Transactions at Play Play & Culture Studies, Volume 9
EDITED BY Cindy Dell Clark
Transactions at Play Edited by Cindy Dell Clark
Play & Culture Studies, Volume 9
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA,® INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Copyright © 2009 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2009922979 ISBN: 978-0-7618-4485-3 (paperback : alk. paper) eISBN: 978-0-7618-4486-0
⬁™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48—1984
Dedicated to; William Joseph Michael Clark
Play on, whatever happens
Contents
Foreword James E. Johnson
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Introduction Cindy Dell Clark
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PART I. PLAY AND CULTURE Commentary: Play ↔ Culture Helen B. Schwartzman
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The Cultural Roles of Emotions in Pretend Play Suzanne Gaskins and Peggy J. Miller
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Nine a Side Basketball in the Kingdom of Tonga: A Case Study in Negotiating Gender Roles Avigail Morris
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Is Hazing Play? Jay Mechling
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PART II. TRANSACTING PLAY Commentary: The Richness of Play Research R. Keith Sawyer 4
Keeping It Real: An Examination of the Metacommunication Processes Used within the Play of One Group of Preadolescent Girls Julie Dunn v
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Autistic Children’s Play with Objects, Peers, and Adults in a Classroom Setting Robyn M. Holmes and Jill K. Procaccino Effects of Partner on Play Fighting Behavior in Giant Panda Cubs Megan L. Wilson, Rebecca J. Snyder, Zhi H. Zhang, Luo Lan, C. L. Li, and Terry L. Maple
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PART III. ADULTS IN CHILDREN’S PLAY Commentary: Inquiries into the Roles of Adults in Children’s Play Artin Goncu and Anthony Perone 7
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“It’s Only Play if You Get to Choose”: Children’s Perceptions of Play, and Adult Interventions June Factor
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The State of Recess in Pennsylvania Elementary Schools: A Continuing Tradition or a Distant Memory? Michael M. Patte
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The Toy Bag: An Examination of Its History & Use in Early Intervention for Infants and Toddlers with Special Needs Eva Nwokah
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Contributors
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Index
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Foreword James E. Johnson—Series Editor
Play & Cultural Studies (P&CS) fits well with our current global environment and our constantly increasing need to explore cultures and find convergences and divergences in individual and group play and factors that affect play and related phenomena over the lifespan. The Series is a publication of The Association for The Study of Play (TASP), the premier professional organization in academia dedicated to interdisciplinary research and theory construction concerning play. TASP held its first annual meeting in Detroit, Michigan in 1975. Although our world has changed so very much since then, the commitment and scholarly rigor displayed by TASP has remained the same or has gone up. Transactions at Play edited by Cindy Dell Clark is the ninth volume in the P&CS series and the third for which I have been privileged to be the Series Editor. The job has proven to be very useful in helping me keep up at least to some degree with the vast swath of literature from psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, folklore, education, animal studies, and other fields that have studied play and culture. The editors of each volume of the series have faced challenges connecting chapters from such a diverse group of contributors. Is the book as a whole greater than the sum of the individual chapters? Assigning a title suggests so, but even if the products are not ‘neatly threaded bracelets’, they have been arguably ‘boxes of jewels’. Transactions at Play is certainly a box of jewels if not more. Cindy Dell Clark not only has brought together excellent chapters, but she has also grouped them into three sections, Play and Culture, Transacting Play, and Adults in Children’s Play and has asked leading luminaries to write introductory commentaries for each section. Moreover, her use of the powerful vii
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concept of ‘transactional processes’ as a thematic link across the pages of the book contributes to the text’s coherence and organizational clarify. I found the book a pleasure to read and rewarding for the knowledge and ideas conveyed. As a form of intellectual play, try to construct your own piece of jewelry from the gems you find here.
Introduction Cindy Dell Clark
When players play, there is a transactional process at work. For a play exchange shifts and pivots interactively. A prototypical example is the seesaw, in which a mutual interactivity powers the teeter-totter action. Another, poignant example comes from my work with diabetic children, which showed interactive play to be a way of coping with illness. A mother and her diabetic son shared a playful transaction during each insulin injection. Agreeing with her son that the demarcated lines on the syringe could be treated as a pretend zebra with stripes, the mother announced that zebra would give the boy a kiss, as the syringe’s needle penetrated his skin. In response, the boy protested that this was a “bad” kiss. Stomping his foot on the syringe encasement to fracture it, the boy retorted “bad, bad zebra – you hurt me!” A rather profound exchange occurred in this play, as the parties inclusively combined the caring (“kiss”) and hurtful (“bad”) interpretations of injection into one shared script. Transactions at play can be found widely, in animals and humans alike, as seen in the remarkable range of work in this volume. A rich array of play contexts is evident across the nine chapters, encompassing varied continents, age groups, and sorts of players. The play processes of giant pandas, of homevisiting therapists, of Polynesian women, and of autistic kids are just part of the mosaic of play this volume spans. The chapters have been corralled into three sections, three chapters to a section. Each triad of chapters is preceded by a commentary setting the stage, introducing, and raising issues germane to the commentator on that section. Helen Schwartzman, Keith Sawyer, as well as Artin Goncu and Anthony Perone generously lent their expertise and ideas to the commentaries. Section one, dealing with the culturally linked nature of play, is introduced through the commentary by Helen Schwartzman. The connection of play and ix
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culture is a titular premise of this series, one that has been long important to members of The Association for the Study of Play. The section brings glimpses of play in America, among the Yucatec Maya, and among the Polynesian Tonga. In each of the three papers, questions are raised that implicate the imprint of culture upon play (and/or vice versa), thanks to coauthors Suzanne Gaskins and Peggy Miller, Avigail Morris, and Jay Mechling. Section two deals with the form and metacommunication of play, that is, its transactional dynamics that scaffold the action as play takes place. Prefaced by a commentary by R. Keith Sawyer, this section examines play dynamics as uncovered by Julie Dunn, Robyn M Holmes and Jill K. Procaccino, as well as the research team of Megan Wilson, Rebecca Snyder, Zhi H. Zhang, L. Luo, C.L. Li, and Terry L. Maple. As Sawyer observes, these three chapters convey a sense of the “advanced and interdisciplinary nature” of play research. Section three begins with a commentary by Artin Goncu and Anthony Perone, considering the role of adults in children’s play. The authors in this section, June Factor, Michael Patte and Eva Nwokah, consider ways in which adults can be barriers, shapers, or interventionists of child play. Contemporary debates about the role of adults in children’s play comprise an important discourse about play itself, at a time when play is sometimes thought to be at risk in society (see film and book, Goodenough, 2007). As illustrated by these chapters and commentaries, play can neither be taken for granted nor treated as a static and fixed entity. The process of play is very much a transaction with social and cultural hydraulics. Play is transacted amidst sociocultural shaping, often with cross-generational involvement. Play research tends also to be transactional in its interdisciplinary reach, and in the weaving of different research approaches. The healthy interchange of ideas about play, one of the hallmarks of The Association for the Study of Play, is a process this rich volume of work both reflects and hopes to cultivate.
REFERENCES Clark, Cindy Dell (2003). In sickness and in play: Children coping with chronic illness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Goodenough, Elizabeth (2007). Where do the children play? A study guide to the film. Michigan: Michigan Television.
Part One
PLAY AND CULTURE Commentary: Play ↔ Culture Helen B. Schwartzman
What is the relationship between play and culture? An important question and it is not surprising that it would be asked in a journal with the title Play and Culture. The articles in the following section address this question by looking at the impact of culture on play (Suzanne Gaskins and Peggy Miller), by examining the role of play in culture change (Avigail Morris), and by asking us to think about what counts as play as we specifically consider the question: “is hazing play?” (Jay Mechling). Considered as a group these three articles speak to many of the themes that continue to animate discussions among play researchers regarding both the “what” and the “why” of play. CULTURE → PLAY In “The Cultural Roles of Emotions in Pretend Play” Gaskins and Miller draw on long-term research in two different cultures (Yucatec Maya and European-American) to illustrate how children’s pretend play is shaped by cultural assumptions and routines related to: 1) how (or if) play is valued in the society and whether or not adults engage in play with children; 2) the overall composition of play groups; 3) cultural norms about the expression of emotions; and 4) the value placed on the production of realistic or fictional narratives. The authors use this approach to explain what types of pretend play occur in these two societies. In the Maya case Gaskins and Miller (page 28) report that: Mayan children do not pretend to be animals, monsters, or inanimate objects. They do not enact pretense through dolls or toy figures. . . .They also do not
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appear to have pretend playmates or imaginary companions. . . .And pretense is never allowed to invade real everyday interactions.
Most importantly, the authors suggest, play does not appear to “serve strong emotional roles” for these children and while they do engage in some forms of pretense the expression of emotions in play is quite limited. The picture is quite different for European-American children who were found to spend significant parts of their day engaged in pretend play and mothers, in particular, enthusiastically encourage this activity. The most important difference here is that European-American children frequently “express emotion” and “intense feelings” as part “of their pretend play scripts, whether these are enactments of situations from their real world, from the fictional stories they are regularly exposed to, or from their own fantasies” (page 18). By focusing on the expression of emotion in play the authors are able to make a compelling argument about the power of culture to shape both the content of a play event as well as its “emotional salience” for the child. The way that cultural assumptions and practices shape “emotions” as well as their “expression” in particular contexts is an important point for researchers to stress. I was, therefore, somewhat confused about why Gaskins and Miller seem to assume that there are “real emotions” that are encouraged and stressed in the case of European-American children and “limited” and “constrained” in the case of Mayan children. At times it seems that their focus is on variation in the “expression of emotion” (with “real emotions” somehow remaining constant although possibly expressed in non-play contexts) and at other times it seems that the authors want to underline the point that culture plays an important and powerful role in actually shaping “emotions” as well as their “expression.” I believe that their research supports this latter interpretation and I would like to have seen them draw this argument out in more detail. PLAY → CULTURE Avigail Morris reverses the causality implied by Gaskins and Miller and focuses her analysis on the way that games may generate cultural change. She illustrates her argument by taking us to the Kingdom of Tonga in Polynesia and examining how an introduced game, now known as “nine a side basketball” (pasikitipolo), provides a space for women to use to integrate modern concepts of femininity with traditional ideas about gender roles. “Nine a side basketball” was introduced to Tonga in the 1920s from New Zealand and Morris reports that it has now been played by four generations
Play and Culture
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of Tongan women. The game is played on a rectangular field that is divided into three sections with two metal hoops at either end of the field. There are nine players on each team (hence the name “nine a side”) with three players from each team assigned to one of three sections (a goal area for one team, a center area, and a goal area for the other team). The most important feature of this game, according to Morris, is the way that it serves to mediate and integrate traditional and modern beliefs and practices related to conceptions of femininity and “proper” gender roles. In this way girls are able: To maintain traditional female roles and concepts of femininity, associated with chiefly behavior (immobility, restraint, humbleness, modesty, grace and dignity, cleanliness, etc.), and at the same time experience a sense of freedom and mobility, controlled aggression and assertiveness associated with male behavior and Western female behavior (page 59).
This is an interesting game for other reasons especially because of the way that it transforms what many in the West consider to be the defining feature of a game or sports activity, i.e., the production of clear “winners” and “losers.” Morris reports that even though teams do win or lose they never boast about winning. “When a point is made there is no great cheering and clapping and when the team wins everyone stays quiet. No prizes or trophies are awarded for the winning team and scores, if noted at all, are almost immediately forgotten” (page 56).1
PLAY? Jay Mechling plays the role of trickster in this section by tossing the question of the relationship between culture and play up in the air and asking us to step back and think about what play is in the first place. He does this by asking the question: is hazing play? He uses a “Batesonian” analysis of play frames and meta-messages to suggest that specific features of hazing, such as “stylized humiliation,” are a form of play that “serves important functions in creating and maintaining the male friendship group” (page 89). An example of “stylized humiliation” would be a play-fight where the meta-message “this is play” contradicts the message “this is a bite,” but we also hear about a variety of other practices such as paddling, public nudity and the “elephant walk!” I enjoyed thinking about the question of whether or not hazing is play. Mechling’s answer is clearly yes but I would say no because I think that hazing has much more in common with ritual (see Don Handelman 1977). Although Mechling recognizes these similarities as well it is his desire to “redeem” aspects of this practice that, I believe, leads him to see it as play. In
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a way the question itself is a kind of “hazing” question for play researchers and if it is I’m thinking that I did not pass the test.
NOTE 1. I am reminded here of work by earlier researchers on the introduction of Western games (such a rugby and soccer) into societies where a high value is placed on cooperation, such as the village of Tarong in the Philippines where children are said to frequently “take turns winning” games; or the Gahuka-Gama in Papua New Guinea where “teams” play until their scores are equal! (Schwartzman 1978:28). This game also reminded me of the excellent film, Trobriand Cricket (Gary Kildea and Jerry W. Leach, 1979. Ronin Films) which illustrates a number of similar points about the transformation of the game of cricket by the Trobriand Islanders and the mediating role that this game plays between traditional and modern practices although, in this case, for boys and men in this society.
REFERENCES Handelman, D. (1977). Play and Ritual: Complementary Frames of MetaCommunication. In It’s a Funny Thing Humour, A.J. Chapman and H. C. Foot, eds. Oxford: Pergamon. Schwartzman, H. B. (1978). Transformations: The Anthropology of Children’s Play. New York: Plenum Press.
Chapter One
The Cultural Roles of Emotions in Pretend Play Suzanne Gaskins and Peggy J. Miller
This paper will examine three different roles that emotions can serve in young children’s pretend play, focusing on the cultural structure and function of those roles. First, emotions expressed in play allow children to explore, practice, and even critique emotions they have observed in others, in a context where they have no effect. Bateson (1976) discusses this function of play as being present even in animals, as seen in the pretend biting of puppies. Vygotsky (1967) also considers this out-of-context exploration of social interaction an important function of play. Second, emotions expressed in play can help children work through their own emotions related to everyday stresses and more serious traumas. Freud (1950) was perhaps the first to describe this phenomenon, and play therapy is founded upon this role of play. Third, building on the work of Miller and her colleagues on the role of emotion in narrative (e.g., Alexander, Miller, and Hengst, 2001), we see that children’s pretend play is often organized according to scripts and characters for which they hold strong emotional attachment. In each of these three situations, is emotion a natural expression of psychological needs or a learned expression of cultural expectations? We will try to answer this question by comparing two different cultures— European-American middle class culture and traditional Yucatec Mayan culture—with respect to these roles. We will present evidence that pretend play has a much narrower expressive potential in the Maya case, limiting each of the roles emotions can serve in pretend play. This in turn minimizes the children’s investment in play as an expressive tool. At the end, we interpret the differences not as evidence of deficiency but as an illustration of how culture shapes the ways that children give meaning to their everyday experiences. 5
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CULTURAL BACKGROUND: EUROPEAN-AMERICAN PLAY For many years developmental research on play was conducted mainly with middle-class European or European-American children in laboratory playrooms by researchers from the same cultural backgrounds, but since this work was done with little or no attention to a cultural level of analysis, it did not yield evidence relevant to describing play as a cultural phenomenon. As Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) argued in their classic paper on language socialization, this kind of situation leads to a “paradox of familiarity.” The cultural assumptions shared by researchers and participants were so familiar that they were nearly invisible. As a result, scholars mistakenly treated the middle-class European-American version of play as the norm or standard. However, the recent wave of research on play from a cultural perspective has de-centered the study of play in two ways: by expanding the empirical record to include a variety of diverse cultures and by studying middle-class European-American play as one cultural case among many. The latter work forms a point of departure for the comparison that we undertake in this paper. Generally speaking, this work shows that EuropeanAmerican children’s play takes shape in a world in which parents value play, believe that it is developmentally beneficial, and devote considerable time, space, and other resources to supporting children’s play (e.g., Goncu, Tuermer, Jain, and Johnson, 1999; Haight, Park, and Black, 1997; Haight, Wang, Fung, Williams, and Mintz, 1999, Taylor, 1999). For example, in a longitudinal study of middle-class European-American children’s pretend play in the contexts of everyday life, Haight and Miller (1993) followed nine children of highly educated parents who resided in Chicago and surrounding suburbs. The fathers worked in a variety of professional jobs and the mothers, who had also worked as professionals before having children, were now the primary caregivers. The families lived in nuclear family households and had one to three children. Haight and Miller made video-recorded observations of the children in and around the home as they went about their daily routines. They found that pretend play comprised a significant part of children’s everyday activity, estimating that during a typical weekday (from 8:00 AM until 5:00 AM), the children played for an average of about one-half hour at two years of age, one hour at three years, and two hours at four years. All of the children in this study owned large collections of toys, especially replica objects, such as stuffed animals, miniature vehicles, dolls, action figures, and accompanying accessories. At four years of age, 75% of the children’s play involved replica objects. All of the families had designated spaces
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for play and for the storage of toys, typically in the children’s bedrooms, and some had “playrooms” or “toyrooms.” In every family, toys spilled out of these spaces into other parts of the house. Pretend play was a social activity, with mothers actively socializing children into play and serving as the child’s primary play partner. Mothers introduced the play mode to children at one year of age. By two years, playing was fluently and jointly established, with mothers and children seeking each other out as play partners. At four years of age, children played equally with mothers and siblings or peers. One of the limitations of the literature on middle-class European-American children’s play is that little is known about variation within this vaguely defined group. For example, virtually nothing is known about possible variation in pretend play, depending on different ancestries (e.g., Irish-American, Italian-American, German-American) within the “European-American” umbrella. Likewise, there is no comparable ethnographic study of play in families of European-American background that are not middle-class. These limitations of the literature make it difficult to make an ideal comparison between the play of children from European-American backgrounds (of which there are many) and the play of children from a Yucatec Maya background (who come from a relatively homogeneous cultural group).
CULTURAL BACKGROUND: YUCATEC MAYA Descendents of the ancient Maya, the Yucatec Maya today reside in small towns and villages across the Yucatec Peninsula. Traditionally, these communities were agricultural, with an annual cycle of growing corn and other crops. Increasingly, this agricultural base is supplemented by or replaced by wage labor (mostly for the men) as overpopulation, deforestation, and unpredictable weather (droughts and hurricanes) have made it increasingly difficult for families to earn a living from traditional crops alone. Despite these economic changes, the communities remain fairly traditional. Yucatec Maya is the language spoken in villages, and many women and children are monolinguals. Economic production remains organized at the level of each family, so children’s participation in adult work is still not only possible but expected (Gaskins, 2003). And even when men are engaged primarily in wage labor outside their village, they still prefer to have their families stay in the village, and they return weekly or biweekly to see them. Families live in large, private compounds near each other, and these form the center of a community, with agricultural plots beyond the town limits.
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Some compounds house nuclear families (with 2-6 children) while others house three generations. Men often build their compounds next to or near their parents, and most social interaction, for both adults and children, occurs with other relatives (Gaskins, 2006a). Within a compound, there is one or more houses depending on the size of the family and their resources; the surrounding outdoor space serves as space for everyday chores and other activities. Farther away from the house, there may be chicken coops and pigsties, and vegetable and fruit gardens. Work and all other activities reflect the climate, which is tropical and varies by the two seasons, wet and dry. It is within these compounds, or across compounds of relatives, that children live their lives. Children are significantly engaged in adult work (Gaskins, 2000; Morelli, Rogoff, and Angelillo, 2003) throughout the day. But they also enjoy a great deal of autonomy in deciding what they do and when they do it. Outside of relying on children to help them with their work, adults do little to structure or mediate children’s activities. Thus, when children are free to play, they do so without adult intrusion. A time allocation study of these children (Gaskins, 2000) has shown that children do not spend much of their time in pretend play. For most families, children spend less than 5% of their time pretending. In addition, children spend most of their time around other people, whether at work or at play. There is little privacy and little sense of needing to be alone. Children related to each other play together in multi-age and cross-gender groups. Solitary play is not common unless a young child is left without playmates because all the older children have gone to school. These two factors combine to suggest at a quantitative level that pretend play motivated by individual psychological motives is unlikely to play a strong role in Yucatec Mayan children’s expression of emotional understanding and needs. But there are other cultural factors that further diminish the potential role of pretend in these children’s emotional lives. Cultural impact on the three roles of emotion in pretend play will be examined in turn. The claims advanced below are generalizations made on the basis of over 25 years of ethnographic fieldwork, including a number of specific studies of children’s play and work, by the first author in one Yucatec Maya village with about 1500 inhabitants. See Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934) for general ethnographic information about the Yucatec Maya; see Gaskins (1989, 1996,1999, 2000, 2003, 2006a, 2006b), Gaskins and Gönçü (1992), Gaskins, Haight, and Lancy (2006), and Gaskins and Lucy (1987) for more detailed discussion of Yucatec Mayan childhood, socialization, and play. See also Bazyk, Stalnaker, Llerena, Ekelman, and Bazyk (2003) for a description of children’s play in a related culture, Mopan Maya.
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EXPLORATION OF EMOTIONS European-American children frequently express emotion as part of their pretend play scripts, whether they are enactments of situations taken from their real world, from the fictional stories they are regularly exposed to, or from their own fantasies that go beyond their experience (Clark, 2003; Haight and Miller, 1993; Hengst and Miller, 1999; Taylor, 1999). In a chapter on the functions of play, Haight and Miller (1993) say, As we watched pretend play unfold we were struck by its intimate connection to the ongoing social scene and to issues of obvious personal significance to the players. We came to appreciate the many ways in which pretending evolved out of and alluded to ordinary family interactions, with their inevitable variety and depth of emotion. (p.72)
They go on to describe how mothers and children used pretend play to communicate intense feelings and to regulate emotion. One mother-child pair, who had many conflicts about the child’s rough treatment of his baby brother, alluded to these conflicts in their pretense; he assumed the role of naughty baby and his mother scolded him with exaggerated severity. In another example, sisters (aged three and four years old), who had been arguing over a favorite doll, moved into a play episode in which they pretended to bite one another, maintaining a precarious balance between hostile and amused feelings. In Taylor’s (1999) discussion of why children create imaginary companions, she gives numerous examples of children using their companions to help them cope with fears and to communicate complex negative feelings that arise as part of the “ordinary” psychoemotional dramas of family life. She also cites cases in which children created imaginary companions in response to such trauma as physical or sexual abuse, the mental illness of a parent, and disruptions to their lives, occasioned by war. Taylor found that 28% of the sample of middle-class European-American children she studied had imaginary companions, suggesting that they are a relatively common vehicle for emotional expression for children in this cultural group. These examples suggest that children may imitate, distill, or interpret emotionally loaded behaviors from their own lives. Or, they may go beyond these scripts of everyday and extreme experience and combine them with what they have observed about emotion through fictional stories. For example, they can pretend to be afraid like “Piglet” or sad “like Eeyore.” They can also apply what they have experienced about emotion to newly imagined circumstances. Thus, in a pretend play episode of being in a space ship, through their intonation and their actions, they may express a range of emotions that resemble
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those seen in their everyday world, applied now to new situations. In all these instances, independent of the source of knowledge about the emotion, play is a safe place where children are exploring the expression of emotion with no attending consequences. They are practicing culturally appropriate expression of emotion, often with partners who share their understanding of emotional expression, whether it is a parent, a sibling, a peer, or even an imaginary companion. Yucatec Maya children also have emotional expression as part of their pretend play scripts, but it is much more constrained. Their scripts are almost entirely limited to enactments of everyday situations (such as playing house, store, or selling food house to house). Within these scripts, emotion can be expressed and thereby practiced and elaborated. The anger in their scripts, for instance, would be modeled on the anger that they have experienced from or observed in others in their real lives. It is important to note, however, that the range and intensity of emotions expressed in the scripts differ from that of European-American children for two important reasons. First, the rules for the expression of emotions in the two cultures differ. Blatant anger is rarely displayed in the Mayan culture outside of the home and is only displayed in the home to people below the agent in the social hierarchy (Gaskins and Lucy, 1987). Thus, when playing house, the pretend “father” might appropriately express anger toward the “mother” or the “children,” the “mother” would express anger only toward the children, and the “children” would not express their anger directly toward anyone. The emotions expressed in play will be shaped by the cultural norms for emotional expression, because the emotions in real life that they are modeled from are shaped by cultural norms. Not only are specific expressions of emotion “tried on” in play, and sometimes even “critiqued” in play (as when a Mayan boy exaggerates the maudlin friendliness of a drunk) but more general cultural rules about when and how to express emotions are practiced. In this sense, play could potentially serve equally in both cultures as a medium for socialization of emotions even though a narrower range of contexts for the expression of emotions is found in Mayan children’s play. However, this role is somewhat constrained for the Mayan children because of a second, more practical reason. Their playmates consist of their siblings and close relatives who share their living compound (Gaskins, 1989). Parents (who in our culture may think that pretending to be angry is “cute” or “healthy”) are never playmates. Likewise, dolls or other stand-ins (who cannot object to being the object of unpleasant emotions such as anger) are rarely used. Not only is play limited to shared scripts of everyday events, but also the dynamics to be expressed must be pleasant and predictable enough to sustain engagement of all participants. Pretend play is almost always or-
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ganized by one or two children in the household who are old enough to successfully supervise the play of the younger children but not so old that their labor is needed elsewhere in the household. Usually, the oldest participants in pretend play are between the ages of 7-10. They are given the freedom to play (instead of work) only to the extent that their play includes and engages the younger children of the compound, thereby freeing the adult women to work (Gaskins, 1996). In this sense, pretend play is rarely independent of childcare. These older children act as producer and director of the play script, assigning roles and sometimes even providing dialogue for the younger children (who might range in age from 2-7). They are quite adept at providing an engaging activity for the younger children while at the same time taking full advantage of their own leisure to play, also. However, this social structure limits the range of events and emotions that can be expressed in the play. One important reason that anger is not often expressed in Mayan children’s play is that in order to reflect the real world’s social expectations, it would have to be addressed by the older children to the younger ones. The youngest of these children may not even be able to understand that the anger is not real, and the slightly older ones are not likely to find it fun to be yelled at. At that point, the young children would object, and they would assert their independence and abandon the pretense. The pretend play session would fall apart as it no longer served the purpose of childcare, and the mother would summon the older child to do more productive work away from the play area. Only non-controversial scripts, therefore, survive the social pressures inherent in the play event. In both cultures, then, play may be used to practice and explore the expression of emotion. However, the Maya children have two strong factors that limit the range and intensity of emotion that show up in play. The culture itself has a norm to be reserved about emotional expression, and the social structure of children’s play is such that it discourages taking social risks. Thus, the range of exploration of emotion is relatively limited for Mayan children while it is relatively open for European-American children.
