October 2, 2014

Pi-Chun Grace Ho

Advisor: Dr. Anna Stetsenko

The Graduate CenterThe City University of New York

The focus of this study is not only on why play matters to children but also, on acknowledging each child as a unique person who matters, as agentive actor of shared communal practices and the world at large.

What matters…?

Purpose

To explore children’s play as an active authoring process by integrating cultural-historical theory and dialogic approach merged on the foundation of a transformative activist stance.

Assumption

Through play, children actively explore and develop the dimensions of themselves as social actors who are able to take active positions and stances rather than just reflect on or passively adapt to the world. Such an active positioning goes beyond being situated in the world and instead, allows for children to initiate new possibilities, envision alternatives, explore and negotiate differences and contradictions and thus, to transform and evolve beyond what is given.

Theoretical Background

Vygotsky’s socio-cultural framework

Transformative Activist Stance

Bakhtin’s dialogic approach

Vygotsky on Play

In play, a child creates an imaginary situation in an imaginary illusory world [where] unrealizable desires can be realized.

(Vygotsky, 1967, p.93)

Social sources of development

Cultural tools and mediation

Play as leading activity

Zone of proximal development

Imaginary situations and rules

Transformative Activist Stance (TAS)

“The core of human nature and development has to do with people collaboratively transforming their world in view of their goals and purposes—a process through which people come to know themselves and their world as well ultimately come to be human” (Stetsenko, 2008, p.474).

“Human nature is a process of overcoming and transcending its own limitations through collaborative, continuous, and transformative practices mediated by cultural tools. In other words, it is a process of a historical Becoming of people not as creatures of nature but as agents of their own lives and development, that is, as agents whose nature IS to purposefully transform their world and to thus come into Being and Becoming” (Stetsenko, 2011, p.34).

TAS in Practice

Embrace being within becoming: children’s play as a transformative becoming in which there is a constant flow of transitions where new positions and intentions emerge through evolving collaborative participation and individual contributions.

Constant becoming: reciprocal recognition and mutual becoming in the change as a process and in the process

Active position: learning to have a stance

Access to the choices: individual uniqueness

A vision for the future: transition and transformation;

change and hope

“Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in open-ended dialogue; to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds.” (Bakhtin, 1984, p.293)

Dialogic Approach

• Ideological becoming: an open-ended and unfinished process

• Social struggles: power, authority, contradictions, limitations…etc.

• Otherness: without “thou” there is no “I”• Answerability: refers to the unique responsibility that articulates the relational nature of being with recognizing the selves’ uniqueness within the self-other relationships.

• Embodied boundaries: self—other; space—time

Play as Authoring

Play is about authorship—being able to learn how to take positions and make decisions to be an author. Children take responsibility and they anticipate consequences. They learn to be aware of limitations and set boundaries.

Social struggles are essential elements that set the stage for children to negotiate their relationship with others, and co-create reality through answerable and responsible deeds constitutive of their participation that evolves as a process of becoming a person who is capable of taking charge and authoring their own positions and views, stances and goals.

CHARACTER STANDPOINT COMMITMENT

Force (Intention)

What Being Doing Becoming

Time (Decision)

When Past Present Future

Space (Attention)

Where Attending Intending Anticipating

Flow (Progression)

How Interpreting Authoring Envisioning

Play as Authoring Framework

PRESENT

PAST

FUTURE

Atten

ding

Inte

ndin

g Authoring

Anticipating

Being Beco

min

g

Doing

Interpreting EnvisioningACTOR

AGENT

PERSON-HOOD

CREATIVITY

POSITIONALITY

ANSWERABILITY

Experience CommitmentSocial Interaction

Social StruggleSocial Contribution

Standpoint

Inte

ntion

Progression

Decision

Parti

cipati

on

Colla

bora

tion

Collaboration

Transformation

Initi

ating

Negoti

ating

Acknowledging

Claiming

TIM

EFORCE

FLO

W

SPACE

• Establishing boundaries

• Setting rules• Taking a stand• Taking charge

• Knowing/ Perspective taking

• Anticipating voices and positions

• Exercising authority/ownership

• Differentiating other’s standpoint/limitations

• Comparison/awareness of conflict

• Sharing/taking turns

• Choosing a role with a clear status

• Adopting a role/ division of roles

• Setting scenarios

INITIATING

NEGOTIATING

ACKNOWLEDGING

CLAIMINGRole / Project Difference

Authorship Power/ Responsibility

What

How Where

When

How children “do” authoring in play?

