Theories Related to the Stages of Play
Piaget’s Stages of Play
Although Piaget is most well-known for his theory about the stages of cognitive development, which were discussed in Chapter 3, he also investigated the development of children’s play behaviors. Piaget stated, “Practically every form of psychological activity is initially enacted in play” (1967, p. 23). Piaget described three stages of play, each coinciding with a cognitive stage (Piaget, 1962; Piaget, 1967).
During the sensorimotor stage, infants and toddlers engage in practice or functional play consisting of repetitive movements and exploratory actions and frequently involving play with objects.
Children in the preoperational stage engage in symbolic play. During symbolic play, children use actions and objects to represent their personal ideas or mental images. As children have increasing experiences in the real world, they construct robust schemas that fuel their imaginations and enhance their abilities to symbolically represent their ideas. As children engage in symbolic play, they feel a sense of control over their experiences because they are able to represent reality from their egocentric perspectives (Piaget, 1962).
The last stage of play identified by Piaget is the games with rules stage, which begins during the latter part of the preoperational stage or early in the concrete operational stage. During games with rules, children play with others and in rule-governed games and learn to regulate their behaviors to comply with the rules and to share mutual obligations for their play (Piaget, 1967). You will learn more about games with rules later in the chapter.
Sara Smilansky (1968), an Israeli psychologist best known for her pioneering work in aiding disadvantaged children to learn to play more effectively, expanded on Piaget’s observations of early functional play. Like Piaget, Smilansky noted that this type of play emerges during infancy and occurs when infants use their senses and muscle movements to observe and manipulate objects. Functional play is essentially physical exercise, which then influences cognitive development. Initially, play behaviors are unintentional but become repeated patterns of behavior as infants gain enjoyment from their own physical actions. For example, four-month-old Alyssa may reflexively grasp a rattle that has been placed within her reach. She will stare at the novel sight and, in so doing, move her arm toward her face to get a closer look at it. As she moves her arm she hears an intriguing sound and turns her head toward it. Eventually, she figures out that the sound happens whenever she moves her arm. If Alyssa likes the auditory sensation, she attempts repetitions of the behavior, enjoying both the muscle movement and the sensory result.
Parten’s Categories of Social Play
As a sociologist, Mildred Parten (1932) believed that through playful social interactions children learn “. . . norms, rules, and cultural patterns” (p. 137). Based on her observations of preschool free play, she sorted children’s behaviors into six categories of social involvement:
· unoccupied behavior,
· solitary play,
· onlooker behavior,
· parallel play, • associative play, and
· cooperative play.
According to Parten (1932), infants and preschoolers sometimes demonstrate unoccupied behavior when they are not involved in play or any other activity. At other times, infants and very young children engage in solitary play, when they play alone without involving others. Parten also identified a non-play behavior that approaches social involvement. Onlooker behavior occurs when a child watches others play but remains uninvolved for the most part. The next level identified by Parten is parallel play, which occurs when two or more children play beside or near each other but remain individually directed. Around age three, children begin to engage in associative play in which two or more children interact or converse while playing, but not inside the same play scenario. For example, two children might be playing near each other in the block area, but their socialization occurs due to their proximity to the blocks and not because they have shared play goals or scenarios. The most advanced social category identi-
| Clapping games are an example of cooperative play because children need to agree upon the rules for it to be successful. Can you think of other examples of cooperative play?
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fied by Parten (1933) is cooperative play in which two or more children engage together in a shared play scenario with mutually decided rules. |
Based on her research, Parten noted that children, despite their age or capabilities, frequently elect to play at lower levels of social participation. She also noted that as children get older, their tendency to play in larger groups increases (1932). Early childhood teachers can use their awareness of the social categories of play not only to observe and assess children’s social competence, but also to incorporate indoor and outdoor play opportunities that promote socialization.
In the following sections, we look at theories pertaining to specific domains of development and include the benefits of play to each.