WORKING THROUGH REAL EMOTIONS IN PLAY The potential power of working through emotional events through pretend play is well documented by the success of formal play therapy with European-American children (Singer, 1993). While there are many examples of such therapeutic pretense occurring spontaneously in children’s everyday play (e.g., Haight and Miller, 1993; Taylor, 1999), there is little research that tells us how often European-American children use this function of pretend play,
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whether they do it primarily when playing alone, with adults, or with other children, what themes are explored this way, and what the outcome of such play is. In short, we know that children can and do use play to work through emotions that result from their everyday experience, but we know very little about how they do so. Even the limited reports that exist for European-American children provides some point of comparison with Mayan children, since the Yucatec Maya children observed by Gaskins have never been observed using play this way. Again, the social structure of play may be significantly responsible for this difference. The therapeutic power of play for European-American children is thought to be strongest for children ages 3-7, who are seen to be in the thick of pretense as a mode of expression. Mayan children in this age range do not usually organize social pretend play nor are they often seen engaged in solitary pretend play. Scripts and roles are chosen by older children who are organizing the pretend play for the younger children. Younger children, therefore, are given no opportunity to enact a personal agenda (Gaskins and Gönçü, 1992, Gaskins, Haight, and Lancy, 2006). The scripts are limited to a few everyday situations and are repeated with little variation across weeks and months of playing. When the older children consult one another about what they want to play on a given day, they are in effect choosing from a closed list of options. New scripts are occasionally added when a new or infrequent event occurs in town (e.g., the fiesta), but they eventually fade away again if they do not reoccur regularly. It is possible that there is a second reason why Mayan children are not observed working through real emotions in their play, although this reason is more speculative and difficult to prove. A fundamental difference between European-American and Mayan children is the extent to which their daily lives are anchored in the reality of differing levels of adult demands and accommodations. For European-Americans, much of their experience has been constructed and supported by adults just for them. They spend much of their time in an adult-mediated child-centric world. Mayan children spend virtually no time in such a world. Beginning as young as 2, they are both encouraged to and eager to participate in the adult world of work and social relations (Gaskins, 2000). They are used to not having things “their way,” and they accept this state of affairs as both predictable and appropriate. For example, when a Mayan 7-year-old boy cuts his toe while playing, rather than receiving sympathy and first-aid care, he is scolded not only for being careless but also for not having already washed the cut to stop the bleeding. It may be that this fundamental difference leads them to have a different emotional response to similar circumstances. (Note that, even before age 2, Mayan children do not show a lot of emotion beyond making their needs known (Gaskins, 2006b).
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Thus, one might consider the outwardly similar (and potentially traumatic) event of receiving a vaccination at the doctor’s office. For the EuropeanAmerican child, this event may, in fact, be more emotionally traumatic than it is for the Mayan child precisely because, in addition to the temporary physical pain of a shot, it violates an expectation that the world in general, and parents in particular, will provide pleasurable events and minimize painful ones. Likewise, the arrival of a new baby sibling may hold more emotional trauma for European-American children precisely because they are used to being “center-stage.” Mayan children are more likely to view the newcomer as an opportunity for the older sibling to participate more fully in the work of the household, including helping to take care of the baby. Mayan children’s emotional stability may come in part from the fact that their social world is distributed across a wider net of people in their daily lives (Gaskins, 2006a). Thus, Mayan children, in a sense, have less to lose when there are specific disruptive events in their lives. For example, if children are familiar with their grandparents’ home in the village, they may show little concern if they are left there when their parents go off to work for days or weeks at a time. On the other hand, children who are taken with their parents to a larger town for work or school may experience a strong sense of loss from being removed from their social world, even though they still living with their parents and siblings. (In fact, adults report the same response.) Regardless of the reasons why children do not seek to interpret and come to terms with difficult events in their lives through play, the absence of such behavior is a second and even stronger example of how play serves a more limited emotional role for Mayan children than it does for EuropeanAmerican children.
EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS TO STORIES OR CHARACTERS A third significant role of emotion in play is the opportunity to express emotional attachments to specific stories or characters through pretend play. Miller and her colleagues (Alexander et al., 2001; Miller et al., 1993) have worked to document the extent, range, and natural history of such attachments in young children. Their work suggests that many European-American children form strong and robust attachments to stories, from either books or videos (or, one might presume, from television shows or video games), and that they take pleasure in retelling these stories in their pretend play. This may take the form of pretending to be a particularly favorite character or the form of using figures of the characters either to reenact events from the story or to
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develop new story lines using these characters. Some story attachments last for months and even years (see also Wolf and Heath, 1992). The research of Miller and colleagues suggests that parents support these attachments by providing multiple exposures to the original story itself, by providing story-related play materials, and by encouraging and participating in pretend play related to the story for which their child has an attachment. They provide such strong support, often at great effort, because they believe that such play is healing for their children, empowering them to cope with the emotional perturbations of their lives. Children are reported to find such interactions with the characters from a favorite story not only joyful but also comforting. (Note the resemblance to the comfort provided EuropeanAmerican children by transitional objects, such as a blanket, as described by Winnicott (1971).) Children even combine this attachment to a favorite character with the process of working through emotions. That is, in character, they will take up disruptive events in their lives in the real world and reenact them. Thus one child, perhaps as Batman, will pretend to take another as Robin to the doctor’s office for a shot, and both superheroes can be much braver than either child could be. Clark (2003) provides particularly compelling examples of children’s use of attachments to characters for emotional ballast. She documents in detail how, when faced with the fear and pain of recurring medical procedures, chronically ill children summon their favorite characters to help them cope. In comparing this experience of European-American children with that of Mayan children, we see a stark contrast. First, Mayan children are never presented with fictional stories from books. This was made perfectly clear when a 14-year-old Mayan child, coming from a relatively highly educated family and currently studying in the 7th grade, was puzzled about why Gaskins’ own child was reading a book for pleasure. Her experience with written materials was limited to schoolbooks, the newspaper, adult comic books (called novelas), and the Bible. She did not clearly understand the concept of fictional literature. The only exposure that young children would have to stories they might become attached to is relatively new, through TV cartoons (or in a few wealthy families, videos and DVD’s). While TV and cable have been available in this Mayan village for several years now, and many children have their favorite cartoons that they enjoy watching, there is little influence of this medium on children’s pretend play scripts. It is not even clear that children recognize that the cartoons are fictional. A 15-year-old boy who had completed 9th grade asked if Spiderman was living (that is, real), and was willing to consider that perhaps he wasn’t, but refused to believe that some other cartoon characters were not living. Traditionally, it was rare for toys of any kind to be purchased for the children, but occasionally older siblings or
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parents now buy children toys while away working in the tourist zone of Cancun, and some of these are cartoon-related figures. But the children appear to use those figures more functionally than imaginatively. They pose them and play with them physically, but develop no pretend play around them nor develop a strong emotional attachment to the toys. Neither do they take on the role of a character from any story beyond stylized and momentary performances of a characteristic movement and sound made by a cartoon character. Thus, favorite story characters, which provide one of the most significant and emotionally rich sources of play scripts for European-American children, are essentially missing for the Maya. (Similarly, they do not form emotional attachments to transitional objects, such as blankets or toys, whether or not they nurse during their first year or are bottle-fed.) This is in part because the sources of such characters is quite limited. But the fact that there is now some potential through TV cartoons for this phenomenon to exist for the Mayan children suggests that Mayan children’s understanding of pretend play does not extend to such representations. Since traditionally their play scripts have been mostly limited to representations of everyday life, it is perhaps not too surprising that they have not incorporated these new fictional themes into their play. Again, as we argued for the expression of personal emotional themes in pretend, the social structure of play makes this difficult. Since pretend play is usually sustained only in mixed age and gender family play groups, the scripts are limited to those experiences shared by all the players. Well known everyday events thus become the strongest candidates for mutual pretense. In addition, there is a strong Mayan cultural value placed on narratives of actual events, as opposed to narratives of fantasy. This has been reported most strongly for the Mopan Maya of Belize by Danziger (2006), who argues that for them, any story that is not truthful is seen as a lie. While there appears to be somewhat more tolerance for going beyond the absolute truthfulness in storytelling among the Yucatecan Maya, the group discussed here, there is a clear preference for and comfortableness with stories about real events and closely related metaphors. Thus, in terms of children’s play, adults clearly recognize that a bowl full of small leaves is not really beans. It is described using a word derived from the word for “deceit,” but it is clear from the tone of voice that it is seen as innocuous and even amusing pretence. But the noteworthiness of the leaves rests in the fact that they are representing something real. A mother who takes it upon herself to explain her children’s play (and she does this only because an ethnographic interest in it has been shown) mostly itemizes the representations of real objects and labels the real event that is being pretended. While such pretend play in general is not strongly supported by adults, it is at least tolerated (Gaskins, Haight, and
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Lancy, 2006). It appears that if children’s pretend play were not grounded in reality, it might not be as well tolerated. Mayan children do not pretend to be animals, monsters, or inanimate objects. They do not enact pretense through dolls or toy figures interacting (where the children themselves are not actors, but merely directors). They also do not appear to have pretend playmates or imaginary companions (beyond pretending that regular playmates are present when in fact they are absent). Descriptions of fantasy imaginary companions of children are interpreted as evidence of illness in the child or doubt that such a situation might ever really occur. And pretense is never allowed to invade real everyday interactions. This fact that the Maya privilege fairly literal symbolic representation in play may explain why cartoon themes are not incorporated in to children’s play. In sum, it appears that Mayan children do not form emotional attachments to stories or characters because they are exposed to few stories. For the few cartoon stories they are exposed to, such attachments would be seen as culturally inappropriate, as would expression of those stories in pretend play. Thus, once again in this third example, we see that a role for emotion in play that is valued by European-American children and their parents is missing for the Mayan children.
CONCLUSIONS We have explored in this paper three ways that emotion can play a role in children’s pretend play. In each case, we have seen that compared to European-American children, in Mayan children’s play these roles are either significantly curtailed or missing completely. Pretend play is used by Mayan children to explore and practice culturally appropriate expression of emotion in different social contexts, but the range of emotion and the emphasis of its expression in play are quite limited when compared to European-American children. Pretend play is used little if at all by Mayan children as a medium for working through real emotions from their everyday or traumatic experiences. And Mayan children have no emotional attachments to stories or characters, and therefore do not use pretend play as a place for expressing the joy and comfort they might entail. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this analysis is that although Mayan children appear to be engaged and content when pretend playing, the expression of emotion serves only a minimal role in Mayan children’s pretend play. The reasons offered here for why this is true are somewhat varied, including general cultural values, parental beliefs and behaviors surrounding children’s play, and the way that play is thereby social structured. General
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cultural values influencing the role of emotion in play include the rules for expression of emotion in the culture at large, the value placed on truthful narratives, and the way in which children are situated primarily first and foremost as participants in the adult world. The primary parental belief about play that shapes how emotion is used in play is the lack of general value placed on play (beyond providing adults time to work by serving as child care for the younger children). Derivative of this is adults’ lack of direct involvement in play, minimal mediation of children’s play, including providing few play materials or ideas, and little encouragement to play in specific ways. Parallel to this stance, parents do not take up or accommodate their own behavior to children’s play themes. Finally, the social structure of play appears to have an important influence on what roles emotion can have in play. Pretend play occurs among a consistent playgroup of siblings and other close relatives consisting of both boys and girls who range in age from 2-10. These groups are never free of more basic social assumptions about their relations to one another. The older ones are always responsible for the safety and contentedness of the younger ones: the younger ones are always organized and directed by the older ones. When this organization breaks down, pretend play stops. Individually, younger children usually do not engage in pretend play on their own, spending more time in functional and large motor play. Older children usually are not allowed the luxury of playing individually, since play is seen as a legitimate occupation for them only so long as they are taking care of the younger children by doing so. This paper suggests one of the reasons why pretend play is not a dominant activity in Yucatec Mayan children. There are multiple roles that emotion serves in European-American children’s play, including the three talked about in this presentation: exploring the social expression of emotions, working through real emotions, and expression of emotional attachment to stories and characters. Two of these roles are virtually absent for the Mayan children, and the third is severely limited. While European-American children’s pretend play is more cognitively complex and creative than Mayan children’s play, this paper emphasizes that it is also more emotionally charged, in complex ways. Thus, understanding the cultural differences in role of emotion in play helps us interpret the differences in quantity and quality of play seen in these two cultures. But it also contributes to a more general understanding of how culture contributes to children’s play. Play is often seen solely as an intrinsically motivated behavior. This paper demonstrates how the role of emotion is one of the complex ways in which pretend play is constructed out of cultural values and practices, a general argument that has been made increasingly often (Farver, and Howes, 1993; Farver, Kim, and Lee, 1995; Edwards, C.P., 2000;
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Gaskins, 1996,1999, 2000; Gaskins, Haight, and Lancy, 2006; Gaskins and Gönçü, 1992; Gönçü and Gaskins, 2006; Gönçü, Mistry, and Mosier, 2000; Haight, Wang, Fung, Williams, and Mintz, 1999; Lancy, 1996; Roopnarine, Johnson, and Hooper, 1994). In this case, we see that play does not automatically serve strong emotional roles for children. Rather, each culture shapes the contours of play to serve the needs of the adults and children in that culture, through its socialization practices, its understandings about the nature of children’s play and in particular the role of fantasy in that play, and the structure that exists in children’s daily behaviors. A European-American ethnocentric interpretation of the evidence presented here would conclude that the Mayan children are missing out on an important part of pretend play by having minimal emotional experience attached to it. A more culturally sensitive interpretation would be to consider the full range of the emotional needs of Mayan children and explore where else in the culture do Mayan children have an opportunity to express and explore emotion? When there are events in these children’s lives that have a strong emotional component (e.g., death, domestic violence, extended absence of family members), how are such emotions expressed, socially communicated, interpreted, and worked through? Alternatively, we can turn the questions back on European-American culture. If one accepts that strong emotional attachments and expression in pretend play is not a universal, but rather a culturally specific phenomenon, the question then becomes what it is about our culture that leads children to have such a strong emotional investment in a domain that has no immediate real life consequences (although such emotional expression in play, as a way of resolving or coping with distressing emotions, is considered to have long term positive consequences both by professionals and parents). The answer to this question would also involve a consideration of the full range of European-American children’s needs and how they are expressed. That is, why do European-American children have so many strong emotions that need to be expressed in the first place, and what are the consequences of expressing them through play? Such reframings of research questions about children’s expression of emotion in pretend play are possible to formulate only when one conceives of pretend play as a culturally constructed event in children’s lives and recognizes that it can vary not only by the content of the scripts, but also by the extent to which it is an emotionally salient part of children’s lives.
REFERENCES Alexander, K. J., Miller, P. J., & Hengst, J. A. (2001). Young children’s emotional attachments to stories. Social Development, 10, 374-398.
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Bazyk, S.; Stalnaker, D., Llerena, M., Ekelman, B., & Bazyk, J. (2003). Play in Mayan children. American Journal of Occupational Therapy. 57, 273-283. Bateson, G. (1976). A theory of play and fantasy. In J. Bruner (Ed.), Play: Its role in development and evolution (pp. 119-129). New York: Basic Books. Clark, C. D. (2003). In sickness and in play: Children coping with chronic illness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Danziger, E. (2001). The thought that counts: Interactional consequences of variation in cultural theories of meaning. In N. J. Enfield & S. C. Levinson, (eds.) Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition, and interaction (pp. 259-278). Oxford, England: Berg. Edwards, C. P. (2000). Children’s play in cross-cultural perspective: A new look at the Six Cultures study. Cross-Cultural Research, 34, 318-338. Farver J. M. & Howes, C. (1993). Cultural differences in American and Mexican mother-child pretend play. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 39, 344-358. Farver, J. M., Kim, Y. K., & Lee, Y (1995). Cultural differences in Korean- and Anglo-American preschoolers’ social interaction and play behaviors. Child Development, 66, 1088-1099. Freud, S. (1950). Beyond the pleasure principle. New York: Liveright. Gaskins, S. (1989, February). Symbolic play in a Mayan village. Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Association for the Study of Play, Philadelphia. Gaskins, S. (1996). How Mayan parental theories come in to play. In S. Harkness & C. Super (Eds.), Parents’ cultural belief systems (pp. 345-63). New York: Guilford. Gaskins, S. (1999). Children’s daily lives in a Mayan village: A case study of culturally constructed roles and activities. In A Gönçü (Ed.), Children’s engagement in the world: Sociocultural perspectives (pp. 25-61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gaskins, S. (2000). Children’s daily activities in a Mayan village: A culturally grounded description. Cross-Cultural Research, 34, 375-389. Gaskins, S. (2003). From corn to cash: Change and continuity within Mayan families. Ethos, 31, 248-273 . Gaskins, S. (2006a). The cultural organization of Yucatec Mayan children’s social interactions. In X. Chen, D. French, & B. Schneider (Eds.), Peer relationships in cultural context (Cambridge Studies in Social and Emotional Development) (pp. 283-309). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Gaskins, S. (2006b). Cultural perspectives on infant-caregiver interaction. In N.J. Enfield & S.C. Levinson, (eds.) Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition, and interaction (pp. 279-298). Oxford, England: Berg. Gaskins, S. & Gönçü, A. (1992) Cultural variation in play: A challenge to Piaget and Vygotsky. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 14(2), 31-35. Gaskins, S., Haight, W., & Lancy, D. F., (2006). The cultural construction of play. In A. Gönçü & S. Gaskins (Eds.), Play and development: Evolutionary, sociocultural and functional perspectives (pp. 179-202). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
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Gaskins, S. & Lucy, J. A. (1987, December). Passing the buck: Responsibility and blame in the Yucatec Maya household. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia. Gönçü, A. & Gaskins, S. (2006). An integrative perspective on play and development. In A. Gönçü & S. Gaskins (Eds.), Play and development: Evolutionary, sociocultural and functional perspectives (pp. 3-17). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Gönçü, A., Mistry, J., & Mosier, C. (2000). Cultural variations in the play of toddlers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24, 321-329. Gönçü, A., Tuermer, U., Jain, J., & Johnson, J. (1999). Children’s play as cultural activity. In A Gönçü (Ed.), Children’s engagement in the world: Sociocultural perspectives (pp. 148-170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haight, W. & Miller, P. J. (1993). Pretending at home: Early development in a sociocultural context. Albany: State University of New York Press. Haight, W., Parke, R., & Black, J. (1997). Mothers’ and fathers’ beliefs about and spontaneous participation in their toddlers’ pretend play. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 43, 271-290. Haight, W., Wang, X., Fung, H., Williams, K., & Mintz, J. (1999). Universal, developmental, and variable aspects of young children’s play: A cross-cultural comparison of pretending at home. Child Development, 70, 1477-1488. Hengst, J. A., & Miller, P. J. (1999). The heterogeneity of discourse genres: Implications for development. World Englishes, 18, 325-341. Lancy, D. F. (1996). Playing on the Mother Ground: Cultural routines for children’s development. New York: Guilford. Miller, P. J., Hoogstra, L., Mintz, J., Fung, H., & Williams, K. (1993). Troubles in the garden and how they get resolved: A young child’s transformation of his favorite story. In C. A. Nelson (Ed.), The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Vol. 26. Memory and Affect in Development (pp. 87-114). Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates. Morelli, G. A., Rogoff, B., & Angelillo, C. (2003). Cultural variation in young children’s access to work or involvement in specialised child-focused activities. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 27(3), pp. 264-274. Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implications. In R. Shweder and R. LeVine (Eds.), Culture and its acquisition (pp. 276-320), Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Redfield, R. & Villa Rojas, A. (1934). Chan Kom: A Mayan Village. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roopnarine, J., Johnson, J., & Hooper, F. (Eds.) (1994). Children’s Play in Diverse Cultures. Albany, NY, US: State University of New York Press. Singer, D. (1993). Playing for their Lives: Helping Troubled Children through Play Therapy. New York: Free Press. Taylor, M. (1999). Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Vygotsky, L. S. (1967). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet Psychology, 5, 6-18. Wolf, S. A., & Heath, S. B. (1992). The Braid Literature: Children’s Worlds of Reading. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications.
Chapter Two
Nine a Side Basketball in the Kingdom of Tonga: A Case Study in Negotiating Gender Roles Avigail Morris
This paper examines the role of games and sports in the process of changing gender roles and concepts of femininity in the Kingdom of Tonga, a group of 150 islands in the cultural area of Polynesia. Based on an interpretive model the study analyzes games and sports as symbolic messages about culture and cultural change. Through games and sports females not only communicate their beliefs and values concerning their roles and status as females within the social structure, but also symbolically negotiate these roles by formulating alternatives which may have real consequences on the direction of the socio-cultural process. The study suggests that traditional games, for the most part, complement and cultivate traditional notions of gender roles and concepts of femininity. In contrast, foreign games and sports, introduced throughout the first half of the twentieth century, based on Western ideals and values, challenge these views resulting in a conflict between Western and Tongan concepts of gender roles and femininity on the playing field. The study focuses on how nine a side basketball (pasikitipolo), the most popular female game in Tonga, offers a symbolic arena in which females are able to resolve this conflict by integrating modern concepts of femininity into their local culture, and through this experience create for themselves new, viable constructs of gender identity.
HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The process of modernization and development, which the Kingdom of Tonga has experienced over the last century, has introduced many changes in regards to concepts, attitudes and values associated with being a Tongan female. Traditional notions of gender roles and concepts of femininity, which stem from 22
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a complex union between traditional chiefly values and those introduced by Christianity, are still regarded by most Tongan females as central to the process of female socialization (James, 1994). Nevertheless, increased exposure to Western notions of femininity, which allows for more physical, emotional and social freedom, have caused many females to question and thus reevaluate traditional notions of femininity. This paper argues that Tongan women are in a constant process of expanding their traditional roles to incorporate modern and thus create a viable synthesis of the two that allows them to preserve their cultural identity and at the same time reinterpret their status as women in a changing society. As a result, “anga fakafefine fakatonga” (appropriate female behavior) is continuously being modified as females look for novel ways of assimilating modern notions of femininity into their traditional lifestyles, thus creating for themselves a new way of “being female.” One novel way in which females form a synthesis between traditional and modern gender roles and concepts of femininity is through the game of nine a side basketball. This activity provides a powerful lens through which to examine the process of change because it acts as both an interpretation as well as an innovator of culture and cultural change. Generally speaking, games and sports are considered to be activities which stand outside of “ordinary” life (Callois, 1961; Huizinga, 1950) in what Turner refers to as “liminal” space (a stage which he describes as “betwixt-and between, neither this nor that, neither here nor there.” (Turner, 1977)) Thus games and sports act as symbolic activities which are free not only to reflect or express culture (Handelman, 1990; Roberts, Arth and Bush, 1959; Roberts and Sutton-Smith, 1962) but also to interpret culture through creative commentary and/or criticism about the socio-cultural system (Geertz, 1972; Opie and Opie, 1969; Scott, 1990). As innovators of cultural change games and sports become “cultural performances,” a term which MacAloon describes as “occasions in which as a culture or society we reflect upon and define ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in others” (MacAloon, 1984:1). Within this context, games and sports become part of what Turner refers to as the “subjunctive mood” in society, expressing not what ‘is’ but what is supposed, desired, hypothesized or perceived as possible (Turner, 1984:20). Turner recognizes these activities in their more active role in the process of cultural change. As he writes: . . . cultural performances are not simple reflectors or expressions of culture or even of changing culture but may themselves be active agencies of change, representing the eye by which culture sees itself and the drawing board on which creative actors sketch out what they believe to be more apt or interesting “designs for living” (Turner, 1986:24).