To what extent can we capture more deeply the opportunities children have, through play, to learn to be agentive rather than passive, that is, initiate possibilities, negotiate differences, acknowledge struggles, and exercise agency?

Research Questions

Research Questions

Some specific questions are:

I. Initiating—role/project

1) How do children take the initiative in setting play scenarios?

2) To what extent do children choose a role with a clear status, and how do they take control of a role?

II. Negotiating--difference

3) How do spontaneous narratives in play serve as a tool for dialogic negotiation over the awareness of others’ viewpoints and contradictions?

4) When and how do children negotiate turn taking and sharing, withdrawing and resuming in play?

Research Questions

III. Acknowledging—power/responsibility

5) To what extent do children acknowledge their own role position to others?

6) How do children establish a standpoint and create boundaries to express who is in charge or taking control of shared activities?

IV. Claiming—authorship

7) How do children claim authorship in play against the background of contentious relations and struggles?

8) How is claiming authorship reflected in how children speak and act in anticipating others’ voices and positions?

Participants

12 children age 4 and 5

Participants were recruited from the Child Development and Learning Center at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Research Methodology

Qualitative Study

- Ethnographic methodology

video-recordings

naturalistic observations

field notes

Data Analysis

Four authoring themes

initiating role/ project

negotiating difference

acknowledging power/responsibility

claiming authorship

Three dimensional stances

developmental stance

authorial stance

transformative activist stance

Illustration: “Sophie’s World”Sophie: I have to go to ballet.

Teacher: Do you think Peter can go with you? Sophie: Sure.Teacher: You can invite him.Sophie: Sure, boys and girls can go to my ballet.Sophie: Do you want to go to my ballet?Peter: well…Sophie: It's for boys and girls.Peter: well…Teacher: That's really funSophie: Yes... because you get to, you get to do...

(Sophie is walking toward the other corner of the playroom)Sophie: Okay, here’s my ballet teacher… my ballet teacher. (Gesturing into the space) Hi, ballet teacher, a child gets there. Come! (Turning to Peter) You can go sweetie. Can you say hello?Peter: Yes, but…but, I’ve been not in ballet… well you know…Sophie: I could ask her.

(Play theme shifts- Peter initiates the dialogue)Peter: I need to go somewhere to get more guitars...Sophie: Alright, I have one guitar that I gave to someone...and then he gave me back then (holding a long wooden block as a pretend guitar). So I could give it to you. Look! This is old fashioned guitar. This is my old… (Pause for a moment and walk to the shelve to get another long block) This is my new guitar! Do you like it?

Peter: Is that the old fashioned one?Sophie: No! It is electric…Peter: I like electric better than old fashioned.Sophie: This is fast tooPeter: I’ll like this one because I like it.Sophie: But this one is electric too.Peter: I like this electric because it’s very loud!Sophie: Yes! This one gets louder and louder and louder. If you turn

this switch up, it gets louder…Do you want this one? It gets louder and louder…

Peter: I want to play with this…Sophie: Okay, you can have both of them. (Passing guitars to Peter)

You keep having both of them, and I need to hurry to ballet class.Peter: Okay. I have to go.Sophie: Bye.

Illustration: “Sophie’s World”

Children’s play, from a combined perspective of Vygosky and Bakhtin merged on a transformative activist stance, with its faculty of imagination and creativity can be expansively understood as an indispensible tool for simultaneously co-authoring oneself and the world.

Authoring within the continuous life quest understood as critically reliant on developing one’s unique positions, stances and voices in shared activities, can be applied to re-conceptualizing the complex dynamics of children’s play, especially through the notion of becoming-through-doing as co-authoring of the world and of oneself in transcending "the given.”

Play creates the space of authoring the world and identities in which children can playfully exercise agency in co-creating their world and themselves in re-experiencing and negotiating their possible selves in relation to others.

Conclusion

EGG and SPIRALS…

THANK YOU…