20 Goldilocks and Her Motorcycle: Establishing Narrative Frames
20 Goldilocks and Her Motorcycle: Establishing Narrative Frames
In this chapter, we give empirical examples of how teachers establish narrative frames for children to play in and from, and what this means to how activities continue. The position of the teacher is highlighted and we analyze the consequences for children’s actions, and the development of the actual play, of different positions taken.
Narratives in Children’s Play
There is a growing body of research on children’s narratives in play, which from a theoretical point of view argue for the importance of adults positioning themselves inside of play. According to Fleer[1] , the seminal work in this regard is the work of Lindqvist[2] in Sweden, who introduced the concept of ‘playworlds’ into the literature: “The focus of playworlds is the teacher and the children collectively role-playing together complex themes with problem situations from stories, fairy tales, and other narratives”, Fleer[3] explains. The specific pedagogical characteristics of playworlds for developing children’s play have been studied by Hakkarainen[4], who illustrates how play- worlds work and the active role this requires of the adult in children’s play. The reason for emphasising the importance of adults contributing to children’s plays, Hakkarainen, Brėdikytė, Jakkula, and Munter[5] argue, is that imaginative play is “disappearing from the lives of children throughout the world”, allegedly often replaced by media use. Consequently, according to this reasoning, preschool teachers are critical to supporting children in finding out how imaginary plays are played out. Adjacent to this reasoning is a more overarching concern about teach- ers’ play willingness and skills, and to what extent such skills are adequate parts of preschool teacher education. The pedagogy of playworlds is primarily communicatively framed through the telling or reading of a story, after which the children and the teacher collaborate on creating the play by joint imagination, agreeing on a basic plot and enacting specific roles. Hakkarainen et al. in their study of adult participa- tion in children’s play development, understood in terms of Vygotsky’s concept of play, argue that narrative mode is an essential prerequisite for gaining access to children’s playworlds. They claim that adults have to become sincere partners in children’s play and they have to use appropriate narrative strategy for joint interac- tion to, in play, create a zone of proximal development (ZPD) for children. Hakkarainen et al. use six criteria to define developed narrative role play, that it: (1) has a social/collective character; (2) is imaginative; (3) is creative; (4) is developed over time; (5) is challenging; and (6) has a narrative structure.
The central play interventions used in Hakkarainen et al.’s[6]study was story presentation, carried out in different forms, such as dramatization or puppet show:
It is important to understand play as a child’s narrative about th