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By translating the originally Western sport of nine a side basketball into local terms, Tongan females are able to transform the game into a “cultural performance.” Through this cultural performance they are free to distance themselves from their own subjective experiences and reexamine their definitions of femininity. The game gives them the freedom not only to reflect, comment on and criticize their social situation, but also to manipulate and experiment with novel combinations of their social, physical and emotional selves. In experimenting with new “designs for living” on the playing field, females actually experience new patterns of thinking about themselves and their society, which can lead to a transformation of reality. This logic places the game of nine a side basketball in a powerful position in influencing the direction of socio-cultural change.
METHODOLOGY The ethnographic fieldwork for this paper took place over a fourteen month period between 1994-5 on the island of Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga. Games and sports were studied within the three main contexts in which they are played, i.e. the home and village, the school, and organized national sports. Various methods were used in order to carry out fieldwork. These included observation, participant observation whenever possible, as well as numerous open interviews. Seven months into fieldwork a questionnaire written in both Tongan and English was handed out to 152 females in order to confirm and supplement data already collected about particular play patterns. For the sake of accuracy as well as more efficient observation and interviewing, tape recordings, photographs and videos were used whenever possible (with the full consent of the informants involved). In addition to these methods, I also conducted in-depth interviews in a series of case studies on the play behavior of females over three generations. I had a good idea of who my most trusted and valuable informants would be, and asked three of them (a twelve year old girl born in the capital city of Nuku’alofa, a thirty four year old woman who moved to Nuku’alofa in her early twenties from a neighboring island, and an elderly woman from the Ha’apai group who came to Nuku’alofa only in her forties) to allow me to document their life histories with a focus on their play activities. This narrative approach was used to create a more detailed account of the interrelationship between changing attitudes towards female roles, and aspects of femininity, and how female games and sport activities contributed to these changing attitudes. There is no recent history written on the development or adaptation of contemporary game and sports in Tonga, therefore research other than direct
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interviewing and observation relied mainly on primary sources such as local newspapers and magazines, high school bulletins, year books, etc. These sources provided significant information concerning sports events and local tournaments, which occur on a regular basis and reflect Tonga’s growing involvement in international sports. They were useful in providing evidence of the increasing participation of females in local and international sports, as well as providing a measure of comparison between Tonga’s development in sports and the development of sports for both men and women in other island nations throughout the Pacific. The role of sport in national development is considered to be a growing concern in the South Pacific. As in many other Pacific islands, international sport has replaced many of the traditional games played only a few generations ago. Therefore, in order to understand the new role of sports in the lives of women in Tonga, it was important to study the role of the Tongan Amateur Sports Association (TASA) in promoting sports for women. Through numerous interviews with the administration and sports developers at TASA, as well as studying the available literature on the role of TASA in sports development, I was able to gain a clearer picture of where females fit into the local, national and international sports scene. Through questionnaires, interviews, both participant and non participant observation, informal conversations and constant reviewing of relevant local literature, substantial data were collected to describe and analyze the patterns of development of female games and sports in Tonga over a time span of approximately seventy-five years. This information is relevant, not only in terms of tracing changes in the types of games and sports Tongan females play, but more importantly, in determining changing attitudes towards participation in these activities. Only after examining how these games and sports are adapted into the Tongan cultural setting can one begin to realize their significance in the construction over time of female gender roles. In order to fully understand the role of nine a side basketball in redefining gender roles among women it is important to first understand how gender finds expression in other contexts of games and sports in Tonga, i.e. traditional games and modern sports.
TRADITIONAL GAMES IN THE CONTEXT OF “ANGA FAKAFEFINE FAKATONGA” (APPROPRIATE FEMALE BEHAVIOR) As is true of other Polynesian societies, females as sisters are given high status as Fahu (superior) over their brothers and mother’s brothers and their
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children allowing her to make both social and economic demands of her brothers who are forced to oblige out of respect (Ortner, 1981). As Fahu, females are ideally expected to behave in a chiefly manner (faka’ei’eiki) irrelevant of their place in the overall social hierarchy. Morton (1996), who studied the process of socialization in Tonga, claims that for females chiefly behavior is characterized by a display of reserve and control in terms of conduct and disposition. Control is displayed through the high value placed on virginity, immobility (the idea that woman should sit or stay put within the confines of her home), social and emotional restraint (for example, controlling great anger), beauty and cleanliness (in both the physical and moral sense of the word), behaving in a polite, humble and respectful manner, and behaving in a modest and graceful manner. Chiefly behavior is further symbolized by restricted body movements, gestures and posture. For example, to maafi (to spread legs, walk fast or run) is considered to be an indecent gesture (Morton, 1996). Restricted movements are also encouraged as a means of guarding and thus preserving the body (especially the skin) from being marred or damaged. A girl’s beauty and sexual desirability are defined through these attributes. The preservation of one’s beauty through modest behavior and maintaining one’s status as a virgin serve to enhance a girl’s already high rank among her immediate kin group. Chiefly behavior is contrasted with tu’a or commoner behavior which Morton claims is associated with child and male behavior (Morton, 1996: 252, 258). This includes more physical and social mobility, thus boys can ‘eve’eva (a word which means to wander and indicates promiscuous behavior) as opposed to Tongan girls who must remain closer to home. Tu’a behavior also implies impulsive, uncomposed and aggressive behavior including unrestricted body movements. This behavior which symbolizes concepts of personhood for males is viewed by many Tongans as congruent with aspects of Western and modern female behavior. The idea of girls becoming fakatangata (like boys) or adopting anga fakapalangi (Western ways) is viewed by many Tongans as one of the negative influences of Western society and a threat to Tongan culture (Morton, 1996: 252, 258). Ideal chiefly behavior for females as described above is expressed in various cultural forms including dance and traditional games and pastimes. Games such as moa (five stones), fisi (a stick game no longer played in Tonga), papalounima (a hand clapping game), fakamatamatafupengu (string games) and fakamapi (a singing game in which the player hits her folded fingers on the leg in order to produce a sound reminiscent of the beating of tapa - barkcloth ) are only a few examples of more traditional activities where bodily movements are kept to a minimum. These games are often played
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while stooping or sitting thus immobilizing the player during the course of the game. Emphasis is placed on graceful, flowing hand and wrist action to exemplify skill and beauty in much the same way as in traditional Tongan dance (Kaeppler, 1993). Games of this sort require a confined space and therefore can be played quite easily within the confines of the home. Perhaps the game which best exemplifies the characteristics of the ideal Tongan female is the game of hiko (juggling), believed to have once been the favorite pastime amongst chiefly daughters (Gifford, 1985). The motions and gestures used in the game bring out beauty and gracefulness in females of all ages. A girl gently tosses anywhere from three to ten balls of fruit in the air catching them (usually with incredible ease) while singing a rhythmic song. The game makes use of the haka nonou motion used in dance which displays the flexible and graceful motions of the wrists along with a rotation of the lower arm while they are held close to the body, a movement that according to Tongan dance expert Adrienne Kaeppler is highly praised among Tongans (Kaeppler, 1986).1 The beauty and feminine aspects of hiko are enhanced not only by the performance of the game but also by its mystic and sensual origin. According to tradition, hiko is a game associated with Hikule’o, the ancient goddess of the underworld, who was confined to her home lest she cause an earthquake and would juggle the eyes of unwelcomed guests (Cohen, 1988: 114). The game of hiko is also associated with Fehuluni, a hermaphrodite god/goddess attributed with strong sexual desires. According to Gifford (1929b), it is believed by those in the Vava’u group that Fehuluni lives with the women who are said to continually juggle the eyes of human beings who defied Hikule’o. The symbolic association of hiko with traditional concepts of beauty and sexuality can perhaps explain one reason why this game has persisted in Tonga and elsewhere in Polynesia for so many centuries.2 Although the song, which accompanies the game of hiko, is hardly sung today, the game itself is still played for as one teacher at Queen Salote Girls School claimed: Hiko is a beautiful game. You walk around with the balls and then sit down like a rooster. It makes you look beautiful. The “performance” of traditional female games then became not only an activity for pleasure or even to enhance skills associated with chiefly behavior, but served as a culturally aesthetic experience as well. The soft, graceful, flowing movements used in the game along with the eye hand coordination which naturally lifts the head and raises one’s posture reflects the Tongan conceptualization of movement conceived of as beautiful and ideally feminine. Games as a form of cultural expression were played by individuals (team sports did not exist before European contact) and therefore through traditional games a girl could show off just how feminine she could be.
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MODERN SPORTS To date, about twenty-four national sports are played in Tonga. Females participate on different levels in nine of these including netball, soccer, tennis, volleyball, squash, hockey, golf, track and field and the local sport of nine a side basketball. Local competitions are held between villages, schools, and other island groups within Tonga. International competitions take place within the Pacific Islands (such as the South Pacific Games and Mini Games) and internationally in the Commonwealth and Olympic games among others. Sports for females gained popularity within the framework of the school, the place according to educator Konai Helu Thaman, “where things foreign were taught” (Thaman, 1992) and to a large extent there they stayed. Modern sports demand a change in the polarization of the Tongan female body. Modest, reserved behavior using graceful and constrained movements so expressive of the Tongan female character has little relevance on the sport field and, if anything, serves as an obstacle to the outcome of the game. Modern sports provide an alternative form of play activity that not only allows for, but, demands ‘free’ use of the body. On an open court or field, one is trained to run fast, jump high, use different reflexes in order to keep abreast of the ball and be aggressive within the limits of the rules. In addition, girls are encouraged to wear shorts during training and competitions in order to perform better. According to Niulolo Prescott, the national coach for both the male and female national volleyball teams at the time of this study, girls who are used to dressing modestly during training may feel too self conscious and perform poorly when they are forced to wear shorts during competitions (Prescott, 1992 and personal communication). The exposure and immodest use of the thighs and legs contradicts their symbolic meaning as a sign of beauty and femininity. Standardized rules established by international associations, such as those in netball, are perceived by many girls as being too strict and far too complicated especially when playing international sports. They require knowledge of a foreign language (English) and a foreign set of values that demand both physical and mental preparation for the game. Physical preparation includes learning new gestures and movements, and increasing one’s physical endurance through long term training and practice in order to provide the skills necessary for succeeding in the game. As a result many girls feel uncomfortable out on the field. They feel clumsy and incompetent or as many girls put it when asked why they do not participate in sports other than nine a side basketball, “oku ‘ikai teu poto au ia” (I am not clever enough) or “’ikai keu lava ‘o tauhi ‘a e lao” (No, I can’t cope with the rules).3
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Training often involves traveling back and forth to town where there is access to more open fields and proper courts. Since much of the training takes place in the late afternoon this presents a problem for many girls who must find ways to travel home before dark and not appear to ‘eve’eva (wander) and thus ruin her reputation in the Tongan community. These requirements conflict with culturally related customs and values and often take time away from family, church and village obligations. The story of a young female national athlete three weeks away from an international competition illustrates this point: There was a funeral in my village. If there is a funeral I cannot train for 10 days. Otherwise everyone will say something. To run alone [unchaperoned] is also seen as strange. It is not good for people to look at me train. And something else, I am the oldest in my family and have to do most of the cooking and washing while Mom works so I had to stop training.
Mental preparation involves not only understanding complicated rules, but, learning to think and cooperate as a team, a concept referred to in Tongan as lototaha (literally translated as “of one heart”). According to one coach encouraging lototaha is not an easy task amongst girls who “enjoy showing off their individual talents at the expense of the game.” Thinking as a team not only means teamwork on the field but dedicating much of one’s time and energy to extra activities surrounding the game, which one manager described as “necessary strategies” for creating lototaha between players. Four of the strategies most frequently described by both players and managers are fundraising projects, praying together, eating together and mohetaha (camps or literally “sleeping together” before games). Such activities mean that girls must be away from their homes more often and out until after dark. Many girls have ambivalent feelings about participating in these extra activities. They feel that although these activities may be good for the team, they would conflict too much with “appropriate” female conduct and family obligations. As one informant notes: Camps are seen as good for the boys but for the girls it is not seen as good. Values are different for girls and boys. The girls do not have camp ‘cause their families want to keep them at home. It is not good for girls to be out at night. Also if the woman who has children goes to camps they will ignore their children and their chores. They will start to think like a palangi [Westerner] and feel more free to leave their family and go play soccer. If the girls play for the world cup then maybe their parents would let them be free of chores but we are talking about village soccer.
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What is implied by this statement is a split in loyalties that comes about when women, who are an integral part of the domestic domain, want to participate in the public domain of sports. Because sports activities take place outside of the domestic sphere and require hours away from home for training, developing teamwork, competitions and sometimes travel abroad, women are viewed as being incapable of being loyal to both domains at once. Loyalty to one’s family, church and maintaining “chiefly behavior” represents a loyalty to one’s cultural identity whereas loyalty to one’s sports team represents a loyalty to a foreign identity. By participating in foreign sports a female risks losing any chiefly status she might have achieved within her traditional Tongan role. As a result, most women enjoy little personal benefit from excelling in sport and therefore have no great incentive for taking competitions seriously. The majority of sporting females explain participation in sports as simply a way of “exercising,” “getting out of the house” or “just to have fun.” To some extent this loyalty split is resolved for the few talented women who participate in international sports. Although she is participating in international sports (i.e. foreign culture), with all of the accompanying foreign ideals and values, she is also representing her country and in doing so enhancing Tonga’s sense of cultural and national identity. Thus, instead of preserving cultural identity in the domestic sphere she is able to represent, maintain and strengthen Tongan identity and pride in the public sphere which legitimizes her sporting activities. For Tongan females, then, play as a form of cultural expression takes on a whole new meaning in the context of sport. The emphasis is on achievement rather than personal performance. The player is no longer offering an aesthetic, possibly even a sensual experience, but rather a presentation of foreign skills learned in order to win points for a team. In other words, games as sports no longer raise status and prestige by building on femininity in the Tongan sense of the word, but rather in the global sense display how well one has mastered foreign attitudes, values and skills required for the game. Through modern sports girls are experiencing new styles of “performing their bodies” (Butler, 1990:279) through freer movement, new ways of relating to their environment through playing sports in public areas, and new forms of social interaction by playing with others as a team. As a result, as Turner claims, they are able to experience new patterns of thinking about themselves and their place in society (Turner, 1986). Many of the achievement oriented values introduced through modern sport have produced a feeling of alienation, a gap so to speak, between the players and the game. Bourdieu in his discussion of the shift from games to sports attributes this feeling to the autonomous nature of sport. Sport he claims has become institutionalized and as a result represents a world within itself
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(Bourdieu, 1991). Standards set by international sports associations dictate rules including the length of the game often down to the last second, playing facilities and equipment, uniforms, qualifications according to skills which determine who can and cannot play and even how the body should be maneuvered during plays. The standardization of sport removes it from the cultural context which allows it to then be reproduced in any place at any time. It is specifically because of its alienating nature that international sport under the auspices of the Tongan Amateur Sports Association has not gained popularity for females, who prefer a more familiar playing field where they both create and are in control of the “performance,” a playing field in which they can integrate modern sports, and the feeling of “freedom and independence” that they inspire, into their traditional value system. Nine a side basketball, the most frequently played game among females in Tonga today, answers this call. It is through the game of nine a side basketball that females are able to incorporate modern concepts of femininity into their traditional lifestyle and through this experience create for themselves what Turner refers to as “new designs for living.”
NINE A SIDE BASKETBALL AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IDENTITY Nine a side basketball is a simple game played on a rectangular shaped field which is split into three sections (see figure 2.1). Nine girls play on each team
Figure 2.1. Diagram: The Nine Sided Basketball Court. fakahu (literally meaning to cause or allow to enter) li pulu (literally meaning “toss ball”) fetuku pulu—defender (literally means to shift or move the ball from one place to another)
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with three players from each side assigned to a section. There are two metal hoops at either end of the field.4 The aim of the game is to pass a ball (preferably a netball but any ball available will do) from one section of the rectangle to another until the ball reaches a designated area near the teams’ basket. The goal shooter (fakahu) attempts to toss the ball through the hoop. If she succeeds her team gets a point. If she misses, the ball returns to the center (li pulu). Unlike netball, where there is a rule book including a long list of causes for penalties, only four rules are acknowledged by the players: 1. A player cannot run with the ball. 2. A player cannot go over the boundaries of her designated square. 3. Although contact is allowed between players, one is not allowed to intentionally push a player out of the way. 4. A player shooting the ball into the ring is allowed one step before the throw. The rules are kept simple and are passed on orally from player to player. No one I spoke to knew of any written rules for nine a side basketball and therefore the game could be easily learned and passed on to others. Most important (at least for many of the girls I spoke to) the game is taught and played in Tongan, in contrast to the majority of the modern competitive sports, which, in preparation for overseas competitions, are taught using English terminology. Tongan females were first attracted to this game in the 1920s when the New Zealand version of nine a side basketball was introduced to Tonga.5 The rapid spread of this game throughout the island groups expressed the female’s growing desire for more social freedom and a break from their restricted lifestyle dictated by chiefly behavior. As Tupou Posesi Fanua, an expert in Tongan tradition commented: I think I should explain. Our traditional games were more subtle. We did not make rows. Girl’s games were more quiet. Because girls in the traditional Tonga were to sit nicely at home. When the active games came to Tonga the girls preferred them. When education came they brought more attractive games. I think we can say that girls had their first taste of freedom and development with the introduction of nine a side basketball.
This same game which seventy-five years ago fulfilled a desire for social freedom in reaction to the notion of the female as something to be preserved, has become the most popular female game played in Tonga today.6 But today this game serves a new purpose as a means of preserving traditional notions of femininity within the context of modern sport. Now during the summer
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months almost every village has at least one team and sometimes even three. Games are played on any available open space within the bounds of the village, as opposed to modern competitive sports that are played on public fields or courts in the center of town. The interpretation of nine a side basketball as a means of integrating an originally Western sport into local terms can be understood in terms of a variety of negotiated meanings about gender roles and concepts of femininity. More specifically what are being negotiated are ideas and concepts relating to chiefly or ‘eiki (female) behavior and commoner or tu’a (male and Western female) behavior on the playing field. These negotiations take place on several levels. Socially, the game succeeds in taking the female out of the domestic sphere (the home) into the public sphere (the field), which both mobilizes her and limits her mobility at the same time. On the one hand she is able to physically leave the confines of her home in order to socialize with her peers, but must remain within the boundaries of the village and within the watchful eye of relatives. In this way she can maintain her reputation as a “respectable girl” and thus preserve her high status within her family and community. When she does travel to other villages it is usually a group activity and always accompanied by chapter. Thus, within the framework of the game girls, like boys, can ‘eve’eva (wander) as a group, an act associated with tu’a (commoner) behavior without jeopardizing her status as ‘eiki (chiefly). Physically, although the game is more active than traditional games allowing girls to use more assertive gestures and movements and increase her physical endurance, the structure of the game still restricts these actions. The actual playing of nine a side basketball involves a minimal amount of movement relative to other introduced sports. Individual players are restricted to a third of the court and must pass the ball rather than run with it from one area to the next. Thus, the game involves only a limited amount of running and jumping, or sporadic and aggressive movement compared to more active sports such as netball and soccer. Even the movements of the body in scoring a goal require keeping the legs together, slightly bending the knees and gently tossing the ball into the ring. In contrast to netball, no shots are allowed on the rebound and therefore there are no aggressive struggles for the ball if it misses the ring. In compliance with more traditional games, nine a side basketball places an emphasis on the movement of the hands and arms rather than the feet and legs. Consequently, while having freer use of the body girls can remain graceful, modest and thus very feminine on the field. Negotiations between emotional restraint (chiefly behavior) and emotional release (commoner and Western female behavior) are also expressed within the game. As is true of most competitive games, girls do exercise some aggression
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towards each other during games. Fights sometimes break out between girls either on the same team, who are trying to “show off,” or those on other teams who are competing for the ball. As opposed to netball, body contact between players is allowed. This means that brushing up against someone in order to retrieve the ball can often turn into an aggressive push. Only in very extreme cases did I see a girl actually sent off the field for pushing another player. Although aggressive behavior is discouraged, nine a side basketball does provide girls with an opportunity for emotional release. Elenoa, who plays on one village team explained: We try to never fight among ourselves, if we are mad at someone we keep it to ourselves. Some people are jealous because someone has reached the first class but we keep to ourselves, but it still shows in the game and Mele [the manager of the team] knows.
Despite the opportunity for emotional release exhibited through aggressive and ostentatious behavior during the game, the emphasis on self-composure and respect for one’s fellow players, as well as for the opposite team, dominates the atmosphere of the game. As one player put it, “in Tonga we say mokomoko pe (cool down and cheer up). It is not good to show your anger. Have a good attitude and manners when playing.” One particular cheer which was sung by the “Tuitui” team in the village where I was living exhibits this idea: Tuitui ke ke tu’u ‘o va’inga—Tuitui stand up and play Mokomoko pe—play cool (or passively) Loto toa ikuna pe ikuna—be bold and brave so you can win win ke fiefia pe—then you will be happy Ta la la la la la la la la la —ta la la la la la la la la la Ko e va’inga ke ta fakaha —this play is for you to show hota angai tangata—manners and a human attitude
(It was explained to me that angai tangata means human behavior, in contrast to animal like behavior expressed in many Tongan rugby chants.) 7 Respect for the opposition is also expressed through the hospitality provided to a visiting team. Hosting a guest team in a respectful manner becomes an important part of the game especially the first game of the season, where traditional gifts of hand crafted tapa (barkcloth) and mats as well as baskets of food (kai tunu) are presented in the form of an opening ceremony. Sharing gifts and especially food is recognized as an important symbol of shared identity in the Pacific Islands (Bell, 1931; Linnekin and Poyer, 1990; Lutz, 1988). The presentation of food, tapa and mats at the opening day of nine a side basketball is more than just a kind gesture but a ritualized public affirma-
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tion of social ties. A palepale (shelter), constructed from a frame of wooden boards covered either by plastic material or coconut leaves, is often put up in the beginning of the season in order to seat members of the visiting team during a home game. Guests are usually supplied with mats as well although I have seen cases where guests bring their own. Therefore a village basketball game is an opportune way of symbolically displaying traditional Tongan hospitality and encouraging positive social relations between villages. Two years in a row I observed the opening game in the village where I lived and was told that other villages open their games in a similar atmosphere. A review of my field notes at the time illustrates the emphasis placed on Tongan values of respect, humbleness, and generosity, which accompany hosting a village game: At about four thirty the games began, despite a power cut which meant the hired band had no sound system. The games began with the same ceremony as last year only in a different order. The Tui’takilangi and Sopu village teams exchanged gifts of mats, tapa and baskets of food. First the host team led by Nonga (the captain of the host team) who wears a mat (a sign of respect) comes out and present tapas, mats and five baskets of food before their guests. Lose, (who is in the second class team but decided not to play today ‘cause she hurt her ankle), explains to me that each girl has contributed two or three things for each basket. “Nonga brought the large basket and there’s pork, fish, kumala [sweet potatoe], yam, manioke [cassava] and tinned fish, Tongan food. I brought pineapple, fish and manioke. Sopu will take the food back with them and eat it when they go home.” The team from Sopu also offers their hosts four tapas, cake and lemonade. Lose told me that the tapas they received were shared among the leaders. “One goes to Nonga the captain of our team and one to Mele who takes care of us. One was given to one of our shooters ‘cause we asked her to come especially from the Longolongo team and she is tired of coming to us so we gave her a tapa and the fourth tapa was given to another shooter because she prepared food for us in the morning. It was to thank her for the food. When the first class (the oldest women ranging in age from about fifteen to thirty) come out everyone seems to wake up. ‘Ailine explains to me that this is the team that “really counts.” The host group makes a grander entrance than the previous groups. They come out more slowly and bow in all four directions of the court. They then form a row and the other team comes out and they face each other and shake hands. The guest team goes off to the side and the host team forms a circle facing each other in the middle of the field. They stoop on the ground facing each other and call out: “Tuitui faka’apa’apa ki he “Loto Kai ‘Ano” (Tuitui gives respect to (or cheers) Loto Kai ‘Ano team). Then they get up with their hands raised and move to their places. I observed this particular sign of public sportsmanship at almost every game I attended with the Tui’takilangi team.
