Volume 2, Number 2

Published 2009

Editor's Note

Vivian Gussin Paley is a teacher, writer, lecturer, and advocate for the importance of play for young children. Author of a dozen books about children learning through play, she has received numerous honors and awards including an Erickson Institute Award for Service to Children, a MacArthur Foundation Fellows award, and a John Dewey Society’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Paley taught early-childhood classes for thirty-seven years—chiefly at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools—and in her books she describes and reflects on her own learning experiences shared with thousands of students. Her writings focus primarily on three major areas of concern she sees in children: fantasy, friendship, and fairness. Paley learned early the value of observing and listening to children, recording and studying what they said and did in her classroom, and using what she discovered to improve her teaching and children’s lives. In all of this, Paley has been a gatherer and teller of stories, and she remains so in this interview and in her continuing work as a sought-after speaker and consultant. Her latest book, forthcoming in 2010, is The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play.

Special Feature

Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper

Interviews

The Importance of Fantasy, Fairness, and Friendship in Children’s Play: An Interview with Vivian Gussin Paley

Vivian Gussin Paley is a teacher, writer, lecturer, and advocate for the importance of play for young children. Author of a dozen books about children learning through play, she has received numerous honors and awards including an Erickson Institute Award for Service to Children, a MacArthur Foundation Fellows award, and a John Dewey Society’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Paley taught early-childhood classes for thirty-seven years—chiefly at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools—and in her books she describes and reflects on her own learning experiences shared with thousands of students. Her writings focus primarily on three major areas of concern she sees in children: fantasy, friendship, and fairness. Paley learned early the value of observing and listening to children, recording and studying what they said and did in her classroom, and using what she discovered to improve her teaching and children’s lives. In all of this, Paley has been a gatherer and teller of stories, and she remains so in this interview and in her continuing work as a sought-after speaker and consultant. Her latest book, forthcoming in 2010, is The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play.

Articles

Exploring the Uncanny Valley to Find the Edge of Play

Scott G. Eberle

Play often rewards us with a thrill or a sense of wonder. But, just over the edge of play, uncanny objects like dolls, automata, robots, and realistic animations may become monstrous rather than marvelous. Drawing from diverse sources, literary evidence, psychological and psychoanalytic theory, new insights in neuroscience, marketing literature, robotics, and new testimony from survey respondents, this article pinpoints a moment when surprise turns to shock and play drains away. Play is surely difficult to define, but demarcating its porous boundary—where what one moment creates joy can, in the next, cause dread—is a useful step toward describing this shifting phenomenon.

“Sometimes I Pounce on Twigs Because I’m a Meat Eater”: Supporting Physically Active Play and Outdoor Learning

Jane P. Perry and Lisa Branum

This article looks anew at the important role of physically active, outdoor play in children’s social and cognitive development and the role of adults in supporting active, child-directed outdoor play. The authors describe the concept of play ecologies to highlight how children experience their environment as enlivened by their interactive inquiry. Using two episodes of physically active play, the authors discuss the purpose and sequence of the play in the context of the children’s peer culture. They make policy recommendations to help teachers, parents, and organizations increase and enhance physically active play among young children.

Book Reviews

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Laura E. Berk, and Dorothy G. Singer, A Mandate for Playful Learning in the Preschool: Presenting the Evidence

Karen VanderVen

Edward Miller and Joan Almon, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School

Jim Johnson

Risë VanFleet, Play Therapy with Kids & Canines: Benefits for Children's Developmental and Psychosocial Health

Stephen Demanchick

Susan Sessions Rugh, Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations

Victoria W. Wolcott

Linda Nazareth, The Leisure Economy: How Changing Demographics, Economics, and Generational Attitudes Will Reshape Our Lives and Our Industries

Garry Chick

Brian Edmiston, Forming Ethical Identities in Early Childhood Play

Stuart Reifel

Martin J. Doherty, Theory of Mind: How Children Understand Others' Thoughts and Feelings

Rebekah A. Richert

Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames

Steve Jacobs

Thomas McLaughlin, Give and Go: Basketball as a Cultural Practice

Douglas Hartmann

Kasia Boddy, Boxing: A Cultural History

Elliott J. Gorn

Kathryn Marsh, The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children's Songs and Games

Victoria Stevens

Rodney P. Carlisle, ed., Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society

Scott G. Eberle

Contributors

Henry Lowood is Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections and Film & Media Studies in the Stanford University Libraries. Author of dozens of scholarly articles and chapters in collected works, he is also codirector of the Stanford Humanities Lab and director of its How They Got Game Project: The History of Video Games in Interactive Simulations. He also represents the university in Preserving Virtual Worlds, a collaborative project of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the University of Maryland, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Stanford to explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction in partnership with the Library of Congress. Devin Monnens works in game design and information technology in the United States. Zach Vowell is Archivist in the Videogame Archive at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Judd Ethan Ruggill is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Arizona State University and is the author of numerous articles and chapters in books. Ken S. McAllister is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Arizona and the author of Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture. Ruggill and McAllister are coauthors of Fluency in Play: Computer Game Design for Less Commonly Taught Language Pedagogy and codirectors of the Learning Games Initiative, a research collaborative of scholars from more than a dozen universities. Andrew Anderson works in game design and information technology in the United Kingdom.

Scott G. Eberle is Vice President for Interpretation at Strong National Museum of Play. An intellectual historian, he has developed dozens of exhibits for the museum and contributed articles to periodicals ranging from History News to Death Studies. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of books on frontier entrepreneur Benjamin Rathbun, the history of Buffalo and Erie County, and the diverse collections of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. His most recent book is Classic Toys of the National Toy Hall of Fame: A Celebration of the Greatest Toys of All Time! Currently he and play scholar Stuart Brown are working on an interdisciplinary study exploring the elements of play.

Jane P. Perry is Research Coordinator and Teacher at the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She trains graduate students on research protocols, supervises research projects, and serves as a spokesperson on issues related to child development. Her personal research interests are outdoor play, playgrounds, and children’s social interactions. She has contributed to a number of educational periodicals and books and is the author of Outdoor Play: Teaching Strategies with Young Children. Lisa Branum is Administrative Research Assistant at the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center.