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PLAY AS A MEDIUM FOR LEARNING

by

Mary W. Moffitt

Part 3: Does Play Make a Difference?

  People tend to approach play from two different stances. One, they like it because it just happens to be more fun than most other things that human beings do. It follows, therefore, that we should have more of it, and it's a dull world if we do not. This was not a popular point of view in Puritan times, but it has increased its vogue in recent years.

  Two, others argue that although play might seem to be a somewhat useless activity, that can't really be so. After all, human beings are evolutionary creatures and could hardly have survived by putting so much ' time and effort into an unfunctional activity; therefore, play and games must be useful. Unfortunately, it has been not so easy to show what play and games contribute as It has been to make this claim. Currently it is being argued that play and games contribute to learning, particularly of a cognitive sort. The article by Moffitt provides us with a valuable set of parallels between play and cognitive activity and lays the groundwork for testing some of the propositions about play vs usefulness.

  One has to keep in mind however, that much of what Moffitt describes as play would be called straight exploration or learning by others. It could be that all these understandings are gained through exploration, and that play has. to do less with these cognitive phenomena than with the child's control over the variations that succeed these cognitive phenomena.

  Play activities provide for "information-seeking" behavior. We have known for a long time that play is a powerful Inner force through which a child reaches out to interact with his environment involving movement and different sensory modes. He seems to learn more when he can move around, handle, and manipulate objects. Through such sensory-notor activities, he learns much about the properties of matter and finds ways to adapt to a complex environment through experiences related to cause and affect.' Children who are prevented from having a wide, range of sensory-motor experiences In these early years, due to Illness, overprotection, or other reasons, are not likely to develop certain kinds of percepto-cognitive Information in the same way later on.

  The schematic drawing on the following page is an attempt to show the relationship of different play activities to perceptual-motor development and cognitive development that are necessary for success in academic subjects.

 Both Bruner and Piaget have expressed the point of view that multi-sensory experiences obtained through environmental encounters with the concrete, three-dimensional world are important. It is through sensory experiences that children build a repertoire of "referents" that can be used for interpretation of now experiences. These referents form a basis for classifying information and the child indicates this by saying, "It is like

The many aspects of sensory experiences are processed through observing, comparing, classifying, ordering, Interpreting, summarizing, and imagining. Each of these processes Is an integral part of the way a child acts upon the stimuli he receives. As a child develops his language and Is able to speak about what he sees, hears, feels, tastes, and smells, he extracts meaning from his experiences, which in turn helps him to build his cognitive structure in various ways.

 As one can see from the schematic drawing, there Is a circular relationship of the parts that make up the whole. Each is dependent upon other parts. Play activities provide the momentum through which a child can make a more balanced thrust toward maturation. It has been recognized for a long time that there is a close relationship between perceptual development and school achievement. If a person selects any one of the subject areas and asks the question, "What does a child need for success In this area?" he is struck by the fact that all of the above mentioned activities are basic to learning to read and write, for understanding science, social studies, and other areas.

 An attempt will be made to describe In more detail the specifics of percepto-cognitive development and the activities that may be Important in each area as shown on the schematic representation.

Percepto-Motor Skills

  BODY IMAGE -- Laterality is an internal realization that the body has spatially oriented parts such as a right and left side, a front and a back, which must be coordinated. A child must sense that he is an object in space and that he takes up a certain amount of space. The body may be used to measure space as a child finds out where he can reach, step, jump, and what he can get into, through, and around. Neuromuscular control is promoted as a child assumes various positions and when he propels his body through space in different ways. Directionality is an external referent by which the child learns to use the horizontal and vertical coordinates In the environment for relating himself to other objects in space. His eye must accommodate to space at various focal points such as near, mid, and far areas. Some children have trouble adjusting to the Illusion of size related to distances. The airplane, which is seen as large on the ground, is explained to be "shrinking" when seen as a tiny object in the sky.

 MOTOR PATTERNS - Running, jumping, skipping creeping, throwing, and the like require balance, control and muscular strength. Bones and muscles grow according to usage. The muscles are arranged In pairs and must be used to develop reciprocal action that Is necessary for efficient movement. Many movements are dependent on hand-eye-coordination. All kinds of manipulative skills involve the extension of the body through the use of tools. Certain occular patterns are a part of hand-eye coordination. Both eye focus and eye following are Important. Where does the child look? Does the eye follow the hand in a rhythmic fashion? Many activities such as painting, pushing a small truck along the floor, steering a bicycle, bouncing, throwing, and rolling a ball provide +or near focus and eye following patt6rns..'

Perception of Space

 MEASUREMENT - A child must acquire spatial accommodations for objects In relation to other objects In a variety of ways. Comparative forms require a referent when differentiation is made for how long, how high, how deep,. and the like.

 POSITION - Up, down, above, under, aside, below, In the middle are but a few of the words that are used to designate position of objects in relation to other objects. A child needs to learn how to organize objects and himself in space by the positions so designated.