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Emotional restraint is also exhibited by the fact that teams are not in the habit of boasting after a win. When a point is made there is no great cheering and clapping and when the team wins everyone stays quiet. No prizes or trophies are awarded for the winning team and scores, if noted at all, are almost immediately forgotten. Thus an element of humble, modesty in the Tongan fashion is maintained and no one is accused of futa’aki (boasting). As one of my neighbors explained, “we do not show we are happy when we win ‘cause it is not nice for the other team to lose. The game must stay friendly.” Despite feelings of village rivalry, which do occur, a village basketball game provides an opportune way of symbolically displaying Tongan hospitality and encouraging positive social relations between villages. Play in this respect is interpreted as a form of bonding between two villages. Bonding through cooperation in sports “soften the contradictions that might otherwise spell disaster” (Sutton-Smith, 1997: 92). MacClancy has pointed out that, “sports and sporting events cannot be comprehended without reference to relations of power: who attempts to control how a sport is to be organized and played, and by whom; how it is to be represented; how it is to be interpreted.” (MacClancy, 1996:5). This statement should not be underestimated when it comes to nine a side basketball. As a strictly female sport almost every aspect of the game is managed and controlled by women.8 In most cases a team chooses an adult female in the village to manage the team and take care of all of their needs. Often the girls will choose the same woman year after year if she is well liked, available and willing to do the job. The girls look for someone who has good connections with others in the village and can ensure them land to play on and transportation to games in other villages. Usually the woman has the means to pay for unexpected expenses, such as food for training sessions and some traveling expenses. Some of these women I spoke to felt that it was their job not only to contact other villages and arrange games but also to act like a mother figure, making sure that the girls had uniforms, food etc. She is also responsible for encouraging team spirit, patching up fights between players and making sure teams have a good coach. In most cases the coach was either an ex-player or a fakaleiti (male effeminate). Some men serve as coaches and judges during games. Alisi, who has taken care of girls from her team in Kolofo’ou since 1963 describes her job as such: We train at five in the morning till seven. Then everyone goes home and do their own work and help mom and dad and at four or five they come to play. After we play we train again or have a meeting to talk about how we can do better next time. In the time of basketball I have to make “coffee” for the team.9 Sometimes I ask one of the families to give food for the girls to eat. When we
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play in another village I have to arrange the transportation and go with the girls and make sure they are happy. At the end of the year we go with the team to the beach and have a picnic there. It’s a farewell party for the team.
One result of female autonomy is that the cultural needs of the players become part of and even take priority over the game itself. As noted above, games are scheduled around the timetable of the girls themselves who are usually busy with chores during the morning hours. Consideration as to where the game is played is also based on social norms and not necessarily on what is best for the game. As one female manager explains: Right now we play on the land next to my house (points to her left). If my neighbor decides to build on her land I will have to find another land. If I get a piece too far from the girls’ home there will be a problem . . . It is hard for girls to go too far from home ‘cause it would get dark. The games sometimes last till seven or eight at night and parents would be angry if their girls walked home alone. So the game has to be in the village even if it’s played on a cracked field.
Nine a side basketball has been played in Tonga for four generations. Mothers and grandmothers, who were once part of this social world as players themselves, are still linked cognitively and emotionally to the game both through their own experiences and those of their children. They support and encourage the continuation of this female game for their daughters because it simultaneously complements, supports and negotiates gender roles and concepts of femininity amidst social change. It is so much a part of Tongan culture that although the game originated in the west it is classified by its players and ex-players as a “traditional Tongan game.” The persistent popularity of the local sport of nine a side basketball among females in Tonga offers an example of a creative interpretation of Western culture into local terms. As a cultural performance the structure and context of the game express the “subjunctive mood” symbolizing the desire of the Tongan female to create a new sexual identity through a synthesis between the old and new order. Whereas the demands of modern sports violate the traditional gender distinctions, by moving women into the public domain physically and emotionally, nine a side basketball reinterprets and reintegrates the gender distinction within the traditional social order. The game allows girls to maintain traditional female roles and concepts of femininity, associated with chiefly behavior (immobility, restraint, humbleness, modesty, grace and dignity, cleanliness etc.), and at the same time experience a sense of freedom and mobility, controlled aggression and assertiveness associated with male behavior and Western female behavior. In other words, within the context of nine a side basketball females can leave the confines of the home and experiment with behavior associated
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with the “outside” while remaining “inside” thus creating for themselves a “new design for living.”
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION By tracing the interrelationship between gender roles and concepts of femininity and the development of female games and sports in Tonga, this study exemplifies the significant role that games and sports play in the dynamics between cultural tradition and change. Using a symbolic interpretation, games and sports take on the role of a “cultural performance” (Turner, 1986). As such they provide a symbolic arena within which Tongan females cannot only reexamine, comment on and criticize culturally defined notions of femininity, but can also experiment with, and thus experience, new ways of “being female.” In this respect, games and sports serve as a catalyst for socio-cultural change, offering new perspectives and definitions of femininity, which represent the new identity that females are trying to create for themselves. In their discussion of the role of sport as a “context in which cultural change can be mediated,” Blanchard and Cheska (1985) describe a general process which takes place when one society incorporates foreign cultural elements into their own system. They claim that the acceptance of a foreign cultural element (in this case Western games and sports) by a “borrowing society” depends on whether the element is congruous with the group’s cultural traits and its perceived needs. Seldom is the borrowing society’s belief system displaced by another society’s feature, but the element itself is adjusted to better fit into the receiving group’s belief system. The beauty of this complex process is that the ethnic group can have it both ways—it filters out foreign features which destroy societal continuity but also allows novelty to be introduced and absorbed in controlled measure (Blanchard and Cheska, 1985:229). This negotiative process describes the integration of Western games and sports into the female Tongan cultural setting. A few women have wholeheartedly embraced Western attitudes and values (especially the “foreign feature” of achievement) that accompany modern sport. They have entered the public domain of the world of nations and as individuals represented and strengthened the cultural and national identity of Tonga. Yet, the majority of girls who participate in sports have been less receptive. Mixed feelings, regarding the changes which modern games and sports have brought to more conservative notions of femininity, have led to reluctance to totally accept these activities on Western terms. While girls are attracted by the physical, emotional and social freedom which accompany introduced games and com-
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petitive sport, they also feel uncomfortable and sometimes even threatened by these activities. This is true on several counts. For one, conforming to the demands of modern sport in terms of following strict and often complicated rules, keeping to schedules, frequent training often far from one’s home, “immodest” use of the body etc. appear overwhelming. Among those girls who do participate in competitive sports, a good performance is measured not so much by accumulating points, following rules and teamwork. Instead, it is measured by how well one can demonstrate an individual performance of skills on the playing field. Secondly, within Tongan society (as is true all over the world) female participation in sports is also linked with anga fakatangata (male behavior) or anga fakapalangi (Western ways). The increasing identification of females with both male and Western behavior is regarded by many as a threat to more culturally defined gender roles. These roles assure females high status and certain privileges within their kin group. Such privileges make women more reluctant to give up on the security provided by the traditional system (James, 1994; Morton 1996). One ex-president of the national netball team hints at this reluctance when she states: What is lacking with women is their self motivation. They come to a stage and think that is as far as they can go. They know that with a little bit of dedication and commitment they could go much further. But they don’t. It has to do with the fact that Tonga is a very self satisfying place for women. They don’t have to prove themselves. Here they are well fed and happy with where they are going. They have the extended family around them. They’ll never be isolated and will never have to fend for themselves. Young girls are still treated well by their families so they don’t feel a need to make an effort.
The conflicts and challenges which contemporary games and especially competitive sports present to culturally defined roles and concepts of femininity have led females to reassess their play behavior. In the process they have found ways of integrating novel elements of modern games and sports, which are compatible with their perceived identity as both Tongans and females. Some sports played on both the school and national levels have been modified to the Tongan cultural experience. Nevertheless, the formalized and structured nature of these activities limits opportunities for self expression, creativity and experimentation. As my research indicates, it is mainly through independently organized games and sports, such as the popular village game of nine a side basketball, that females are able to integrate modern concepts of femininity into their local culture. The continuous popularity of this game over the past seventy five years can best be explained by analyzing some of the symbolic messages which it
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conveys about tradition and cultural change. For one, the desire to combine, rather than replace, the old with the new, expressed through both the structure and content of the game, makes a statement about how Tongan females see themselves as females within a changing society. Notions of femininity based on traditional ideologies (anga fakafefine fakatonga) continue to play an important role in the identity of the modern Tongan female, nevertheless women do not view these ideologies as static. Thus by blending elements of both Tongan and Western notions of femininity within the context of the game according to their own formula they succeed in creating new meanings for traditional ideologies. In this way women become active agents of their own destinies. Second, by taking a once international female sport (Arlott, 1975) from the unfamiliar public sphere and bringing it into the familiar domestic sphere - the village setting, females succeed in creating a protective “boundary” ( Handelman, 1992: 4; Harris and Park, 1983: 25) against certain Western influences which are viewed as threatening or even destructive to their cultural identity. This protective boundary provides a sense of stability amidst change. Unlike international sports, such as netball and soccer, which are dictated by foreign values, nine a side basketball remains compatible with the values and lifestyle of the Tongan female. One great advantage of this village game, as opposed to sports played under the auspices of TASA, is its ability to accommodate girls and women of varying degrees of exposure to Western values. One need not necessarily be achievement oriented in order to play on the team yet at the same time there is plenty of room for those who are. The informal environment in which the game is played also allows girls to maintain a large degree of control over the speed at which change takes place. They can “digest” so to speak the new ideas and concepts, which are being presented to them, at their own pace. Through a game such as nine a side basketball they can experiment with new ideas and concepts and accept or reject those elements of the game which do not suit their individual cultural needs. It is no wonder then that nine a side basketball has remained so popular throughout the last seventy-five years. As females are increasingly exposed to features of Western society the game has become even more meaningful as a mechanism for monitoring socio-cultural change. The analysis presented in this study has obvious implications for both foreign and local sports developers who work hard to promote international sports programs in Tonga. As interpretations of culture, the Western oriented games and sports introduced to Tongan society cannot simply be transformed onto the Tongan playing field as is, but must go through a process of cultural interpretation. Some games and sports will remain similar to the original version while others will be drastically altered. As Heider (1977), Leach (1976),
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Mandle and Mandle (1995) and others who have studied this process in other cultural contexts claim, the success of the game or sport will ultimately depend on the degree in which it fulfills the cultural needs of its players. Tongan females are playing to a new rhythm. Not a rhythm of the west nor a rhythm of the past, but a creative synthesis of the two. The rhythm is synchronized with the changing realities of a new “Tongan way.” NOTES 1. The game of hiko has been transformed into a choreographed dance for girls and traditionally performed every year by the Queen Salote Girls’ College as part of a fundraising program. Several village dance groups also perform the hiko dance for tourists at the International Dateline Hotel in Nuku’alofa. 2. The first explorer to describe this game was Johann Reinhold Forster, son of explorer Georg Forster, on his travels around the world in the 1770’s. As he notes from a visit to Tongatapu in 1773: A girl of 10-12 years excited our attention, standing in the crowd on the beach. Her longish face had the most beautiful features, and the whole expression had an indescribable charm. Her bright and merry eye seemed like pure life. Her long hair fell down in natural curls and was garmented with good smelling flowers. Of her whole attitude, soul, freedom and grace were shining. She had five ball shaped fruits, which she threw permanently high and caught by an admirable skill and quickness. (translated from the German by Peter Surens)
3. During fieldwork a questionnaire on patterns of play was handed out to 152 adolescent girls. One question asked: ‘Oku ‘ke va’inga ‘iha timi sipoti? Kapau ‘oku ‘ikai, koeha e ‘uhinga? (Do you play on any team sports? If not, why not?). Out of the 102 girls who answered this question 74 answered that either they did not feel competent enough or they felt the rules were too complicated. 4. Each hoop is approximately nine inches in diameter and sits on a wooden or metal pole. Which is anywhere from 110 to 112 inches high. Height varies according to who has constructed the pole. The poles are firmly placed in rubber tires in order to keep them upright. The fact that the poles are held in tires also means that they are mobile and can therefore be removed and stored at the end of the season. 5. There is no documented history about the origins of this sport in Tonga, but as mentioned above, my own research indicates that the game was first introduced to Tonga in the 1920’s, by girls returning from studies abroad in New Zealand. Many women interviewed credit Princess Fusipala with the organization of the first girls’ basketball team in Tongatapu, although this assumption has not been confirmed. 6. In a questionnaire handed out to 152 girls, 117 said that they played nine a side basketball in their village on a regular basis. 7. One particular Rugby chant written by the King for the Tongan international Rugby team the “Sea Eagles” illustrates the more aggressive atmosphereassociated
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with male sports. Part of the translated version of the chant, which is sung in a call/ response style specifically compares the teams animal like hunger to win. Below is a translation of a few of the lines of the chant: Call: I will speak to tell the world the Sea Eagles are hungry. Response: So every foreigner knows I commit murder today. Starting from scrum half and going to all the backs. I have become a barbarian. Call: Hey, hey all of you Response: We all mow down any forwards in our path. And crush any rebellious spirit. Call: So they say this and they say that about Tongan rugby. Response: I am ready to bend iron and to shred all lions to pieces. So stop all of the noise. For now is the moment of the eagle. (quoted from The Times, London, May 30, 1995)
8. Although there is no official umbrella organization of nine a side basketball on Tongatapu, there is one man who introduces himself as the president of the Tongan Basketball Association. He travels from village to village in order to pick teams to play in Pangai (a public field in town) during the King’s birthday. It was difficult to tell how seriously he is taken. When I asked about him most women just laughed. According to one basketball player: He came to us once and tried to tell us the rules. We teased him and chased him and he left. He likes to go to other islands ‘cause the girls there take him more seriously and thinks he’s important.
9. “Coffee” (which has little to do with the drink) is simply food provided either before or after training. Most players admitted that it was used as an incentive to get girls to come to training sessions. Food was also described as an important means of showing support for the team. In the village I stayed at, a different neighbor provided food for the team almost everyday during the summer. Food meant anything from simple sandwiches to a full fledged ‘umu (Tongan underground oven where meat, fish and root crops are cooked).
REFERENCES Arlott, J. (1975). The Oxford companion to sports and games. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. Bell, F. S. L. (1931). The place of food in the social life of central Polynesia. Oceania 2, no. 2: 117-135. Blanchard, K. and Cheska, A. T. (1985). The anthropology of sport: an introduction. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey Publishers. Bordieu, P. (1991). Sport and social class. In C. Mukerji and M. Schudson (Eds.) Rethinking popular culture. Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press.
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Boyd-Barrett, J. O. (1982). Cultural dependency and the mass media. In M. Gurevitch (Ed.) Culture, society, and the media. London: Methuen. Butler, J. (1990). Performative acts and gender constitutions. In S. E. Case (Ed.) Performing feminisms: feminist critical theory and theatre. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Callois, R. (1961) Man, play, and games, Chicago: Free Press of Glencoe. Cohen, S. (1988). The juggling girls of Tonga. Whole Earth Review, Spring Issue: 112-114. Geertz, C. (1972). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight, In C. Geertz. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gifford, E. W. (1924a). Euro-American acculturation in Tonga. Journal of Polynesian Society, 33. Gifford, E. W. (1924b). Tongan myths and tales. In Bernice P. Bishop museum bulletin, Bayard Dominick expedition publication no. 8. Honolulu: published by the museum. Gifford, E. W. (1985). Tongan society. Bernice P. Bishop museum bulletin, no. 61, Bayard Dominick Expedition, publication no. 16. Honolulu: published by the museum, Kraus Reprint, Millwood, NY (first published in 1929). Handelman, D. (1990). Models and mirrors: toward an anthropology of public events. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Handelman, D. (1992). Passages to play: paradox and process. Play and Culture, 5, no.1. Harris, J. C. and Park, R. J. (1983). Play, games, and sports in cultural context. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc. Heider, K. G. (1977). From Javanese to Dani: The translation of a game. In P. Stevens Jr. (Ed.) Studies in the anthropology of play: papers in memory of B. Allan Tindall (proceedings from the second annual meeting of the association for the anthropological study of play). West Point, NY: Leisure Press. Huizinga, J. (1950) Homo ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Boston: The Beacon Press. James, K. (1994). Effeminate males and changes in the construction of gender in Tonga. Pacific Studies, 17 (2), 39-69. Kaeppler, A. (1986). Movement in the performing arts of the pacific islands”. In B. Fleshman (Ed.) Theatrical movement: A bibliographical anthology. (pp. 586600). New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., Metuchen. Kaeppler, A. (1993). Poetry in motion. Tonga: Vava’u Press. Published in association with the East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Development program. Leach, J. W. (1976). Structure and message in Trobiand cricket. Unpublished paper written to accompany the movie Trobiand cricket. Berkeley, California: University of California Extension Media Center. Linnekin, J. and Poyer, L. (1990). Cultural identity and ethnicity in the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press. Lutz, C. (1988). Unnatural emotions: everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenge to western theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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MacAloon, J. J. (1984). Introduction: cultural performances, culture theory. In J. J. MacAloon (Ed.) Rite, drama, festival, spectacle. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. MacClancy, J. (1996). Sport, identity, and ethnicity. UK: WBC Book Manufacturers. Mandle, J. R. and Mandle, J. D. (1995). Open cultural space: grassroots basketball in the English-speaking Carribbean. In M. A. Malec (Ed.) The social roles of sport in Caribbean societies. Boston: Gordon and Breach. Marcus, G. E. (1989). Chieftanship. In A. Howard & R. Borofsky (Eds.) Developments of Polynesian ethnology. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Morton, H. (1996). Becoming Tongan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Olson, E. (1994). Female voices of aggression in Tonga. Sex Roles, 30. Opie, I. and Opie, P. (1969). Children’s games in street and playground. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ortner, S. B. (1981). Gender and sexuality in hierarchical societies: The case of Polynesia and some comparative implications. In S. B. Ortner & H. Whitehead (Eds.) Sexual meanings: the cultural construction of gender and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prescott, N. (1992). Ko e sipoti mo hotau ‘ulungaanga fakafonua. [Sports and our culture]. translated from the Tongan. Provided by author. Roberts, J., Arth, M. and Bush, R. (1959) Games in culture. American Anthropologist, 61. Roberts, J. M. and Sutton-Smith, B. (1962). Child training and game involvement. Ethnology 1:166-185. Scott, James C. (1990) Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Singer, M. (1959). Traditional India: Structure and change. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society. Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, MA. And London: Harvard University Press. Thaman, K. H. (1992). Cultural learning and development through cultural literacy. In B. Teasdale & J. Teasdale (Eds.) Voices in a seashell: education, culture, and identity. Institute of Pacific Studies (USP). The Times, (May 30, 1995), London, England. Turner, V. (1977). Variations on a theme of limininality. In S. F. Moore and B. G. Myerhoff (Eds.) Secular ritual. Assen/Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum. Turner, V. (1984). Limininality and the performative genres. In J. J. MacAloon (Ed.) Rite, drama, festival, and spectacle. 19-41 Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Turner, V. (1986). The anthropology of performance. New York: P.A.J. Publications.
Chapter Three
Is Hazing Play? Jay Mechling
Let us begin with an image. I am looking at a vintage (1937-38) photograph of hazing in the online archives of Arizona State University (http://www.asu .edu/lib/archives/asustory/pages/17casc.htm). Why are the young men in this photograph smiling? This is one of many images I have collected through purchase or have viewed on the Internet, all snapshots of young men and, occasionally, young women being hazed as part of the initiation process into a fraternity, sorority, or athletic team. Some snapshots capture very private, secret hazing events, while others capture hazing in public spaces, adding a level of public humiliation to what already would have been humiliating even in the privacy of the group. These snapshots capture just a fraction of the hazing events taking place in any given year, and there is no way to know the bias in the sample of images available to the public. Yet, it seems striking that so many of these young people are smiling through their hazing, even given the tendency for enough alcohol to make anything seem fun and funny. That these initiates seem to be enjoying the hazing complicates our understanding of the meanings of hazing, especially in an era when many people and institutions define hazing as a “social problem” that must be eradicated. Some hazing incidents over the past few decades have led to severe injuries and deaths, and especially alarming to some observers is the seeming rise in hazing among female groups, who look more and more like the male fraternities and sports teams in their hazing practices. A culture critic suspects all claims that something is a “social problem;” indeed, there is an entire scholarly specialty devoted to “the social construction of social problems,” with a journal of its own (Social Problems) and numerous books and articles by rhetorical critics, sociologists, historians, and others who step back from unreflective belief in all claims and who ask what interests are served by the public’s accepting a phenomenon as a “social 45
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problem” in need of fixing. We could ask whose interests are served by the claim that hazing is a social problem, but here I set that question aside for another venue and want to ask the key question of interest to folklorists and others engaged in the interdisciplinary study of play. Is hazing play? I begin with a brief summary of the recent history of hazing and public debates about hazing and then move on to my central question. I think the paradoxical nature of play helps us see beyond overly simple understandings of hazing and appreciate it as a complex, multivalent event. Specifically, I argue that the carefully framed meanings of “humiliation” in the male friendship group both give the event its symbolic power and become the greatest source of misunderstanding resulting in the war on hazing. Not all humiliation is alike, and herein lies the key to understanding some of the positive functions of hazing.
HAZING AND CULTURE The anthropological and historical literature records the near universality of initiating young men into adulthood; and in most cases these initiations involve some sort of mental or physical test the initiate must pass, to move onto the next stage (Raphael, 1988). In most cases, the male initiation rituals follow a sequence identified first by Van Gennep and elaborated later by Turner and other anthropologists, a sequence beginning with the separation of the initiates from the community, followed by a liminal period of tests and humiliations, and concluding with a reintegration of the initiates into the group or community (Turner, 1969). Hazing in the transition from one stage of life to another serves both the psychological needs of the initiate and the social needs of the group. The interdisciplinary study of masculinity, a specialty roughly twenty years old and informed powerfully by feminist psychoanalytic theory, has arrived at the important insight that masculinity, which is performed so often with seeming confidence and bravado, is actually a very fragile construction due to the developmental necessity of the boy’s separation from the mother, the feminine (Chodorow, 1978; Frosh, 1994; Mechling, 2005). This means that, unlike the feminine, masculinity is defined as a negative, as “not feminine,” and must be worked at, proven, continually. “Proving one’s manhood,” therefore, daily challenges the developing boy and then man, and a great deal of the cultures of male friendship groups and more formal organizations in a patriarchal society can be understood as mechanisms for proving manhood (Beneke, 1997). Historians have found accounts of male hazing in Plato and Augustine, but the more immediate source of current hazing practices is the emergence
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of a “culture of male honor” in the United States and Great Britain in the 19th century (Bederman, 1995). A host of socio-historical forces—some economic, some having to do with the emergence of separate domestic and public spheres, others having to do with colonialism (for the British) and immigration (for the Americans)—conspired to create a perceived “crisis in white, middle-class masculinity” by the late 19th century. Americans worried about the “feminization” of American boys, who were under the guidance of mothers in the home and of female teachers in the schools, and these boys and then young men felt the pressing need to “prove” their manhood through sports and other rugged activities. The practices of “fagging” in British public schools (private schools from the American perspective) extended into American private boarding schools and colleges, where underclassmen (freshmen, especially) were required to obey and serve upperclassmen. A common tradition in such schools was stylized rough-and-tumble play fights between classes (years). Called “class scraps” and a number of other colorful phrases, these elaborate, stylized versions of rough-and-tumble play are the more public version of how older males haze younger ones in a play frame. Through most of the twentieth century universities and the general public accepted hazing as a largely secret practice that was a normal ritual within fraternities and male athletic teams. This acceptance of hazing extended to the military and to other all-male professions (all-male through most of the twentieth century, that is), professions such as policing, firefighting, logging, and construction. Boys will be boys. Hazing stories circulated beyond the fraternity or athletic team, so that certain elements became part of the formula for hazing. Nudity, even public nudity (such as tying a nude initiate to a lamppost or tree in a public place, or driving a nude initiate to a remote spot and leaving him there to find a way home) was an expected element of hazing, confirming in the public imagination the homoerotic nature of the practices. Paddling on the buttocks was expected, and there arose a material artifact to embody the custom— the decorated fraternity paddle. Judging from the large number of vintage photographs of public (dressed) paddling, the practice was well-known by the public. In more private venues, initiates might be blindfolded and made to think that they were eating worms (really spaghetti) or asked to fish human feces (really pieces of banana) out of a toilet bowl to eat. Relay races where initiates had to sit on blocks of ice to pick up an olive or other object between their butt cheeks was another favorite, as was the “elephant walk,” where a line of nude initiates would walk in a line linked together, each young man holding the penis of the initiate in front of him or, in some cases, inserting his thumb in the anus of the man in front of him. Urine and feces figure so prominently in most stories of hazing that the psychoanalytically-inclined
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scholar rather easily sees the infantilization of the initiates through these hazing practices (Dundes and Dundes, 2002). The hazing practices I have just listed—and the list could go on—are relatively harmless to the initiate. The more worrisome practices, the ones that have led to severe injury or death, almost always involve the ingestion of large amounts of alcohol. Sometimes the deaths result directly from the alcohol consumption, when the blood alcohol level reaches a critical point sufficient to arrest breathing. Sometimes the alcohol lowers inhibition and caution enough that initiates agree to engage in dangerous behavior, leading to drownings, falls, and other lethal accidents. In 1999 Hank Nuwer, an anti-hazing activist who maintains a database of hazing injuries and deaths, estimated that sixty young people died in hazing incidents between 1970 and 1999, and there have been several deaths since then (Nuwer, 1999; see also, Johnson and Holman, 2004).
