Thanks for the comments here on play. I haven't read Newman and Holzman
(now have the book ordered), but have been working on the notion of play
throughout the lifespan, relations of play to tertiary artifacts, and
relations of play to the "cognitive" consequences of school/literacy. I've
been particularly interested in following up the issues of *will* and play
that Vygotsky raises (Vygotsky 1978 and elsewhere), looking back, for
example, at Luria's data and other cross-cultural studies and seeing the
high level of refusal (to play the experimenters' games). Also interested
in seeing a spiraling pattern in play. Vygotsky describes early forms of
play as tightly tied to everyday activity, kids playing that they are
eating while they're actually eating at the table. He sees a trajectory of
abstraction, from play with objects having routine uses to playful
tranformations of objects (the broom becoming the horse) to play without
objects (imagination). However, if we look at complex tertiary artifacts
in large organizations (e.g., disaster simulations, war games), we're back
to play with objects having routine uses (e.g., the doctors and nurses in
the emergency room playing doctors and nurses in an emergency room). And
what's especially interesting is that this kind of activity is intended to
produce not only learning in the persons involved, but also change in the
artifacts, practices, and institutions. So, if we expand the notion of
leading activity to encompass mediational means as well as persons (i.e.,
what factors are having a leading role in development of artifacts,
practices, institutions as well as people), then play, in this expanded
sense, may continue to be a leading activity well past pre-school.
Paul Prior
>Mike and others,
>
>While I definitely agree that "play" tends to be ignored at other levels (9
>and 14 year old) at least in the sense Vygotsky defined it, in younger
>children, I question if there is more than just seeing play by its outward
>appearance (not work). My understanding of play is, it is often seen as
>opposition to work or rather it becomes defined by what it is not, rather
>than what it is. In this sense if we take how Vygotsky saw play at the
>preschool age (rules and result) (tools and result) and don't see it as
>something one moves beyond, but it also develops I think there are other
>possibilities for seeing "play" at different levels.
>
>In this sense, I see Holzman and Newman's work as taking how Vygotsky saw
>the ZPD operating in play to different levels. They transform rules and/for
>results into tool and /for results with play being the former. Play
>(performance, drama, writing etc.) is not in opposition to "reality" or
>work, but connected to it. As with children who play mommy and daddy it is
>very well connected to reality, but at the same time the child can be what
>she/he is not (a head taller than him/her self). In *Schools for Growth*,
>I see "play" being elaborated at a variety of levels. In using both
>Vygotskian ideas of play and Wiittgensteinian language games the importance
>of performance is invoked. From the social therapy centers, to the All
>Star Talent Show a variety "play" activities are described.
>
>In Vygotsky's article on play and in later work (*Child Psychology*) on
>imagination in late childhood, he makes a pretty direct connection between
>the two. So, play (in the preschool period) being not simply a transition
>from rules "and" to rules "for" results, but also having an important
>relationship to creativity, imagination, or "revolutionary activity" to use
>Newman and Holzman's term. As Vera describes in *Notebooks of the mind*
>the act of creativity is not in opposition to culture but a gift to it.
>
>For me, Vygotsky arguing for the ZPD in both play and education is of
>central importance. The connection is not simply that play has the same
>function for younger children that instruction has for older children, but
>a "unity of opposites". As Vera describes in *notebooks* that creativity
>was not solely embedded within this sole individual against the social, but
>that the social; teachers, parents, friends, books etc. facilitated or
>supported that creativity.
>
>While "little league" or other activities are play in an opposition sense
>(not work) are they in the "developmental" sense. Is what Vygotsky saw as
>characteristic of play in preschool better found in other avenues. I tend
>to see the 5th D as being more consistent with play in a "developmental"
>sense.
>
>
> /\ / /\ | /-----
> / \ / /__\ ---|--- /---
>/ \/ / \ | /----
>
>Nate Schmolze
>http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
>schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
>
>*******************************************************************
>"Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
>since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
>it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
>in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
>interests".
>
> L.S. Vygotsky
>********************************************************************