Fjgure-Ground

 FIGURE-GROUND is a term applied to the way a child selects a certain stimulus from a complex background by ignoring all other stimuli. Perception of form,, texture, smell, and taste is dependent upon what a child picks out to attend to. Some parts will stand out as "figural" and details noted while the background will tend to fall back and lack clarity. Ability to concentrate is related to how long a child can attend to a specific configuration.

CONFIGURATION - A child needs to have a clear image or a basic configuration of an object if he is to make some differentiation of It from among other materials. Special problems may arise in figure-ground differentiation when items are embedded in extraneous detail or only partial figures are shown. Children are often asked to select a particular item from a picture with many other details. If a child does not understand how to use certain clues or he lacks a clear image of the object, the task may cause some difficulty for him. There is some relationship between motor development and figure-ground differentiation because it has been found that children score poorly on figure-ground if their motor development Is poor. Language disorders may arise, too, from Inability to hear sounds distinctly which Is another form of figure-ground differentiation.

 SYMBOLIZATION A child needs to have some experience with concrete objects if he is to fully recognize their symbolization. Some children have difficulty in recognizing specific symbols due to Inexperience In handling, seeing, or hearing. Painting is an activity that Is particularly useful for learning symbolization. Through painting and drawing, a child may learn that he can represent the three-dimensional world through line and form and thus develop his own symbols. Clay is another medium that may be used for this purpose. When a child makes his own symbols, he can better accept the symbols of mathematics and those used to represent sounds for reading.

Whole-Part Learning

 Learning to see the parts or elements that make up the whole Is related to reading and other academic skills. Young children tend to see the whole rather than the parts although some children may see some small detail. Piaget speaks of this tendency as "centration" or, In other words, the child tends to become fixed on one element within the whole. On the other hand, if two shapes are similar but differ only on Interior detail, the child may fail to see the Interior detail as part of the whole pattern.

 Reading, for Instance, requires the skill of looking at Individual letters and then at the word as a whole. Some children learn to Identify words by configuration or shape of the word while others look a ' t the elements or individual letters and then at the whole word. There are many activities that are related to whole-part learning. Construction of all kinds such as block building, woodworking, .collage, painting are some of the activities that require the child to assemble or note discrete parts that make up the larger whole. Taking apart and putting together provide opportunities for learning to look at sequence and order of parts as they relate to each other.

Classification-Seriation

Classification and serration are cognitive processes that result from a child's ability to perceive the attributes of various kinds of materials and organize them in some class or category. Many concepts in science and mathematics are dependent upon the ability to place objects In various kinds of categories or put them in ordered arrangements. Activities for matching and sorting of a wide variety of objects for size, shape, texture and the like are essential and involve perceptual acuity.

Language Development

 Language and thought are closely allied. As children work and play they learn to talk about the attributes of objects and describe what they are perceiving. The English language, of course, has Its own word order and the child learns to transform the syntax In various ways. Actual experience provides for ideas associated with the experience and helps to build meaning for the words he hears and learns to use.

Cognitive Development

Basically, cognitive development is composed of ideas or concepts. These may be both quantitative (many, more, few, numerical., etc.) and qualitative,(warm, cold, rough, smooth, etc.). As children build concepts about their world, they build on past experiences and understandings. Bruner speaks about learning as "continual deepening of one's understanding that comes from learning to-use ideas in progressively more complex forms. Learning proceeds in a spiral order. A child can learn something new because he has a schema into which the new information may be fitted.

The schematic drawing attempts to show the relationship of processes, perceptual intake, language and cognitive development In a circular fashion as indicated by the lines. Each part is related to the other.

Academic Subjects

It should be noted that the skills for academic learnings are the same as those that are found in the schema under perceptual development. It is important, therefore, to provide the kinds of activities that are important for the development of perceptual skills. It has been noted that if a child does not succeed in learning to read, for instance, he is referred to the remedial teacher who frequently has to work with perceptual deficiencies before the child can progress with the task of reading.

It Is apparent that many of the activities that are called "play" are directly related to the development of various kinds of skills that child ' ren need for achieving success in academic subjects. Nothing has been found to take the place of play, and we eliminate these activities at our peril. Furthermore, play is a medium for sustaining interest and mental energy when a child becomes involved In working with materials and pursuing his ideas.

Play activities should be planned to provide for optional learning conditions. This means that materials should be well selected and strategically placed for good use. Adequate amounts should be provided so that children may work without the frustration of waiting too long for turns. Time for play is essential. This does not mean that children will work at academic work and then have ten minutes of "free play"; It means that teaching becomes a process of diagnosing the needs of children and planning for individual progress in a total program.

Children need and respond to activities that contribute to both perceptual and conceptual learning. This demands that the environment present challenge to children. When there is no challenge, attention deteriorates or fluctuates with the result that learning may be affected.

Bruner, Jerome. The Process of-Education (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Press, 1966) p. 12.

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