THE WAR ON HAZING There is some irony in the fact that the war against hazing began during a decade, the 1990s, that showed sure signs of a crisis in white, middle-class, heterosexual male identity. Hazing thrived in the earlier period of masculine crisis, the 1950s, but the difference in the 1990s was that the women’s movement and feminist ways of looking at male behavior had become much more powerful forces in American society. The first salvo on the male culture of hazing was by anthropologist Peggy Sanday (1990), whose book, Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus, saw fraternities as seedbeds of male violence, including sexual violence. Sanday recommended that fraternities be abolished. A series of highly publicized “wildings” and gang rapes by middle-class white teens— the most notorious chronicled in Lefkowitz’s (1997) Our Guys—in the 1990s bolstered the notion that adolescent males are dangerous, toxic elements in American society, and that male friendship groups can turn even the nicest middle-class, white boys into violent rapists. Hank Nuwer, the most visible of the warriors against the culture of hazing, published four books on the topic in the 1990s and into the current century. His Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing (Newer, 1990) was published the same year as Sanday’s book. Nuwer focused on the story of the alcoholrelated death of Alfred University student Chuck Stenzel and of Stenzel’s mother’s social movement organizing to end hazing. Having had his own experiences in a fraternity, Nuwer claimed the insider’s perspective on this male culture of hazing.
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A number of severe injuries and deaths in the 1990s led the Fraternity Executives Association to make public statements against hazing, which they defined as “any action taken or situation created intentionally, whether on or off fraternity premises, to produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment or ridicule” (quoted in Nuwer, 1999: 31). Nuwer attributes a great deal of the danger of these ritual customs to the mixing of alcohol and hazing, and he is an abolitionist on the matter. “Greekthink,” he argues, leads to the loyalty, authoritarianism, and abuse one sees in many cults. He concludes that hazing must be forbidden. Fraternity leaders, military leaders, and athletic leaders at all levels need to show good values and enforce the rules against hazing. Ricky Jones’s Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek Letter Fraternities (2004) arrived at the same gloomy conclusion that halfway measures to reform hazing practices will not work, that the abolition of hazing is the only solution to the injuries and deaths. The latest stage in the war on hazing has been the passage of state laws criminalizing hazing. In the Spring of 2005 the Florida Legislature passed and Governor Jeb Bush signed the Chad Meredith Act, named after a University of Miami freshman who drowned while attempting to swim across a campus lake with two officers of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. His blood alcohol level was 0.13 and a jury awarded his family a $12.6 million negligence verdict. The act follows pretty closely the Fraternity Executives Association’s definition of hazing, though the law elaborates possible illegal acts under the statute. The Act defines hazing as “any action or situation that recklessly or intentionally endangers the mental or physical health or safety of a student,” and the list of possible hazing activities includes physical brutality, forcing initiates to ingest disgusting substances, and subjecting initiates to “extreme mental stress”—“such as sleep deprivation, forced exclusion from social contact, forced conduct that could result in extreme embarrassment, or other forced activity that could adversely affect the mental health or dignity of the student. . . .” (law cited on StopHazing. org website). The public stance of fraternities and college administrations alike is that hazing is bad and needs to be abolished. It is not surprising, then, that the Interfraternity Council at the University of Florida welcomed the Chad Meredith Act, assuring the university community that campus fraternities were committed to ending hazing and were engaging in educational programs toward that goal. “We are challenged to look at ‘tradition’ with more scrutinizing eyes,” wrote the IFC members in The Alligator, the campus newspaper. “ If in analyzing our actions we find them to be wrong,” they continued, “we
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know that there are people rooting for us to do right” (IFC Executive Board, University of Florida, 2005). The first case to test the Chad Meredith Act involved a 19-year-old Florida A&M (an historically black college) student who, along with other pledges, was beaten severely by five members of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity as part of the initiation in February of 2006. The five fraternity members went on trial and in December of 2006 the jury convicted two of them, sentencing each to two years in prison. The judge declared a mistrial in the other three cases when the jurors could not determine the role of those three in the hazing (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2006). From the outset of their deliberations the jurors struggled with the meaning of “serious bodily injury,” the wording in the statute. Meanwhile, the legislature of the State of California passed its own version of tough legislation aimed at punishing hazing. “Matt’s Law,” named after Matt Carrington, a 21-year-old student who died in February of 2005 as the result of a fraternity hazing at California State University, Chico. Forced to drink enormous amounts of water during the hazing, Carrington’s body chemistry was so compromised that he collapsed and died a few hours later. In that case, the four fraternity members pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter. In August of 2006 Matt’s Law passed both houses of the California State Legislature and in September Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law. Like the Florida statute, Matt’s Law defines hazing as “conduct which causes, or is likely to cause, bodily danger, physical harm, or personal degradation or disgrace resulting in physical or mental harm to another person in the course of the other person’s preinitiation into, initiation into, affiliation with, holding office in, or maintaining membership in any organization.” (Inside Hazing, 2006). In the California law, as in the Florida law, the consent of the person being hazed cannot be used as a legal defense. The California law has yet to be tested in the courts. It seems, then, that the rhetorical construction of hazing as a “social problem” has been very successful. The definition of hazing by the Fraternity Executives Association is now codified in anti-hazing laws in two large, bellwether states, and other states are considering this wording for their own legislation. It is now taken-for-granted wisdom that hazing is bad and should be abolished. But the scholar of play should be as skeptical toward these claims as toward any claim about “social problems.” Let us step back from uncritical acceptance of these claims and see what happens if we take seriously the proposition that hazing is play. How might that force us to think differently about hazing?
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HUMILIATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS The present definition of hazing is too broad, in my view, in that it includes humiliation (“embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule,” in the words of the Fraternity Executives Association) seemingly on a par with physical harm. The war on hazing is right to target dangerous practices for abolition, but it misses the point of ritual humiliation in the male friendship group. Lumping these practices together is what dooms the war against hazing, and the first step in “fixing” hazing must be to recognize these distinctions. The public war on humiliation arose in the 1990s as the result of several social and historical developments. The educational establishment was moving in that direction in the late 1980s, and by the 1990s teachers, parents, and the mass media were working hard at defining bullying as a social problem. To be fair, a series of dramatic school shootings in the 1990s and the purported motives of the shooters helped frame the rhetorical campaign against bullying, but this campaign was a piece of a larger trend picturing boys as dangerous critters among us (Miedzian, 1991; Garabino 1999). All this was happening in a decade that perceived a general crisis in white, middle-class, heterosexual identity—the product of economic uncertainty, highly visible feminist and gay rights movements, rancorous debates over affirmative action and immigration, the continuing overwhelming presence of women teachers in schools, and a number of other factors. Since masculinity is something that requires constant tests and proof, it is possible that boys and men were getting more aggressive in their tests of manhood during the 1990s, though I do not subscribe to the theory that violent videogames have anything to do with this trend, an argument that mistakes an effect for a cause (Jones, 2002). In any case, many forces in the 1990s were working at “civilizing” boys and men to behave in more orderly ways. Hence occurred the war on humiliation in the 1990s. Humiliation was seen as an instrument of bullying and bullying led to unacceptable violence.
HUMILIATION AS PLAY What the enemies of humiliation do not see is that there are different types of humiliation, a point clear to the scholar of play. Bateson’s (1972 [1955]) frame analysis helps us understand the different forms humiliation can take and the world of difference in the meanings of humiliation, depending on the frame. Participants sharing a play frame have exchanged and agreed to (usually tacitly) the metamessage, “this is play,” a message that directs the participants in their interpretation of all other messages (nonverbal, paralinguistic, and verbal
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communication) within the framed play. As Bateson (1972: 183) puts it, we face “two peculiarities of play (a) that the messages or signals exchanged in play are in a certain sense untrue or not meant; and (b) that that which is denoted by these signals is nonexistent”. This is the paradox of play. This same paradox emerges in the ritual frame, a frame which strongly resembles play but which affirms rather than doubts and which intensifies important symbols of the group rather than invert them or otherwise undermine their power (Handelman, 1977). Groups have formal initiation rituals, so I am more inclined to see the play frame of hazing, though I recognize that hazing sometimes has ritual elements. In both cases— play and ritual—the participants understand that what goes on in these frames is “not real” and is to be understood against other frames, notably “everyday life” or “ordinary experience.” One of the skills boys acquire as they are socialized into male friendship groups in the United States is the use of stylized aggression in the play frame. “Stylized” here means, among other things, that the behavior is consciously performed, usually as an exaggerated performance of the original behavior being represented. The stylized aggression of the playfight, for example, may resemble the performances of aggression in a real fight, but the participants understand that the stylized aggression within the playfight frame is “not for real.” The insults in a verbal duel, a sort of playfight, are understood to be a form of stylized aggression; the same words in another frame would be fighting words, a provocation for a real fight. Similarly, the physical aggression in rough-and-tumble play, including organized team sports, simply stylizes real aggression. The play frame is fragile, as Bateson reminds us, and a misstep can break the frame. A stylized playfight can become one for real unless and until the participants repair the play frame. The sociobiologists have an explanation for the evolutionary usefulness of stylized aggression in men, but we need not invoke that explanation to see, simply, that stylized aggression serves important functions in the male friendship group. Such groups typically have a hierarchy of power, and the stylized aggression helps the boys and men find their place within that hierarchy. The stylization of aggression also protects the boys and men from real violence; the playfighters are safe within the play frame of the friendship group. In fact, as Bateson said, the very fact that the friends can engage in a play frame signals to all participants something about their relationship; in the case of playfighting, stylized aggression paradoxically signals to all participants the closeness and trust they share. And we should not overlook the intrinsic pleasure that may be involved in the stylized performance of aggression, regardless of its functions within the male group.
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One consequence of boys’ socialization into a culture of framed, stylized aggression is that they learn to take such framed aggression as “not real,” which means that boys and men can walk away from these framed contests without holding grudges. “It’s only play,” “it’s only a game.” Anyone not well-socialized into framed, stylized aggression has a hard time distinguishing between real and stylized aggression, between real and symbolic violence; such a person may “take personally” an act of aggression directed at the person. Some men, but also many women, lack much experience with stylized aggression within a play frame, and that deficit leads to trouble later in life. This understanding of the role of framed, stylized aggression in male friendship groups should help us see the distinctions between types of humiliation. In the male friendship group, humiliation within a play frame is experienced as a form of stylized aggression, part of a contest to establish, maintain, and sometimes to upset the hierarchy in the group. Taking the humiliation the right way and being able to give it back amount to a test of one’s masculinity and one’s membership in the group. Participants understand that the humiliation does not mean what it would mean in another frame. This is true of the humiliation dished out and endured during hazing; in part, the initiates can endure the humiliation because they understand that these particular humiliations are limited to the time and place of the hazing. There are some important things to say about this humiliation within the play frame of hazing. First, for all his wisdom about play, Bateson harbored a romantic notion about the voluntariness of play. It took a more cynical person, Erving Goffman (1974), to add to Bateson’s frame analysis of play the important question of power. Goffman would have us look at who has what power in the frame and examine how that person or those people exercise the power, including the power to resist other people’s exercise of power. Sometimes people are dragged into pretending to share a play frame because they lack the power to resist. An employee facing a sexist or racist joke told by a boss, for example, must either pretend to be participating in the joking frame or complain and risk reprisals. Goffman reminds us how some people use frames to manipulate others, just as Sutton-Smith and Kelly-Byrne (1984) show us how some people can use the play frame to “mask” darker motives. Playfighting between siblings can mask real aggression, for example, just as joking can mask real, hurtful intentions (“I was only kidding”). Seeing the humiliation in hazing as a form of stylized aggression within a play frame depends, then, on the voluntariness of the hazing situation. Pledges are volunteers, surely, though one can imagine some situations where, once begun, the hazing situation does not permit easy exit.
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These remarks on voluntariness and frames point to a different sort of meaning for humiliation. The “good” sort of humiliation (if I can call it that) depends upon the voluntary agreement by participants to engage each other with a play frame, where all messages, gestures, and behaviors are understood to be interpreted under the metamessage, “this is play.” “Bad” humiliation, by this criterion, would be humiliation that lacked the voluntary play frame to create its meanings. As I just indicated, sometimes a person with more power than other players can use the play frame to hurt those players, who think they are sharing a play frame with everyone but who, in reality, are the dupes of a player with malevolent motives. In other cases, there is no play frame at all for the humiliation heaped upon a person, as when a bully or other mean-spirited person seeks to humiliate a victim through physical actions or words. Moreover, certain classes of people endure daily humiliations, as when structural racism, classism, sexism, or heterosexism subjects people to frequent indignities. In short, there is such a thing as “bad humiliation” that should not be tolerated; bullies need to be confronted, mean-spirited people need to be called to account for their behavior, and people should work toward a society that respects the dignity of every person. But the existence of “bad humiliation” does not mean that all humiliation is harmful and should be eradicated. I am arguing here for an understanding of the important functions of humiliation in the psychological and social dynamics of male friendship groups, and for the possibility that hazing (which is irrepressible) serves important functions precisely because it contains ritual, framed humiliation. Paradoxically, hazing is pleasurable for all the participants—including the “victims,” hence the smiles in the photographs— precisely because it is framed play. The humiliation ritualizes the hierarchy. The humiliation stands for real verbal and physical aggression, but the stylized versions are milder and safer than would be real fighting words or real violence. Sharing the play frame signals to all present that there is a high level of trust among the players; delivering the humiliation and enduring the humiliation affirms the closeness of the group, both the closeness of the initiates (the pledge class) and the closeness of the larger group. The fact that some players use the frame of the hazing for more meanspirited purposes does not negate the basic value of humiliation in the play frame of hazing. Some members of the group violate the implicit contract of the play frame, using the frame to mask real aggression and violence. Alcohol certainly can affect the judgment of the members conducting the hazing or the judgment of the initiates, but there is in some hazing events the occasional member whose personality leads him to use the play frame to inflict hurtful humiliation and injury upon a person over whom, temporarily at least, he has power that he would not have in everyday life. Groups sometimes recognize
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who among their number harbors this defect in character and try to minimize that person’s power over others. But in some cases the group does not rein in that individual and he commits unpardonable acts of cruelty and violence. That’s a matter for the group to police, however, as a cost of maintaining hazing. The fact that there might be real sadists (even in the strict clinical meaning) among the members hazing initiates raises, of course, the interesting question of the relationship between the humiliation in the hazing play frame, the humiliation in sado-masochistic sexual relations, and the play frame that sometimes governs that brand of stylized sexual behavior (Kleinplatz and Moser, 2006). Pursuing the larger typology and meanings of framed sadomasochistic play lies beyond the argument I want to make here, but the sexual connection is relevant in considering the meanings of the nudity in so many male hazing practices. The connection between the nudity and the meanings of humiliation is worth discussing a bit before I summarize my argument. Men are nude in each other’s presence in a few specific, framed settings. Not so long ago, the tradition of men’s swimming together nude in lakes and rivers morphed into the common practice of swimming nude in gendersegregated pools. Even when pools, lakes, and other public sites began mixing male and female bathers and modesty required bathing attire, men were used to sharing changing areas or locker rooms with a minimum of privacy. Whereas women’s shower facilities in schools and public pools usually provided private stalls for changing and showering, men’s facilities (until recently) usually provided one open space with several showerheads. Men’s shower facilities in schools and some other settings are now moving more in the direction of privacy (an interesting increasing modesty in men at the same time there is increasing nudity in the mass media), but it is still the case that in college residence halls, athletic team locker rooms, health club locker rooms, and many public pool changing rooms, men are expected to show they think nothing of being nude in the presence of other men. Here is where the paradox of frames does its work, as nudity in the presence of other men actually works to confirm the heterosexuality of the men who literally are exposing themselves to one another. The usual object of “the male gaze” is female, so the gaze is usually understood as sexual (heterosexual). The frame of the locker room or similar setting (skinny dipping in a lake, for example) affirms that the male gaze at other men is not sexual; men can be nude in each other’s presence because the frame bears a metamessage that the nudity and gaze are not sexual, that they do not mean what they would mean in another framed setting. Of course, men have an elaborate, implicit set of rules about the gaze in these settings, though in a play frame the gaze at genitals (for example) can last longer because, again, the sustained
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gaze does not mean what it would mean outside of the play frame. Men can tease each other about their genitals (drawing multiple gazes to the genitals) or can play genital-centered pranks (e.g., Ben Gay mentholated cream in the jockstrap) and maintain the heterosexual construction of masculinity. This is a test of one’s manhood, how one takes and gives back in this playful contest of humiliations. These observations suggest that the frequent nudity in male hazing events contributes to multiple meanings. That the members are clothed and the initiates are nude certainly establishes a hierarchy of power and can be experienced by the initiates as a form of acceptable humiliation. The shared nudity of the pledges helps bond them in their status as equals. Certainly the nudity and play with urine and feces infantilizes the pledges, a step in their new “birth” into an identity of full member of the group. The “investiture” ceremony in the group’s formal initiation ritual (once the tests of hazing have been passed) often involves adding items of clothing to the body, as the Latin root suggests (vestments). Thus, on the path from pledge to member, the young man moves from naked infancy to the category of mature, clothed brother. The nudity of the pledges also serves the homoerotic meanings of the hazing play. From ancient Greece to the present, many observers have argued that the homoeroticism between usually heterosexual men is a crucial element in their bonding. A common argument about the meanings of gang rape is that the men are having symbolic sex with one another through the intermediary of the women being raped. Dundes (1978) makes the case that American football, one of the most masculine of sports, is highly homoerotic in its language and symbolism. The heterosexual meanings of all of these activities are protected by the frame, which can contain the homoerotic elements because they are seen as part of the bonding between heterosexual men. We might note that the strong resistance in the military to accepting gay men is that their presence changes the meanings of the male gaze and threatens to disrupt the heterosexual meanings of the homoerotic play in the military. Fraternities and sports teams have problems with openly gay men for the same reason—the threat to the frame. The heterosexual male gaze at women is an assault, after all, as becomes clear when men think they are the object of the homosexual male gaze and reply with aggression and violence. The nudity of the pledges in hazing creates a controlled homoerotic play space and time. There will be other incidents of homoerotic play later among full members of the group—horseplay in the showers, pick-up football games, and the like—but in the hazing frame there is homoerotic play that is not permitted otherwise among full members. As I mentioned earlier, the quintessential symbolic element in hazing, an element known to the general public even if they’ve heard of no other details
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of hazing, is the paddling on the butt, sometimes clothed, sometimes nude. The initiates touch each other’s penises in a few of the traditions, such as versions of “the elephant walk,” but members rarely (probably never) touch the penises of the pledges; that would serve no bonding function and would disturb the frame, its heterosexual meanings, and its hierarchy. The paddling is a more complex, ambiguous hazing tradition, but its pervasiveness suggests that the paddling is central to the power of the symbolism of the hazing frame altogether. What could the paddling mean? Certainly the nudity of the pledge and the paddling of his bare butt infantilize him, a step in that ritual process of rebirth into a new identity. The male butt, however, bears sexual meanings relevant to the bonding functions of hazing. The butt is the object of anal sex between men, sometimes consensual, sometimes rape. Male-on-male rape is about power and dominance, not about sex, just as male-on-female rape is about power and not about sex. Even in consensual male relations, the participants “read” the two roles differently. As in heterosexual sex, the role of penetrator is read as masculine, the role of the person being penetrated is read as feminine. The key to the meaning of the paddling is that, in fact, the pledge is not penetrated by his brothers-to-be. Despite the phallic shape and symbolism of the paddle, the members hazing the pledges refrain from engaging in that ultimate, aggressive, dominating act of feminizing the pledges. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, the paddling and its masochistic acceptance by the pledges is a part of the “repression of the feminine” in the pledges necessary for their affirmation of hetero-masculinity (Freud 1919). My point here, simply, is that the details of hazing—the nudity, the paddling, the binding, and so on—richly enhance the play frame and give hazing its meanings in the construction of a mature, heterosexual member of the group. This is why hazing will be impossible to abolish. It serves too many crucial psychological and social functions in the male friendship group. There is one final puzzle to solve in answering the question, “is hazing play?” It is so very clear to me how the details of hazing serve the male group. What are we to make, then, of the trend for sororities and women’s athletic teams to haze new members in ways that strongly resemble the male practices? Hazing scandals involving women’s college athletic teams and cheerleading squads are becoming more common (Wolverton 2006), and the pictorial record of some of these hazing incidents (see, for example, the website www.badjocks.com) makes it clear that women’s folk cultures on these teams and squads are engaging in stylized humiliation in the play frame of the hazing (again, in most cases, the initiates are smiling). We lack much ethnographic evidence of these female hazing practices, so I shall withhold speculating much here about why this is happening and
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what are its meanings. Certainly the ethnographic explorations (by women researchers, needless to say) of female hazing will need to place the hazing in larger contexts of the changing nature of female friendship, female socialization, and the effects of women’s increasing presence in scenes previously allmale or something like it (police, firefighters, military, professional athletes, etc.). I would like to see those researchers tackle the issue of real humiliation versus stylized humiliation in the female friendship group, and how these may differ from the patterns of male humiliation, real and stylized. I count on women researchers and insiders from these female teams to help us see what’s up with these “girls gone wild.”
CONCLUSION The war on hazing, with all good intentions, has made a crucial error in including humiliation and its variants within the legal definition of hazing. Responding to instances of real injuries and death, the critics of hazing have sought to criminalize a play form—stylized humiliation—that does no harm and, in fact, serves important functions in creating and maintaining the male friendship group. Bateson’s frame theory of play and fantasy forces us to reconsider the functions and meanings of hazing. There are still many unresolved gender questions raised by this inquiry. One, as indicated, is the need for ethnographically-based studies of hazing in women’s groups, studies that will help us sort out the similarities and differences between men’s and women’s play. These differences and their trend (is women’s play becoming more like men’s play?) will tell us much about play and culture in the 21st century. But there is a larger gender question here, as well. As women increasingly enter institutions and settings previously all-male or very nearly all-male in their membership, the once-secret play and rituals of the male friendship group are now open to more scrutiny from the outside, and the tendency in public policy has been to outlaw these male initiation rituals and play. We see this in the two new state laws criminalizing hazing, and we see this trend in the United States military, as publicity about the infamous Tailhook traditions revealed the hazing of female naval pilots by male naval pilots, a tradition now banned (Burke, 2004). Similarly, publicity about the details of the King Neptune ritual hazing of sailors (including women sailors) experiencing their first equator crossing has led to an official ban of that old naval tradition (Bronner, 2006). The war on humiliation reaches now into basic training, so much so that some officers and others worry that the military is not training
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soldiers, sailors, and fliers to be as tough as they need to be to face real combat (Mockenhaupt, 2007). The reasons for the current war on humiliation are multiple and complex, and it distorts our view to see the entrance of women into traditionally male settings as the single cause for the war on hazing. Indeed, Bronner (2006, and personal communication) reports that many female sailors are disappointed that the Neptune ceremonies have been eliminated; they feel cheated out of a satisfying tradition, and they feel that they should be treated as equal to the men, even if that involves some hazing. And, as I indicated, women in sororities and on athletic teams appear to be hazing and ritually humiliating new members with great satisfaction for all involved. The war on hazing and humiliation might be harming women as much as men. Scholars of play must perform a difficult dance, balancing critical distance with a romantic notion about play and players. Like folklorists, play scholars jump easily to the uncritical defense of players (the folk), forgetting sometimes that play and players can be mean, nasty, and malevolent and that some forms of play lead to injury and death. Hazing traditions pose a particularly troubling dilemma to the play scholar, who feels tugs from several directions. The folklorist wants to defend folk traditions, but few folklorists would defend traditions that lead to injury and death. How shall we reconcile our feelings that all people should be treated with respect—as we wish to be treated—with the observation that people seem willing, even eager, to endure tests and degradations to become a member of a group? The Batesonian perspective on play frames and ritual frames provides an answer, a way to see that there might be essential, redeeming aspects of hazing.
REFERENCES Arizona State University Archives (2007). http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives/asustory/ pages/17casc.htm, last accessed May 28, 2007. Bateson, G. (1972 [1955]). A theory of play and fantasy. In Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine. Bederman, G. (1995). Masculinities and civilization: A cultural history of gender and race in the U.S., 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Beneke, T. (1997). Proving manhood: Reflections on men and sexism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bronner, S. J. (2006). Crossing the line: Violence, play, and drama in Naval equator traditions. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Burke, C. (2004). Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the high-and-tight: Gender, folklore, and changing military culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
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Chodorow, N. J. (1978). The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chronicle of Higher Education (2006). Florida jury convicts 2 fraternity members in first test of state’s anti-hazing law. Chronicle of Higher Education online (http:// chronicle.com/news/article/1421/florida-jury-convicts-2-fraternity-members) accessed May 25, 2007. Dundes, A. (1978). Into the endzone for a touchdown: A psychoanalytic consideration of American football. Western Folklore 37: 75-88. Dundas, A. and Dundes, L. (2002). The elephant walk and other amazing hazing: Male fraternity initiation through infantilization and feminization. In Bloody Mary in the mirror: Essays in psychoanalytic folkloristics, by Alan Dundes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Freud, S. (1919). A child is being beaten: A contribution to the study of the origin of sexual perversions. In J. Strachey (Ed./Trans.) Collected papers XVII (pp. 172-201). Frosh, S. (1994). Sexual difference: Masculinity and psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Garabino, J. (1999). Lost boys: Why our sons turn violent and how we can save them. New York: The Free Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row. Handelman, D. (1977). Play and ritual: Complementary frames of metacommunication, In A.J. Chapman and H.C. Foot (Eds.) It’s a funny thing, humour (pp. 185-192). Oxford: Pergamon. IFC Executive Board, University of Florida (2005). UF Greeks commend new hazing Law. The Alligator, online at http://www.alligator.org/pt2/050614column2.php, last accessed May 24, 2007. Inside Hazing (2006). Matt’s law. http://www.insidehazing.com/matts_law.php, last accessed May 25, 2007. Johnson, J., and Holman, M. (2004). Making the team: Inside the world of sports initiations and hazing. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Jones, G. (2002). Killing monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence. New York: Basic Books. Jones, R. L. (2004). Black haze: Violence, sacrifice, and manhood in black Greekletter fraternities. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kleinplatz, P. J., and Moser, C. (2006). Sadomasochism: Powerful pleasures. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. Lefkowitz, B. (1997). Our guys: The Glen Ridge rape and the secret life of the perfect suburb. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mechling, J. (2005). The Folklore of Mother-Raised Boys and Men. In S. J. Bronner (Ed.). Manly traditions: The folk roots of American masculinities (pp. 211-227). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Miedzian, M. (1991). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. New York: Doubleday. Mockenhaupt, B. (2007). The Army we have. The Atlantic 299:5 (May): 86-92, 84, 96-99.
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Nuwer, F. (1990). Broken pledges: The deadly rite of hazing. Atlanta, GA: Longstreet Press, Nuwer, F. (1999). Wrongs of passage: fraternities, sororities, hazing, and binge drinking. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Nuwer, F. (2000). High school hazing: When rites become wrongs. New York: Franklin Watts. Nuwer, H, (2004). The hazing reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Raphael, R. (1988). The men from the boys: Rites of passage in male America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Sanday, P. R. (1990). Fraternity gang rape: Sex, brotherhood, and privilege on campus. New York: New York University Press. Stop Hazing.org (http://www.stophazing.org/laws/fl_law.htm) Accessed July 12, 2008 Sutton-Smith, B., and Kelly-Byrne, D. (1984). The masks of play. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Press. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. New York: Aldine. Wolverton, B. (2006). Hazing photos spur debates on complicity of coaches. The Chronicle of Higher Education 52 (June 2) A1, A33-4.
Part Two
TRANSACTING PLAY Commentary: The Richness of Play Research R. Keith Sawyer Long ago, Jean Piaget made play a central concern for developmental psychologists. But in the last ten years or so, a broad range of other disciplines have turned their attention to play, including anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. This interdisciplinary scope provides an opportunity for synergy; we can all increase our understanding of play by sharing ideas across disciplines. I’m excited by the increasing richness of play research. A few decades ago, developmental psychologists were primarily engaged in laboratory studies, did behavioral coding, and reported quantitative measures of statistical significance. In the last twenty years or so—Bill Corsaro’s 1985 book Friendship and Peer Culture in the Early Years was seminal—researchers have used more qualitative methods, for example publishing and analyzing transcripts of what children say while they’re playing, deepening our understanding of play considerably. The three articles in this section represent the advanced and interdisciplinary nature of current play research. Although their topics are very different— eleven year old girls creating a new drama, autistic 6 year olds engaged in solitary sensorimotor play, and giant panda cubs play fighting—all three articles analyze the moment to moment processes of play. I was delighted to read Julie Dunn’s study of metacommunication in a group of eleven and twelve year old girls. Many parents and educators have observed children of this age engaged in dramatic, improvisational play, but I have never seen an academic study of this phenomenon. I really enjoyed reading the transcripts of the groups at play. The groups get into a group flow state (Sawyer, 2007), with new dramatic ideas suggested, often accepted or elaborated, sometimes rejected, but never interrupting the continuing flow of the drama. I would have enjoyed reading even longer transcripts, and I have 63
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a suggestion for journal editors: for articles of this type, perhaps the full transcripts could be posted on the journal web site? The post interviews with the children are fascinating for what they reveal about the girls’ understandings of dramatic convention. It’s interesting that when Dunn had the girls watch the videotapes of their performances, they were disappointed. Somehow the play felt much more real when they were doing it, than when watching it later. The next article is Robyn M. Holmes and Jill K. Procaccino’s article about play in a special needs class with 6 children of 6 and 7 years old. A central feature of autism is the inability to improvise (Sawyer, 2001); the play of autistic children has a ritualized quality. If the essence of sociodramatic play is its improvisational quality (Sawyer, 1997), then autistic children would be unable to engage in normal sociodramatic play. The article provides data that support this claim. These children play very differently than non-autistic children of this age. Only 6 percent of the time did they choose objects that required make believe (toy grill, pretend pizza). Sensorimotor play with the trampoline and the therapeutic ball together accounted for over half of all play. And social play was substantially less frequent; only 6.8% of their play was social, and that was parallel sensorimotor play. For normal children of this age, almost all of their play would be social and symbolic. One key finding is that children didn’t play very long—averaging less than a minute— unless an adult scaffolded their play, in which case the play episodes lasted five to ten times as long. A practical implication is that scaffolding by adults is invaluable in fostering these children’s play development. Whenever I teach a course on play, I am always sure to include a segment on animal play. In Wilson et. al.’s study of giant pandas, the researchers went to the source, the two largest captive breeding facilities in China, and spent a year observing nine cubs and three mothers. As the authors point out, despite the many studies of animal play in a variety of different species, there hasn’t been much study of bear cub play. Pandas often have only one cub at a time (the article doesn’t say whether this is always the case) so in the wild, these panda cubs could only play with their mother. But in captivity, cubs are often reared together with same-age peers. Giant pandas, like many other animal species, use metacommunicative signals to initiate and maintain a bout of play fighting: these authors observed bite move, head shake, and paw move signals. The basic story of this paper is that cub-mother play fighting is quite similar to cub-cub play. The main difference is that during cub-cub play, there are almost twice as many contact-maintaining behaviors per minute than occur in mother-cub play. The authors conclude that peer-rearing cubs, which is a common practice in captivity, doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the play fighting behavior of cubs.
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It would have been fascinating to read some ethnographic detail along with these quantitative data; for example, a detailed anecdote about a particular play fight would have helped make the data come alive. I’m glad to see these exciting studies that deepen our understanding of play, by focusing on the processes and dynamics of how play unfolds.
REFERENCES Corsaro, W. A. (1985). Friendship and peer culture in the early years. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp. Sawyer, R. K. (1997). Pretend play as improvisation: Conversation in the preschool classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Creating conversations: Improvisation in everyday discourse. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Sawyer, R. K. (2007). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. New York: Basic Books.
Chapter Four
Keeping It Real: An Examination of the Metacommunication Processes Used within the Play of One Group of Preadolescent Girls Julie Dunn INTRODUCTION Metacommunication involves a range of implicit and explicit signals used by players within dramatic play to “collectively regulate the emergence of the play drama” (Sawyer, 1997a, p.xxiii), enabling the integration of individual ideas within a shared text. From as far back as Bateson (1972), many writers in the field of play (Goffman, 1974; Schwartzman, 1978; Giffin, 1984; Bretherton, 1984; Glasgow Koste, 1995; Linqvist, 1995; Vandenberg, 1998; Lofdahl, 2005) have identified metacommunication as a key aspect, and a good deal of literature exists about how young children typically collaborate in play using these signals. However, the same cannot be said about metacommunication within the context of older children’s play. Sawyer (1997a, p.36) has suggested that there is a considerable gap in the literature in relation to the development of interactional complexity in play and in particular, the changes that may occur in terms of children’s use of metacommunication as they mature. He offers the notion (1997a) that children may in fact reach a point in the development of their metacommunicative skills whereby they can play dramatically without making any directorial (explicit) statements; Sawyer (2002) recently has drawn upon Goldman’s (1998) study of the Huli children of the New Guinea highlands to support this claim. This paper will analyse and discuss the metacommunication processes used in the dramatic play of one group of preadolescent girls, in order to investigate Sawyer’s hypothesis. The data reported here will be drawn from longitudinal research involving almost 30 girls who participated across two distinct series of sessions – initially when they were eleven and again a year later. Transcripts and analysis of the more than 35 hours of play they collaboratively generated, as well as interviews following each series of play sessions, 67
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will be used to address the research question: Which metacommunication strategies were most favoured by these preadolescent girls and why? Giffin’s (1984) continuum of explicit and implicit metacommunication strategies will be used as the framework for this analysis and her notion of “conservation of the illusion” will also be applied.
METACOMMUNICATION AND “CONSERVATION OF THE ILLUSION” Holly Giffin’s (1984) study, which outlines in detail the metacommunicative strategies used by pre-school children, is perhaps the most comprehensive attempt by a researcher to analyse communication within dramatic play. She places these strategies along a continuum, with overt proposals such as “let’s pretend that” or “I’m going to be the cat” falling at the most explicit end, while highly implicit strategies such as enactment are positioned at the opposite end. She notes that even young children show a preference for the implicit strategies and suggests that this preference is related to an unwritten rule of play. Giffin refers to this as the “illusion conservation rule” and suggests that it exists in order to ensure that players are able to “sustain and experience collaboratively a transformed definition of reality” (1984, p.88) by negotiating transformations with the least possible acknowledgement of the play frame. A play frame, simply put, refers to the boundary that separates the “dramatic” context from the “actual” one and is a term that was originally applied to play by Bateson (1972) and then developed further by Goffman (1974). Giffin’s rule in relation to play frames suggests that in order to experience play events “as if” they are real, players must avoid direct acknowledgement of the fact that this frame exists. In a process directly related to “the willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge, cited in O’Toole, 1992, p.13), the dramatic worlds created by players are treated “’as if’ they are real.” Heathcote (cited in Johnson and O’Neill, 1984) calls this the “acceptance of the one big lie,” whilst Cockett (1998, p.36) suggests that within all dramatic activities we create “a realm of illusion that we know is not real in order to play a game of accepting that, for the time being, the illusion is real.” O’Neill (1995, p.45) believes that many forms of dramatic activity depend on this kind of notion, suggesting that both theatre and improvised drama forms depend on this “temporary acceptance of an illusion – a closed, conventional, and imaginary world that exists in conspiracy between audience and actors.” Goffman too has described this “conspiracy” (1974, p135) within dramatic contexts and refers to audience members in the theatre as “collabo-
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rators in unreality” who actively engage in a process of “playful unknowingness.” In order to “conserve the illusion” within dramatic play, children must also become “collaborators in unreality,” such that the spontaneous and collaborative nature of play requires of them an even higher level of acceptance of the illusion than theatre does. O’Neill (1995, p.59) points out: The rules of the game in theatre are already known to the spectators who collude with them, but in improvisation . . . as in dramatic play, these rules are discovered and generated in action.
The importance of rules in dramatic play has of course been highlighted by Vygotsky (1933/1976, p.542) who challenged Piaget’s view (1951/62, p.87) that symbolic play appears to be “without rules or limitations.” Huizinga (1955, p.11) also saw rules as being essential within play and described the player who breaks these rules or ignores them as a “spoil-sport.” The spoilsport, according to Huizinga, shatters the play world by revealing its relativity and fragility, robbing it of its illusion. It can be argued then that a player, who opts to use an explicit form of metacommunication during dramatic play when an implicit one could easily have been applied instead, is in fact a spoil-sport, as overt signals disrupt the flow of the play and make the collaborative task of conserving the illusion more difficult. However, even players who are committed to remaining inframe may not be able to manage a spontaneous play situation where only implicit signals are used, for in order to successfully avoid explicit directorial statements, all participants need to be highly accommodating of new textual directions and accepting of offers – even those that do not necessarily correspond with their individual ideas or interests. Personal gratification has to be delayed and all players must share the common goal of conserving the illusion. This connection between metacommunication and “conservation of the illusion” raises the question of whether participants in play make explicit choices about their metacommunication signals with a particular purpose in mind, or whether their choices are completely intuitive and related only to their level of maturity. The research project outlined below is an attempt to explore this issue. THE RESEARCH PROJECT Conducted within the context of an after school club, the participants involved in this longitudinal case study were students of an all girls’ primary school in Brisbane, Australia. Attracting a mainly white, middle class clientele, the
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school has a somewhat formal curriculum. Participation in the after school sessions was voluntary, with 27 girls expressing a desire to participate in the first series of sessions and almost 20 choosing to return for the second series a year later. Three sub-groups were created for the first series and two for the second. No new participants were permitted for the second series. Play sessions were conducted in a small school hall, with participants making use of a limited range of randomly selected costume and prop items. All sessions were video recorded. The data collection process for both series also included individual and group interviews, with the second series group interviews making use of video stimulated recall (Lyle, 2003). An additional feature of this research was the occasional involvement of the researcher as a co-player. Not originally part of the research design, the opportunity to gain an “insider’s” view of metacommunication was provided by the girls themselves, who used implicit signalling devices to draw me into their play, and at times, to cleverly keep me “in frame” when my preference was to return to my sideline observations. Each play session was of approximately 90 minutes duration and typically moved through a number of different phases. These included: a preparation phase where the girls negotiated their ideas and prepared themselves and the space for the forthcoming action; an enactment phase where the ideas discussed during preparation phase were enacted or “played out;” an innovation phase where the play text moved beyond the original plan and into unchartered territory -- with new directions being generated spontaneously; a breakdown phase where the play text became unworkable for the majority of the players and needed to be cut for explicit renegotiation; and a concluding phase where attempts were made to gain some kind of closure for the narrative – a feat that was rarely achieved. Not clearly defined, linear or distinct and certainly not identified by the players themselves, these phases were partially characterised as well by the presence or absence of explicit metacommunication, with the preparation and breakdown phases making exclusive use of this overt form of negotiation, while the remaining three phases made use of predominantly implicit signals. Table 4.1 provides a summary of these texts and the groups that created them. It highlights the preference shown by the girls for exploring supernatural or dangerous contexts, with murderous characters being present in almost every text. Surprisingly consistent in terms of style, structure, and content, these texts reflect the particular socio-cultural context of the research and its inherent conditions. They cannot therefore be used to make generalised statements about what might occur when other groups of preadolescent players come together, but nevertheless they offer a useful window of insight into
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Table 4.1. Series One Texts Series One Texts Week One
Saturday Group
Two
The Detectives and the Alien Landing *# Haunted House*
Three
Lost in the Bush#
Four
Pirates*#
Five
Aliens*#
Monday Group
Wednesday Group
A set of sleep-overs: Home, treehouse, cave Space Adventure with Aliens# Bermuda Triangle Adventure*# Spice girls, the Equestrian team and the haunted house*
The Magic* Cupboard Wise Woman* Congo Jungle Detective Mystery*# The Green Girl*#
Thursday Adams*
Series Two Texts Week
Monday Group
Wednesday Group
One Two Three Four Five
Cluedo Murder Mystery* Haunted Hotel*# Alien Invasion# The Fashion Spies# School Camp Cave In#
Kings and Queens – Murder in the Castle*# Plane Crash*# Clothes in the Attic* Animal Liberationists and the Fashion Designers# Strange Student*
Key: * indicates a play text with supernatural components in the content # indicates a play text where the participants faced danger
metacommunication and how it operated within the dramatic play of these older girls. Throughout this paper these play episodes are referred to as texts. This is not to suggest in any way that scripted material was used in developing them, or that the play episodes were ever re-presented by the players in written form. Instead, the term is used to highlight the fact that the spontaneous and collaborative play outlined here usually resulted in the generation of one or more fairly cohesive narrative “texts.”
RESULTS Analyses of the sessions within both series one and two of this research project suggest that for these players at least, Sawyer’s (1997a) hypothesis was an accurate one. A clear preference for implicit signaling techniques was noted, and over time the players demonstrated the ability to avoid explicit signals almost entirely within the enactment, innovation and concluding phases of their play, while breakdown phases where explicit signals were used, usually
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occurred towards the very end of the ninety minute sessions and were very brief. The following section will explore this claim in detail, drawing on transcripts to provide examples of the metacommunication processes employed by the players across the two series. Interview transcripts will also be used to provide some understanding from the players’ perspective of the forces that drove these practices.
EXPLICIT METACOMMUNICATION Apart from the explicit signalling that occurred during preparation phase and the occasional, brief break-down phase, the overwhelming majority of metacommunication was implicit. However, especially within series one, a number of explicit strategies were applied and these included Giffin’s (1984) 1) categories of overt proposals to pretend and 2) low voice prompting. In addition, an approach not previously noted in the metacommunication literature, involving whispering in groups outside the play space, was also observed. Overt proposals, so commonly noted in the play of young children, tended to be used within the enactment, innovation and concluding phases only when the play had completely broken down and needed to be re-established, or because an individual player personally wanted to redirect the action – usually when more implicit attempts to take control had failed. This overt negotiation or cutting of the action in order to re-negotiate the text was, however, viewed dimly by the majority of players. Players with a habit of doing this were usually ignored by the group, with the text moving on as if they had not spoken. The following transcript from the series one Green Girl text is interesting because it contains two explicit signals not normally noted. The first of these is denying, followed by an overt proposal to change the textual direction. This explicit request is ignored by the remaining players and the text moves on. Natalie heads across the room carrying a torch. She comes across Gillian, Winter and Jessica who are examining a piece of paper on the floor. She calls out to the remaining players on the other side of the room that she has located the three girls who have what they have been searching for. Natalie: Hey, you guys, I found Winter, Jessica and Gillian. Gillian: No you didn’t! (Gillian physically pushes Natalie away.) Natalie: (Turns to the others with arms outstretched – appealing) Then what happens? Look, this is dumb, because everything’s not happening.
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The rest of the players ignore Natalie’s appeal and the action continues as though she hasn’t spoken. The three girls continue to examine the paper while on the other side of the room the search for the missing girls goes on. Sawyer (1997b) highlights denying as one of the aspects of children’s play that differentiates it from adult performed improvisation. Based on his research within performance improvisation groups, he suggests that adults on stage cannot contradict each other and still be effective, whilst children playing quite regularly do. Similarly, Lobman (2003), has identified the “don’t negate, collectively create” rule as being critical in both contexts. Significantly then, within the texts created by these preadolescent girls, contradictions and denials such as this one occurred infrequently and rarely if ever in the series two sessions. Elsewhere (Dunn, 2003) I have identified four important playwright functions that are intuitively used within dramatic play (narrative, intervening, reinforcing, reviewing), with one of the most significant of these being the reinforcing playwright. The reinforcing playwright’s role is to support the offerings of the intervening playwright by responding with additional ideas that incorporate this new direction. “Denying” is the antithesis of this and is towards the most explicit end of the metacommunication continuum. Natalie’s “discovery” of the lost girls is an example of the intervening playwright at work, while Gillian’s denial is in direct contrast to the normal situation in these texts where either the intervention is reinforced and included, or it is simply ignored. During the session two interviews I was to discover deeply felt resentment towards players who denied others or cut the action in order to achieve their own personal goals for the text. Researcher: So were there times in the sessions when you were ever frustrated by what happened? Gillian: I remember last year Natalie made it really hard. Angela: Yeah. Sarah: And Helen and Amy, remember in the Saturday group? Researcher: So what was it that they did that made it hard? Ang: They don’t go along with it. They wanted it to just go in their direction and they try to stop all the time to make it go their way. Donna: They act like, “This is my way and I’m not doing it. . . .” Gillian: Natalie made us stop and that spoils it. Researcher: Spoils what? Gillian: Well it just doesn’t feel as real. . . .
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Given that Natalie only participated in series one (owing to other commitments), this interview recorded at the end of series two suggests that her approach to play was highly unpopular apparently because her use of explicit negotiations had a negative impact on the ability of the other girls’ to achieve a sense of realness – to conserve the illusion. Low voice prompting was the other explicit signal from Giffin’s continuum that was noted. This signal provides the player with the opportunity to direct the action overtly, but without stopping for an out-of-frame negotiation. Usually occurring between just two players, the player wishing to direct the action drops the tone and volume of her voice in order to prompt the actions of another player. The effectiveness of this form of metacommunication lies in its surreptitious nature, and during my sideline observations and reviews of the video recordings, I never once noted an example of it. However, whilst involved in the Green Girl text as a co-player, I experienced it first hand. Within the transcript below, Angela has decided that the text would be more interesting if the “teacher” (me) does not accept that the green girl exists. She needs to convey this new idea to me, but does not want to stop the action to do so. She therefore adopts the strategy of low-voice prompting: Researcher: (in role as teacher!): Ok, where is she? Where’s the green girl. Natalie: (Leading over Angela) Here she is. Angela: You think I’m Angela! (Spoken in a very low voice) Researcher: (Responding to this new direction) But this isn’t the green girl, this is Angela. Faye: It’s not Angela, it’s Aphrodite – the green girl we told you about. Researcher: Oh, come on! This girl looks just like Angela. Natalie: It is Aphrodite, she’s just got her mask on again.
Angela’s vocal tone and volume were sufficiently different for me to understand the direction I was given. Swiftly achieved and clearly communicated, Angela had provided me with a valuable insight into the simplicity of this explicit metacommunication strategy. Significantly, the other players also accommodated this new twist in the plot even though they had not heard the prompt, and the text moved on seamlessly without any need for discussion or a break in the action, highlighting the flexibility and spontaneity of these players. As well as these two signals noted by Giffin, during series one the girls used an additional strategy that has not previously been noted in the literature. Here the players moved outside the room to quickly whisper ideas about the
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text to each other, even as it was continuing inside with other players. This strategy, which clearly falls into the overt proposals to pretend category, is quite different, however, from those already discussed because of the manner in which these overt negotiations took place. Quickly convened and concluded, these out-of-frame chats occurred quite regularly in the first series, but never in the second. Giffin (1984, p.87) suggests that working outside the play frame “releases the players from the constraints of the play definition,” and provides them with the opportunity to “collectively and radically restructure the frame if they wish.” The attempts by these girls to hide or conceal this restructuring, by both whispering and going outside momentarily, raises the question of who they were hiding the communications from. Whose illusions were they conserving by doing this – their own, each other’s, mine or some other “unidentified them” possibly related to the video camera? During the series one group interviews I asked the girls about how they communicated their ideas in order to keep the text moving. In their responses they refer to both implicit signaling and whispering. In the transcript below I am referring to a moment from the Thursday Adams text: Researcher: So tell me, suddenly someone decides to pick up a bell and without planning this in advance you react like you are scared or hurt by it. What made you decide to do that Hannah? Hannah: I have no idea. Angela: In the story she is supposed to be afraid of bells. Researcher: Yes but how did you all decide that? Hannah: The bells were supposed to stop the necklace thing from working. Researcher: But you didn’t plan that in advance, so how does everyone else know? Hannah: Because I went crazy when the bells went off . . . Researcher: So it’s not necessary to stop and talk about these things? All: No! Researcher: Ok, so when you want to change something in the story or put something new in, how do you get others to go along with that? Angela: You lead them along that track and change the story. . . . Researcher: But how do you actually do it? Donna: Just whisper to them. . . ..or mostly you just say something to them and they go along with it.
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Researcher: So when do you whisper, Gillian, compared to when you change it within the action? Gillian: When it is really complicated. . . ..like when it’s not easy just to show them what to do. Researcher: So why do you whisper it to them instead of saying out loud “Ok, let’s make it that you have to walk out the door.” Hannah: No! Imagine saying, “We have to walk out the door now!!!” Sarah: It would ruin the story because you would be saying it out of nowhere. Hannah: And it would be a bit confusing too because you would be going into the story and out of the story all the time. Researcher: So you’re saying it is easier to stay in the story? Hannah: Yes, and if you whisper it to someone, they know that it’s not meant to be in the story. Researcher: So that kind of is a way of differentiating between what is really in the story and what is organising the story? All: Yes. (General agreement on this point. Heads nodding.) Lucy: If you say what you are going to do that interrupts it. . . .it’s not as real if it keeps being interrupted. Jane: Yeah, if you make an announcement about what you are going to do it makes it less real. Helen: Yes. Karen: It’s much more real if everyone just goes with the flow.
IMPLICIT METACOMMUNICATION In order to “just go with the flow,” players needed to use implicit signals. According to Giffin (1984, p.81) implicit metacommunication strategies range from enactment, which is the most in-frame, to storytelling which is closest to the out-of-frame end of the continuum. She sees enactment as the most sophisticated, for here the players are “enacting a shared script and thus each action automatically and implicitly metacommunicates the appropriate response.” Enactment was by far the most common metacommunicative strategy used by these older girls, with high levels of concentration, collaboration and cooperation being used to keep the action moving without resorting to strategies further along the continuum. At times however, some additional signals were
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required, with Giffin’s categories of ulterior conversations and underscoring being used. Ulterior conversations allow players to make transformations in roles and objects from an in-frame position. Underscoring is similar, but exposes the play frame more, with the player describing what they are doing as they are doing it. Table 4.2 for the Congo Detectives play text provides good examples of all three of these implicit strategies, with enactment being the main approach adopted. Table 4.2. Congo Detectives Play Text Transcript
Implicit Signal
Natalie and Winter have decided to switch roles, and have signaled to the others by making a phone call to the office, that they would now be the bosses of the detective agency and would be coming to check on the progress of the case. They adopt a demeanor that clearly reflects their superior attitude, and don fur coats to signal power. Meanwhile, at the detective agency, there is a flurry of activity as the agents prepare for the arrival of their bosses.
Implicit role assignment using voice, demeanour and costumes.
Angela: Come in, you’re quite welcome.
Enactment
Natalie: (Addressing Jessica and Kate who are photographers) What are you paparazzi people doing? Shouldn’t you be out looking for things to take pictures of? Do I have to take five percent off your pay rise? And what are you doing? (She addresses Gillian) Gillian: I’m going through the files on the crime. Natalie: Shouldn’t that be over and done with by now? Gillian: Well, it takes quite a while. If you had enough money to increase our salary we could do it better.
Enactment
Winter: We should fire her and get a more efficient secretary. Natalie: Yes, someone who works and does not be cheeky to their bosses. (Gillian gets up and walks off) Winter: Where are you going Miss? Natalie: Yes, where are you going? Winter: You’re not finished your work. Natalie: Yes, sit down and finish that work. (By walking after Gillian however, Natalie steps on two cut-outs of footprints that are on the floor. These were placed in the space before the play began . . . as the girls prepared.) Angela: Now look what you have done, you’ve stepped on the evidence. (continued )
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Table 4.2. (continued ) Transcript
Implicit Signal
Natalie: Well, it shouldn’t have been left lying around. Angela: The reason for this visit was to help I thought, if not, go away.
Ulterior Conversation
Winter: How dare you talk to your. . . . Angela: (Cuts Winter off and goes right up to her face and shouts something inaudible. Winter looks shocked). Faye and Angela get on with their work of examining the evidence. Faye has been deeply engaged in report writing throughout this whole exchange and now she and Angela go into a deep but inaudible discussion about this evidence. Natalie and Winter go over to them and try to get their attention back by knocking on the desk. She does this several times and eventually says “knock, knock, knock.” Faye looks up.
Underscoring
Another form of implicit signalling connected to underscoring was the use made of mime. Here the players acted out key aspects of the text. Unlike underscoring however, where the players say what they are doing as they do it, these signals are simply presented non-verbally for other players to observe. Within series one sessions these mimes were quite simplistic and were mainly used to show movement across space, such as within the Congo Detectives text where Winter climbs onto a desk and wrenches an imaginary steering wheel back and forth to signal to the others that they are escaping. Within series two however, the mimes became far more sophisticated, with the Clothes in the Attic text including several examples of complex collaborative mime involving all players. The following transcript from this session not only includes an example of a collaborative mime, it also highlights the growing generosity of the players and their willingness to leave key textual decisions to others. Susan, Gillian, Tanya and Renee, playing the role of university students, are examining a painting and noting that there have been changes to it since last they saw it. . . . Susan: Look, that woman on the rock has changed sides – I’m sure. And what’s that behind the painting? Renee: It’s a button. Susan: But what’s it for? Tanya: Look, over here, it’s made an opening in the wall!
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Gillian: Come on, let’s go, there’s a tunnel underneath it. Come through. (They follow Gillian and crawl under chairs and through a narrow gap in the furniture pretending to be crawling through a tunnel.) Renee: Oh my gosh it stinks so much. Tanya: (They emerge from a under the last chair). Look, a grave stone. What does it say? Renee: It says, died 1960. Susan: Died 1960! Gillian: I just remember about a book I read, where if you open a grave you can draw any evil spirits back in! Susan: But hang on, what about Sarah, we have to make sure that she is not one of the spirits. We don’t want her to be sucked back in as well. Renee: Yes, we have to make sure it doesn’t pull her in too. Susan: (Looks around) Oh well, I’m sure she’ll be back in a few minutes. Ok everyone, let’s start pushing the gravestone back.
The group all begin to mime together pushing back the gravestone lid. They work together for some time until at last it comes free. They all grab at their noses. Renee: Oh yuck, it stinks. Tanya: It’s almost like someone died – literally.
Another category from Giffin’s continuum is that of storytelling, and within the series one texts it was used in a form that was similar to that of a narrator. During the Wise Woman text, for example, Stephanie needs to signal to the others that she has returned to her village and so calls in a loud voice, “We’re coming back!” She follows this narration with an out-of-frame horn sound, “toot, toot “ (out of frame because this would be an inappropriate vocalisation for her character) and then uses ulterior conversation to reinforce the fact that they are coming back by calling again, “Town, town, we’re back and we have the fish.” Of interest as well in terms of implicit signals, were the calls for me to enter the fiction and become co-player. Never done within the play as an explicit request, instead, the girls used implicit metacommunicative strategies within the fiction to demand my involvement. During the Green Girl text for example, Faye invites my involvement in this way: Angela: Why don’t we go and find the green girl now? Faye: Yes, but the teacher is going to have to make sure that we’re in bed, so it’s our bedtime now so let’s get into bed and meet back here at one o’clock.
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Natalie: No midnight. Angela: No, one o’clock. Natalie: Ok, how about 11.30 so we can get the stuff already and leave at midnight? All: Ok. Faye: (Points and looks directly at me) Quick, she’s coming, get into bed.
A call such as this required a response from me and could not be ignored. Faye had adopted the role of the intervening playwright and had written me into the next scene using an enactment technique which I have labelled aggressive assertion. More difficult to ignore than coaxing, where a player may ask “Isn’t it time we got ready for work?,” confident players who chose to use aggressive assertion would instead announce “Time for work!” By identifying and labelling these forms of enactment (coaxing and aggressive assertion), I was more able within the analysis process of series two to understand how these older players managed to stay in-frame for so long and in such an effective manner. Table 4.3 provides an annotated example of Table 4.3. Clothes in the Attic Play Text The girls all lie down on the floor on the beds they have prepared. While they are just getting comfortable, Gillian lifts up the leg of a chair which is close to her bed and drops it hard onto the floor. Immediately she sits upright. Gillian: What was that? Sus: I don’t know. Gillian: It was a distinct bang! Tanya: What’s going on here?
Out of frame sound effect. Only Gillian knows she made the noise – others experience it implicitly.
Sarah: It was coming from behind you. Renee: It was probably just my laughing you could hear. Gillian: No, I’m going to take a look. She puts on a brown fur coat to investigate Sus: Ok but don’t go on your own – the two of you should go together. The other two head off and the three remaining lie back down. Gillian and Tanya begin to wander around the attic end of the room. Tanya taps a wall and asks what something is. Gillian says it is nothing and to come away. She takes Tanya by the hand and leads her back towards the bedroom area.
Ongoing enactment
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R: Did you find anything? Sus: Yeah, did you see any ghosts or anything?
Coaxing
G: No. This is followed by inaudible conversation where everyone is speaking at once. When this ends the five girls lie down again and try again to get to sleep. When all is quiet again, Renee sits up and is holding the necklace in front of her.
Coaxing
R: Hey everyone, do you want to see what I found? She says it very quietly and everyone ignores her, choosing this time to remain asleep. Slowly then she places the necklace around her neck and looks into the centre of it. Suddenly, amidst all the silence, she screams loudly and throws herself onto the floor.
Coaxing
Sus: What is it this time? R: Ahhh! (She points to the necklace which she has hastily removed) Sus: It’s just a necklace. R: (Throwing it towards Susan) It’s a scary necklace.
Aggressive assertion using in-frame sound effect screaming
Sus: What? R: I saw, I saw. . . . Sus: You saw what? R: A man! G: Look, I’m going to get you some water. Calm down. Sus: Yes, I think we should all just go back to sleep. Sar: Well what will we do with this? (holding up the necklace)
Enactment resulting from the aggressive assertion
Sus: Just put it back where you found it. Sarah throws it back towards Renee. At this she screams even more loudly and throws it back towards Susan. Sus: Look, I’m just going to put it here beside the wall. When everyone is back asleep again, Renee jumps up, gets the necklace and puts it up on the stage. All is quiet for a couple of seconds. Gillian jumps up and packs up her bedding, announcing that it is morning. Tanya complains that it is only six o’clock, but Gillian goes to the window, pulls back the curtains and announces that it is a beautiful morning outside.
Time jump implicitly signalled using storytelling (narration) and mime.
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a series two transcript from Clothes in the Attic that includes both aggressive assertion and coaxing, while also showing how the girls had begun to use out-of-frame sound effects to create tension. The ease with which ideas are being offered, accepted and built upon here was typical of all the series two play texts. Gone are the hurried whisperings outside, denials and overt proposals to change direction. Instead, the players have evolved a set of practices that allow them to create texts that ‘flow’ and where coaxing is used to test out ideas that might need to be denied if aggressive assertion were used instead. The transcript above also provides a useful example of the enjoyment the girls gained from feeling scared. Individual interviews repeatedly reinforced the fact that being ‘pretend scared’ was a goal of the play and that the more real the texts felt, the greater sense of fear they could experience making implicit signaling even more important. Later however, during the video stimulated interviews conducted at the conclusion of all data collection, some key additional insights into “realness” were revealed. Almost all the participants expressed dismay as they viewed the videos. Karen’s comment was typical: When you look at it now, it doesn’t seem like how we saw it through our eyes when we were actually doing it, because then we thought it looked like an actual castle, but when you look at the video it just looks like the school hall with a couple of chairs turned over.
Others, such as Donna, also expressed surprise that moments in the play that were very scary and felt “real . . . almost too real,” could possibly have been experienced by her in this way now that she had viewed them again, this time through the “spoil-sport” lens of the video. The shared and private illusions (Dunn, 2002) she had so carefully managed during play had been shattered. CONCLUSION The changes in metacommunication that were noted from the series one sessions to series two, along with the quite significant level of implicitness present in the play of this group of girls from the very beginning, clearly offer support for Sawyer’s hypothesis that children may reach a point in the development of their metacommunicative skills whereby they can play dramatically without making any directorial (explicit) statements. However, what is perhaps more interesting in terms of this research is the reason why this was the case. Was it simply that these older children were more able to
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delay gratification, collaborate with their peers and find alternative ways to communicate ideas than their younger counterparts, or was the cause of this preference for implicitness linked instead to a greater desire to “conserve the illusion” than is present amongst younger children? One of the advantages of researching the play of preadolescent children is that they are more able to analyze and discuss their experiences within play than their younger counterparts. The interview data outlined here therefore has provided some useful details about why they make the metacommunicative choices they do. Importantly, it has also revealed some key insights into the forces that drive their play and the connection between these forces and their metacommunicative choices. These insights suggest that a desire for realness was one of the key forces driving these girls as they played, while the high level of implicitness seen in these sessions was not simply a matter of greater skill or maturity, but was instead linked to a strong desire to conserve the illusion. These older girls not only looked for ways to ensure that their play flowed without stoppages, they saw this as being the only way to ensure that their texts had the sense of realness they were seeking. Whether the desire to conserve the illusion is keener during preadolescence than it is when children are younger is difficult to evaluate, especially from this research which only included older girls, but the comments offered by the girls relating to “realness” and their negative reactions to the illusionshattering video tapes suggests that “conserving the illusion” is a key factor of play and is in fact what makes it worth engaging in. Implicit signaling is just one part of that process.
REFERENCES Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books. Bateson, G. (1976) A theory of play and fantasy. In J.S. Bruner, A. Jolly, & K. Sylva (Eds.), Play: Its role in development and evolution. (pp. 119 – 129). Middlesex: Penguin Books. Bretherton, I. (1984). Representing the social world in symbolic play: Reality and fantasy. In I. Bretherton (Ed.), Symbolic play - The development of social understanding. (pp.3-41). Orlando, Fl: Academic Press. Cockett, S. (1998). What’s ‘real’ in drama? National Association for Drama in Education Journal, 22 (2), 33-43. Dunn, J. (1995). Who’s pretending: a study of the dramatic play of primary school children, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Dunn, J. (2001). Dramatic Worlds in Play: A Study of the Dramatic Play of Preadolescent Girls. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
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Dunn, J. (2002). “Dramatic Worlds in Play – Creating and sustaining illusions of realness,” in Rasmussen, B. & Ostern, A. (Eds.) Playing betwixt and between – The IDEA Dialogues 2001 – Selected papers from the 4th World Congress of Drama/ Theatre and Education Bergen 2001. Bergen: IDEA Publications. Dunn, J. (2003). “Enhancing dramatic activities in the early childhood years” in Wright, S. (Ed.) The arts, young children and learning. Allyn and Bacon: Boston. Giffin, H. (1984). The co-ordination of meaning in the creation of shared makebelieve reality. In I. Bretherton (Ed.), Symbolic play: The development of social understanding. (pp.73-100). New York: Academic. Glasgow Koste, V. (1995). Dramatic play in childhood - Rehearsal for life. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. (Originally published in 1978 by Anchorage Press). Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis - An essay on the organization of experience. New York : Harper and Row. Goldman, L. (1998). Child’s play: Myth, mimesis and make-believe. New York: Oxford University Press. Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens - A study of the play element in culture. Boston: Beacon. Johnson, L., & O’Neill, C. (Eds.) (1984). Collected writings on education and drama - Dorothy Heathcote. Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Lindqvist, G. (1995). The aesthetics of play - A didactic study of play and culture in preschools, Acta Universitatis Upsealiensis (Doctoral Thesis at Uppsala University). Uppsala: Uppsala Studies in Education 62. Lobman, C. (2003). What should we create today? Improvisational teaching in playbased classrooms. Early Years, 23 (2), 131-142. Lofdahl, A. (2005). ‘The funeral’: A study of children’s shared meaning making and its developmental significance. Early Years, 25 (1) 5-16. Lyle, J. (2003). Stimulated recall: a report on its use in naturalistic research. British Educational Research Journal, Vol 29, no. 6, pp. 861-878 O’Neill, C. (1995). Drama worlds - A framework for process drama. Portsmouth, England: Heinemann. O’Toole, J. (1992). The process of drama- Negotiating art and meaning. London: Routledge. Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. (C.Gattegno & F.M. Hodgson, Trans.). New York: Norton Library. (Original work published 1951) Sawyer, R. K. (1997a). Pretend play as improvisation - Conversation in the preschool classroom. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sawyer, R. K. (1997b). Improvisational theatre: An ethnotheory of conversational practice. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Creativity in performance. (pp.171-193) Greenwich, US: Ablex Publishing Corp. Sawyer, R. K. (2002). The new anthropology of children, play and games. Reviews in Anthropology. 31, 147-164. Schwartzman, H. (1978). Transformations - The anthropology of children’s play. New York: Plenum Press. Schwartzman, H. (1995). Representing children: Anthropologists at work, children at play. In A. D. Pellegrini (Ed.) The future of play theory - A multi-disciplinary
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inquiry into the contributions of Brian Sutton-Smith. (pp. 243-255). New York: State University of New York Press. Vandenberg, B. (1998). Real and not real: A vital developmental dichotomy. In O. Saracho & B. Spodek (Eds.), Multiple perspectives on play in early childhood education. (pp. 295-305) Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1976). Play and its role in the mental development of the child. In J. S. Bruner, A. Jolly, & K. Sylva, (Eds.), Play - Its role in development and evolution. (pp. 537-554) Middlesex: Penguin Books. (Original work published, 1933).
Chapter Five
Autistic Children’s Play with Objects, Peers, and Adults in a Classroom Setting Robyn M. Holmes and Jill K. Procaccino
AUTISTIC CHILDREN’S PLAY IN A CLASSROOM SETTING Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder associated with brain impairment that persists throughout an individual’s life time (American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Children with Disabilities, 2001; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, 1999). More prevalent in boys than girls (Yeargin-Allsopp et al., 2003), it produces difficulties in specific cognitive, social, emotional, and communicative abilities, although these may vary with age (Rodgers, 1999; Wolfberg, 1998; 2003). The American Psychiatric Association (2000) has reported several criteria necessary for this diagnosis. These include: (a) impairments in social interaction; (b) impaired language abilities which affect communication; (c) restricted, repetitive behaviors and interests; (d) abnormal preoccupations with certain activities and parts of objects (e) unyielding adherence to routines; and (f) limitations in play (see also AAP, 2001; Rodgers, 2005). ASD includes a broad spectrum of disorders ranging from Asperger’s Syndrome to classic autism, that is from milder to more severe forms (APA, 2000). Thus not all of the following behaviors or limitations are present in all children with autism, although ASD clearly impacts children’s development. As a group, these children tend to prefer solitude and are often unable to enter into and sustain bi-directional social interactions. Thus they often have difficulty in making friends and engaging in play with peers (APA, 2000; Jordan, 2003; Lord, 1984). Many autistic children also lack the cognitive ability needed to substitute or transform one object into another – a skill critical in pretend play (Hess, 2006; Hughes, 1998; Singer & Singer, 1990). They seem drawn to repetitive 86
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routines and stereotypical movements (Hughes, 1998; Wing, 1997) and their expressions of affect differ in comparison to the normally developing child. Affect is often expressed in spurts, usually comprised of longer, intense intervals (Seifert, 1990), and perhaps unrelated to ongoing activity. They may also have difficulty in sharing affect with others (Rodgers, 2005). The connection posited between play and emotional variability (Sutton-Smith, 2003) suggests that such impairments will also impact the child’s play experiences. Autistic Children and Play One childhood activity that is particularly important and linked to development is play (Cohen, 2006; Frost, Wortham & Reifel, 2005; Johnson, Christie & Wardle, 2005). As Thomas and Smith (2004) noted, the attention given to the link between play and development has generated interest in the study of play and autism (see also Sherrat & Peter, 2002). Play has consequences for all areas of development and the child’s ability and capacity for play (both alone and with peers) is affected by this disorder. Autistic children’s play behavior often takes on a ritualized form and many exhibit stereotyped and repetitive behaviors. One characteristic play deficit associated with ASD is an inability to engage in pretend play (Hess, 2006; Hughes, 1998). As Holmes and Willoughby (2005) noted, there is a paucity of research on the play of autistic children conducted in natural settings, particularly in schools. For example, many existing studies have been conducted in either laboratory (e.g., Lord, 1984) or clinical settings (Dominguez, Ziviani, & Rodger, 2006; Siegel, 1996). For example, Dominguez et al. (2006) compared social play and object use between normally developing peers and children with ASD. They reported no differences in functional play and symbolic play and that ASD children played more with gross motor toys. However, there are several naturalistic studies that take exception, including those conducted in home settings (Restall & Magill-Evans, 1994; Williams, Reddy & Castall, 2001) or in a residential facility for children and adolescents with autistic and communication disorders (Brown and Whiten, 2000). Recent studies have addressed the need to study the play of autistic children in natural settings, specifically schools. For example, Holmes and Willoughby (2005) examined the play behaviors of young children (5-6 years) diagnosed with disorders in the ASD spectrum. They observed their free play behaviors in mainstreamed classrooms with normally developing peers. They found that autistic children engaged in more functional play than other types of cognitive play and episodes of pretend play were unusual. Their sample did engage in parallel play but only slightly more than they engaged in solitary play. Onlooker behavior and unorganized play were recorded in greater frequency than any other category.
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Some play studies have focused exclusively upon the cognitive differences in the play of normally developing and autistic children; many of these studies have utilized Piaget/Smilansky’s cognitive play classification scheme. In this paradigm, play activities move from simple to complex forms in an invariant order: functional play, constructive, symbolic play, and games with rules (Piaget, 1951; Smilansky, 1968). Several of these comparative studies have reported both qualitative (Wolfberg, 2003) and quantitative differences in the form and frequency of functional and symbolic play. For example, Wing et al. (1977) reported deficits in autistic children’s functional play. Other more recent studies have reported mixed findings. Studies with younger children have yielded no differences in functional play (e.g., Charman & Baron-Cohen, 1997; Dominguez et al., 2006; Lewis & Boucher, 1988) whereas other studies with older preschoolers tend to suggest more pronounced differences (Libby et al., 1998). Many of these autistic children engage in simple manipulative or sensory play (Hughes, 1998; Williams et al., 2001) that takes the form of repetitive and ritualized behaviors (Firth, 1989; Tiegerman & Primavera, 1981). Particularly when given free choice, this type of play is reported in characteristically higher percentages than functional play (Libby et al., 1998). A related topic of inquiry has examined autistic children’s ability to stay engaged in play. For example, Koegal et al. (2001) found that autistic children engaged in play behaviors only about half as long as their normally developing peers. The findings suggested that autistic children are able to maintain an interest in the same objects as their equally developing peers do. However, while playing with objects autistic children tend not to communicate with their peers or will not extend their levels of play to more complex play such as substitution pretense (Koegal et al., 2001). They tend to take their object and isolate themselves from the group much more than their normally developing peers would. Finally, some studies address the role of adults and play intervention programs in enhancing autistic children’s play behaviors. (See Landreth, 2001, Reddy, Files-Hall, & Schaefer, 2005, and Ziviani, Boyle, & Rodger, 2001 for related works in play therapy. See also Hughes 1998 on research evaluating play intervention programs.) For example, Thomas and Smith’s (2004) work evaluated the effectiveness of a play intervention program that combined adult mirroring and play scripts; Hess (2006) explored the nature of adult guidance and scaffolding through the reading, retelling, and enacting of a story; and Field et al. (2001) investigated the effect of adult play and adult imitation on children’s subsequent behavior. They found that children who played with imitative adults were more likely to display positive behaviors toward the adult such as sitting next to, touching, vocalizing, and smiling.
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In this study we address two research questions. We ask first: in the natural setting of a special needs classroom, in what types of cognitive and social play do autistic children engage and what objects do they employ? Second, we ask: Do adults provide guidance and help autistic children sustain their play? We explored these questions in a preschool classroom setting of 6 and 7 year old autistic children, studied using numerous observations through an entire school year. This contrasts with studies reported in the literature that involve more limited periods of observation. Our approach included: 1) examining child initiated, adult initiated, and adult guided play interactions; 2) recording the duration of the play episode and the content of that play; and 3) exploring the types of cognitive and social play in which the children engaged and the objects they selected. We also gathered contextual information on play activities and behavioral frequencies. We frame our study in line with contemporary play theory. We believe that all children are capable of play and children diagnosed with ASD are no different. Rather their limitations frame the form their play takes (Hughes, 1998). We also acknowledge Vygotsky’s (1933; 1978) notions of adult scaffolding and guided participation in helping children reach their maximum potential and are sensitive to individual differences in development. Based on past research, we expect that these autistic children will stay engaged in a play activity longer if an adult initiates play or engages in guided collaborative play with them. We also expect that adults will initiate play more than children will either play by themselves or with a peer (Holmes & Willoughby, 2005). With respect to social and cognitive play, we expect that there will be more instances of unoccupied (randomly active) and solitary sensorimotor play than other social cognitive play (Lord, 1984). We do not expect to see any instances of group play (Holmes & Willoughby, 2005). METHOD Participants The participants were six European American children (5 boys, 1 girl) enrolled in a private school for children with special needs located in the northeastern United States. All were members of a self-contained class of ages ranging from 6 to 7 years with a mean age of 79.33 months (SD=4.41 months). All of the children had difficulties communicating verbally and thus used alternative means of communication such as American Sign Language or a Picture Exchange System (PECS). In conjunction with ASL and PECS, the children were also observed communicating through gestures and vocalizations. All children were treated according to the American Psychological
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Association’s (1992) guidelines for ethical treatment of human participants (see also Greene & Hogan, 2005 for conducting research with children). Approval for this project was granted from our Institutional Review Board, cooperating school, and 100% of the parents. Setting The school enrolls students with special needs from pre-school to young adulthood (under 21 years of age). They have a range of disabilities which include physical, cognitive, and behavioral impairments. The school offers individualized instruction tailored to each student’s needs and emphasizes preparing the children for life experiences within an environment that maximizes their academic and social potential. This classroom had one female, head teacher with three years experience working with ASD children. In addition, there were three teacher’s assistants (2 males and 1 female) who combined had several decades of experience working with ASD children. A speech therapist (female) and an occupational therapist (female) each respectively worked with the children on an individual basis for six hours and four hours per month. A physical sketch of the classroom with toy locations appears in Figure 5.1. Design and Procedure This project employed a small group design using a qualitative approach. Observation via continuous monitoring and time sampling procedures (Pellegrini, 1996) were employed to record the duration of play episodes and types of social-cognitive play. The teacher, teachers’ aides, and speech and occupational therapists were also consulted at various times during the project to confirm our observations of the children’s play behavior. We believe we achieved triangulation of data with these three sources (Greene & Hill, 2005). The fieldwork period began in October 2005 and ended in June 2006. Both authors served as observers, participated in the children’s activities, and interacted with them when possible. In addition, each learned some of the children’s signs so that she could communicate with them. We believe the children adjusted to our presence and were comfortable with us since several would voluntarily approach us to interact with them such as helping them off with their backpacks, making physical contact, and sitting together. The children were typically observed during their free play period in the morning when they first arrived at school. They were observed two days a week for two hour sessions typically from 8:30am – 10:30 am. We visited the
Figure 5.1. Classroom Layout
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children on 35 separate occasions. Total observation time across all children for the entire fieldwork period was approximately 100 hours. For observations, a stop watch was employed to record the length of time a child spent on a play activity. The authors usually sat in proximity and their vantage point varied according to where the children were located in the classroom. The order in which children were observed was rotated during the fieldwork period. From October to December 2005, the length of time children were engaged in a play activity was recorded. Types of play included three conditions: self (child) initiated, adult initiated, and adult guided participation. Observations were recorded via continuous monitoring during free play periods (Pellegrini, 1996) and this approach often produced several observations for each child during a given play period. During these times, we recorded every play activity involving an object. We focused upon play with objects for several reasons. First, play with objects can either promote or stifle autistic children’s play since certain objects have been linked to particular kinds of play behavior (DuBois, 1997). For example, blocks aid in construction whereas dolls promote pretend play. Second, children with ASD typically use fewer toys than their normally developing peers and often remain drawn to their play object choices (Restall & Magill-Evans, 1994; Williams, Costall, & Reddy, 1999). Finally, our preliminary observations revealed that these children incorporated objects in their play and the adults in their classroom typically included objects in their play with a child. We operationally defined playing with an object to include any physical manipulation ranging from simple, repetitive, stereotypical movement to more complex actions performed on or with the object. Examples included patting a book, twirling a dinosaur in one hand, and stringing beads. From February to June 2006, the length of time children were engaged in a play activity was recorded along with the type of social/cognitive play. We employed Rubin’s (1977; 1982a, 1982b) Play Observation Scale (POS) that contained cognitive play classifications (Piaget, 1951; Smilansky, 1968) embedded in Parten’s (1932) social categories of play (see also Wolfberg, 2003). For example, if a child was playing alone and repetitively manipulated a plastic dinosaur we coded this behavior as solitary-sensorimotor. During the initial phase of the project, we did not record any play activity involving an adult. Rather we focused exclusively upon a single focal child. Observations were continuously recorded during free play periods. Each child was observed at 5 minute intervals. Finally, traditional written field notes were employed to record contextual information such as areas of the classroom where the play occurred, other playmates, and how a play object was manipulated.
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Coding The first author trained the second author to use the POS. First, the second author familiarized herself with a preordained checklist that contained all the social and cognitive play categories. During free play periods, both observers simultaneously recorded a child’s behavior, then paused to compare the recordings and codes. If a discrepancy arose, discussion took place to clarify the use of a particular code. Periodic checks of the coding (25% of all observations, randomly selected) were performed thereafter to ensure intercoder reliability. (The level was Cohen’s kappa = .85, well within acceptable ranges.)
RESULTS Part 1 In the first stage of the project, we recorded only play activities involving objects, once initiated, and via continuous monitoring. Average play times for each play condition appear in Table 5.1). The average time reflects every play activity the child engaged in over the entire fieldwork period and the amount of times each child engaged in play varied inter-individually. Play durations ranged from two seconds (a single jump on the trampoline) to 12 minutes 12 seconds (playing on the computer). Individually and as a group, when these children played alone they were not able to sustain an interest in their play. Play episodes lasted for about a minute or less when these children engaged in solitary play. However when adults initiated or entered into play with the children they served to sustain the children’s interest and consequently extended the length of time children remain engaged in play. Only one child, Richard played longer by himself than when in a play condition with an adult. Table 5.1. Average Play Durations in Seconds for Each Play Condition by Individual Child Play Conditions Child’s Name James Kevin Oliver Richard Brian Melissa
Adult Initiated
Adult Guided
Child Initiated
312.33 245.67 135.50 0.00 69.50 523.33
674.80 229.00 1,164.00 26.40 118.00 318.33
75.63 34.78 71.33 33.89 26.20 75.87
Figure 5.2. Play Conditions, Frequencies
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In Figure 5.2, frequencies for play conditions are presented. Child initiated play was the most frequent type of play. It comprised 62% all play episodes. Adult initiated and adult guided play were respectively observed 28% and 10% of all free play time episodes. Even though child initiated play occurred more frequently, adult initiated play was sustained the longest period of time. With respect to play objects, the trampoline was the most popular toy and the children incorporated this object into 27.5% of all their play episodes. It did not keep their attention very long, however. They would jump on it for a few seconds and then move on to another play activity. The second most popular toy was the therapeutic ball. It was used in 25.5% of all play episodes and children either balanced on it by lying across it or jumped on it to make it bounce. Blocks, and toys that require “make believe” play such as the toy grill and pretend pizza were only chosen 6% of the time and these toys primarily were used in adult guided play episodes. Listening to “Dr. Seuss” on the computer sustained the child’s attention much longer than a stuffed animal did. For example, Melissa and James seemed mesmerized by the screen and sat looking at the computer with neutral facial expressions for uncharacteristically long periods of time. They did not interact with or operate the computer or screen in typical ways, however. Books, when selected, were not used for reading. Rather they provided sensory stimulation by movements such as touching the pages and the cover. Part 2 In the second phase of the project, we simultaneously recorded length of solitary and peer play along with the type of social-cognitive play. The means for length of play for each social-cognitive play category appear in Table 5.2. For these children, parallel sensorimotor play was the most sustained form of play, onlooker play was the next most sustained form of play whereas unoccupied and solitary sensorimotor play were the least sustained forms of play and did not significantly differ. Table 5.2. Means in Seconds for Social-Cognitive Play Durations for All Children Social-Cognitive Play Categories Unoccupied Onlooker Solitary Sensorimotor Parallel Sensorimotor Parallel Symbolic
Mean
SD
71.97 123.08 72.42 209.55 0.00
33.78 114.09 23.52 58.86
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Table 5.3. Frequencies for Social-Cognitive Play Categories for Individual Children Social Cognitive Play Categories Child Kevin Oliver James Brian Richard Melissa Total
Unoccupied
Onlooker
Solitary Sensorimotor
Parallel Sensorimotor
Parallel Symbolic
5 12 13 4 19 23 76
2 1 1 0 1 1 6
13 33 22 16 80 30 194
2 4 2 5 5 2 20
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Social-cognitive play and play with objects Among the children, solitary sensorimotor play occurred with the greatest frequency (65.6%). Children spent most of their time playing alone with objects. They incorporated puzzles, dinosaurs, and musical instruments in their play but their actions and movements with the toys were repetitive and stereotypical. For example, rather than complete a whole puzzle a child would repetitively pick up and replace the same puzzle piece. Unoccupied play was the second most frequently observed category of play (25.7%). Although parallel sensorimotor play lasted the longest it was observed for only 6.8% of all play activities. However when it did occur it did serve to keep the children engaged in the activity. Playing with the body sock, a stretchable elastic band worn around the waist of two players, was an example. Another example was playing in the tent, keeping the children physically close to one another and engaged in the activity. In Table 5.3 we present the frequencies for social-cognitive play for each child to illustrate individual differences. For example, although none of the children engaged in parallel symbolic play, they varied in the amount of Table 5.4. Toys Child Brian James Oliver Kevin Richard Melissa Total
Trampoline
Ball
Body Sock
Dinosaurs
Puzzles
Computer
Rocker
0 1 4 7 28 9 49
8 6 2 2 30 6 54
0 0 0 2 0 0 2
2 0 7 0 0 0 9
0 6 7 0 0 0 13
0 4 0 0 0 3 7
3 0 0 0 4 0 7
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times we recorded other types of social-cognitive play. For example, Richard accounted for 41.2% of all solitary sensorimotor play whereas Melissa accounted for 30.3% of all unoccupied play. Finally, in Table 5.4, a list of the children’s most popular toy choices is presented. The two most popular toys were the trampoline and the therapeutic ball although it should be noted that the trampoline did not keep the child’s attention for a sustained period of time. The trampoline (34.8%) and therapeutic ball (38.3%) accounted for 73% of all the children’s play with toys.
DISCUSSION For these children, play is acknowledged as an important medium through which development can be enhanced. Their daily routines incorporated ample indoor and outdoor play opportunities with learning activities. The children’s head teacher, teachers’ aides, and therapists all played with the children during free play and integrated play into their class activities. They also performed activities such as the wheelbarrow (holding the child by his or her legs while walking on the hands), compression (stimulation with the therapeutic ball), playing with the body sock, and brushing (running a plastic brush along the child’s arms) which were individually tailored to a child’s needs (for purposes of calming or providing desirable sensory stimulation). Desirable play objects were also used as rewards when the children communicated appropriately, through signing or using laminated pictures to complete a request. Further acknowledging play as a means of teaching, teachers subscribed to the principles of the Natural Environment Teaching program (Kroeger & Nelson, 2006), which they employed during numerous play episodes to promote language development. For example when Melissa gestured she wanted to play with a toy grill, Amy (a teacher’s aide) sat with her, demonstrated actions with the toy, and asked Melissa to repeat her actions. Amy would flip a plastic hamburger over and then look at Melissa and say “Okay, I want you to do the same.” While flipping the burger Amy would prompt Melissa to say “f” (the first consonant sound of the word flip). Natural Environment Teaching was also integrated into object play that provided sensory stimulation. For example, when Brian was playing in the rice bin the teacher gathered a handful of rice, said the word “drop”, and then prompted him to say the first consonant of the word, in this case “d.” When Brian imitated the sound the teacher dropped the rice she was holding in her hand. This program in the classroom makes use of Vygotsky’s (1933; 1978) notion of adult scaffolding. When Brian and his teacher were playing in the
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rice bin, he would often giggle or smile. The teacher commented that the children seemed to enjoy these interactions. They provided the children with sensory stimulation and gave her the opportunity to create situations in which she could prompt the child to imitate phonemes. Such guided participation presumably leads to developmental gains and would not have occurred if the adult was not present. Our findings suggest that autistic children who have difficulty communicating verbally do indeed engage in play although their disorder precludes them from engaging in the same types of social and cognitive play in which their normally developing peers engage. We draw attention to the importance of acknowledging individual differences and how play behaviors are adapted to meet individual needs and wants – some of which focus upon satisfying individuals’ desire for sensory stimulation (Holmes & Willoughby, 2005). For example, as a group these children were drawn to toys that allow for sensory stimulation such as the therapeutic ball and trampoline and these choices remained consistent throughout the year. As Holmes and Willoughby (2005) noted, it is typical for children with autism to select objects based upon the sensory stimulation they provide (see also Ziviani et al., 2001). Individually, the children also consistently played with toys that provided them with idiosyncratic preferences for sensory stimulation. For instance, Richard preferred a more sedate form of sensory stimulation such as playing with grains of rice that moved through his fingers, whereas Oliver preferred to handle larger manipulatives such as the dinosaurs. With respect to social-cognitive play our findings support past literature. In line with children’s social and cognitive limitations, solitary sensorimotor and unoccupied play were the most frequently observed (Holmes & Willoughby, 2005; Koegal et al., 2001; Libby et al., 1998). As Wing (1997) and Hughes (1998) noted, these children are drawn to maintaining routines and solitary sensorimotor play provides a medium for repeating behaviors with an object, often in a manner providing an immediate response such as sensory stimulation (Ziviani et al., 2001). Interestingly, peer play did occur in the form of parallel sensorimotor play. In these instances, the children seemed comfortable with the approach of the playmate and being in proximity with him or her. Although this occurred infrequently it lasted longer in duration than the other forms of play did. It seems reasonable to suppose that simply the presence of a desired playmate may be enough to sustain a play event. These peer play episodes also included specific play objects - the tent, body sock, or dinosaurs. The inherent properties of these objects may have also helped sustain the play period. For example, the tent could hold a maximum of two children and the occupants necessarily remained in close proximity due to space constraints.
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It also had a flap which could be opened and closed. Some of the children preferred more dimly lit settings and this play object afforded this opportunity. Children who preferred to avoid the brightly lit classroom remained inside the tent longer even if another child was with him or her. Similarly, the body sock confined two occupants to the same space and children who enjoyed physical activity tended to play with this object longer even though it required a playmate. Finally, the children played with the dinosaurs in a small area on the carpet near the bins where they were stored. Playing with these toys resulted in a decreased social distance between the children using them. Thus they may have provided a way for children with limited social skills to interact with peers in play. Finally, although all of the children had difficulties communicating verbally there were individual differences in the children’s ability to stay on task, communicate, and interact with their peers. Some of the children such as Oliver and Richard were occasionally receptive to approaches from other peers whereas other children never were comfortable interacting with or being near a peer. For example, if Brian was bouncing on the therapeutic ball and another student attempted to join him, he would often discontinue bouncing and find another toy he could play with alone. We observed that while on the therapeutic ball Brian often laughed and smiled whereas with other toys he would often stereotypically manipulate them in his hands and show no affect. It seems reasonable to suppose that Brian would prefer to play with a less desirable toy rather than play alongside a peer with a more desirable toy. We acknowledge several limitations of our study. First, we had a small, nearly homogeneous sample with respect to gender and ethnicity and acknowledge challenges to external validity. Second, we limited our observations to one time and setting of the school day – indoor, free play. Outdoor play may have provided opportunities to observe different types of socialcognitive play and adult-child play interactions. Finally, we focused upon play with objects to the exclusion of other play. This study investigated social and cognitive play in children with ASD, their play object use, and the impact adult participation has on these children’s play. Past research and the current study support the findings that ASD children tend to select play objects based upon the sensorimotor stimulation they provide (Dominguez et al., 2006; Holmes & Willoughby, 2005) and engage in more functional (Libby et al., 1998; Williams et al., 2001) and solitary types of play (Holmes & Willoughby, 2005). In our sample, when adults played with the children the adults were able to encourage language development, introduce more complex actions, and help the child sustain an interest in his or her play (cf., Field et al., 2001). Such endeavors will broaden our understanding of the possibilities of ASD children’s play, specifically, the
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types of play in which these children engage and the role of adults in enhancing children’s play experiences. Future endeavors might: consider comparing the role of adults as play partners with children with different disabilities, employ different play categories, and observe in diverse natural settings.
AUTHOR NOTE The authors warmly thank the school director, the children’s teacher and teacher’s aides, and of course most especially, the children. The authors kindly thank the editor and reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. The editor’s encouragement and assistance through the revision process was very much appreciated. An abbreviated version of this work was presented at the 5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, Hawaii (2007, January).
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Frost, J., Wortham, S, & Reifel, S. (2005). Play and child development (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall. Greene, S., & Hill, M. (2005). Researching children’s experience: Methods and methodological approaches. In S. Greene & D. Hogan (Eds.), Researching children’s experience: Approaches and methods (pp. 1-21). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Greene, S., & Hogan, D. (2005). (Eds.) Researching children’s experience: Approaches and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hess, L. (2006). I would like to play but I don’t know how: A case study of pretend play in Autism. Child Language Teaching & Therapy, 22, 97-116. Holmes, E., & Willoughby, T. (2005). The play behavior of children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 30, 156164. Hughes, F. (1998). Play in special populations. In O. Saracho & B. Spodek, Multiple perspectives on play in early childhood education (pp. 171-193). Albany: State University of New York Press. Johnson, J., Christie, J., & Wardle, F. (2005). Play, development, and early education. Boston: Pearson/A and B. Jordan, R. (2003). Social play and autism spectrum disorders: A perspective On theory, implications, and educational approaches. Autism, 7, 347-360. Koegal, L., Koegel, R., Frea, W., & Freedeen, R. (2001). Identifying early intervention targets for children with autism in inclusive school settings [Electronic version] Behavior Modification, 25, 74-761. Kroeger, K. A., & Nelson, W. M.,III. (2006). A language programme to increase the verbal production of a child dually diagnosed with down syndrome and autism [Electronic version]. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 50, 101-108. Landreth, G. (2001). Innovations in play therapy: Issues, process, and special populations. Florence, KY: Bruner-Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Lewis, V., & Boucher, L. (1988). Spontaneous, instructed, and elicited play in Relatively able autistic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 325-339. Libby, S., Powell, S., Messer, D., & Jordan, D. (1998). Spontaneous play in children with autism: A reappraisal. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 28, 487-497. Lord, C. (1984). Development of peer relations in children with autism. In F. Morrison, C. Lord, & D. Keating (Eds.), Applied developmental psychology (pp. 165229). New York: Academic Press. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (1999, November, 10). Autism [Fact sheet]. NIH Publication No. 96-1877. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes Of Health. Parten, M. (1932). Social play among preschool children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 27, 243-269. Pellegrini, A. (1996). Observing children in their natural worlds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams, and imitation. (C. Gattegano & F. Hodgson, Trans.). New York: Norton. Reddy, L., Files-Hall, T., & Schaefer, C. (2005). Empirically based play intervention for children. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Restall, G., & Magill-Evans, J. (1994). Play and preschool children with autism. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 48, 113-120. Rodgers, S. (2005). Play interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorders. In L. Reddy, T. Files-Hall, & C. Schaefer (Eds.), Empirically based play interventions for children (pp. 215-239). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rodgers, S. (1999). Intervention for young children with autism: From research to Practice. Infants and Young Children, 12, 1-6. Rubin, K. (1977). Play behaviors of young children. Young Children, 3, 16-24. Rubin, K. (1982a). Nonsocial play in preschoolers: Necessarily evil? Child Development, 53, 651-657. Rubin, K. (1982b). Social and social-cognitive developmental characteristics of young, isolate, normal, and sociable children. In K. Rubin & H. Ross (Eds.), Peer relationships and social skills in childhood (pp. 353-374) New York: SpringerVerlag. Seifert, C. (1990). Theories of autism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Sherratt, D., & Peter, M. (2002). Developing play and drama in children with autism spectrum disorders. London: Fulton. Siegel, B. (1996). The world of the autistic child: Understanding and treating autistic spectrum disorder. New York: Oxford University Press. Singer, D., & Singer, J. (1990). The house of make-believe: Children’s play and the development of imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smilansky, S. (1968). The effects of sociodramatic play on disadvantaged Preschool children. New York: Wiley. Sutton-Smith, B. (2003). Play as a parody of emotional variability. In D. Lytle (Ed.), Play & Culture Studies, Vol. 5: Play and educational theory and practice (pp. 3-18). Westport, CT: Praeger. Thomas, N., & Smith, C. (2004). Developing play skills in children with autistic spectrum disorder. Educational Psychology in Practice, 20, 195-206. Tiegerman, E. & Primavera, L. (1981). Object manipulation: An interactional Strategy with autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 11(4), 427-438. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1933). The role of play in development. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind in society (pp. 92-104). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Williams, E., Costall, A., & Reddy, V. (1999). Children with autism experience problems with both objects and people. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 367-378.
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Williams, E., Reddy, V., & Costall, A. (2001). Taking a closer look at functional Play in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 67-77. Wing, L. (1997). The history of ideas on autism. Autism, 1, 13-23. Wing, L., Gould, J., Yeates, S., & Brierley, L. (1977). Symbolic play in severely Mentally retarded and in autistic children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 18, 176-178. Wolfberg, P. (2003). Peer play and the autism spectrum. Shawnee Misson, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Co. Wolfberg, P. (1998). Play and imagination in children with autism. New York: Teachers College Press. Yeargin-Allsopp, M., Rice, C., Karapurkar, T., Doernberg, N., Boyle, C., & Murphy, C. (2003). Prevalence of autism in a US metropolitan area. Journal of the American Medical Association, 289, 49-55. Ziviani, J., Boyle, M., & Rodger, S. (2001). An introduction to play and the Preschool child with autistic spectrum disorder. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 64, 17-22.
Chapter Six
Effects of Partner on Play Fighting Behavior in Giant Panda Cubs Megan L. Wilson, Rebecca J. Snyder, Zhi H. Zhang, Luo Lan, C.L. Li, and Terry L. Maple
ABSTRACT The present study documents play fighting behavior in giant panda cubs during play bouts with both mothers and other cubs. Specifically, the effects of partner (mother or cub) were examined by observing video tapes that were recorded at two facilities in China over a three-year period. Behavioral codes were scored using focal animal sampling and all-occurrence recording. Hypotheses were tested on both rates of individual behaviors and categories of behaviors. Partner had a significant effect on play fighting, in that cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of bite, break away, paw swat, and re-engage behaviors during play bouts with cubs. Other behaviors, however, occurred at higher rates during play bouts with mothers. These differences suggest that cubs and mothers might provide different opportunities as partners during play fighting bouts, but not to a large degree. These findings have implications for captive management of giant pandas.
EFFECTS OF PARTNER ON PLAY FIGHTING BEHAVIOR IN GIANT PANDA CUBS Among mammals, physical activity play, including play fighting, is the most common form of observed play (Fagen, 1981). Play fighting in mammals (e.g. marsupials, carnivores, pinnipeds, ungulates, rodents, and primates) includes lunging, pouncing, biting, and pushing (Byers, 1984). Some carnivores, such as hyenas, dogs, and bears, also exhibit mouth-to-mouth behavior during play fighting (Power, 2000). Behaviors, often referred to as “play signals”, that initiate, maintain, and terminate play fighting are common, and 104
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appear to be readily recognized by animals of the same species (Fagen, 1981). For example, in primates, chimpanzees tickle (van Lawick-Goodall, 1968) or display facial expressions and body postures (Hayaki, 1985) to initiate a play bout. Play fighting in captive marmosets often begins with behaviors that involve bodily contact (Chalmers & Locke-Haydon, 1984; Stevenson & Poole, 1982). Rats pounce and bite (Meaney et al., 1985), and carnivores initiate play fighting by rolling on their backs (Biben, 1983; Fagen, 1981; Schenkel, 1966), play walking (Bekoff, 1974; Biben, 1983), engaging in acrobatics (Bekoff, 1974; Fagen, 1981; Feddersen-Peterson, 1991; West, 1974), or performing the classic canid play bow (Bekoff, 1977). Many carnivores also engage in locomotory patterns (e.g. stalking) prior to the onset of play fighting (domestic cats: Caro, 1981; Fagen, 1981; hyenas: Drea et al., 1996; cheetahs: Caro, 1995; lions: Schenkel, 1966; tigers: Wasser, 1978). This is also true for black bears, which initiate play by first approaching the other animal in a swaggering walk, and then paw at the other individual (Henry & Herrero, 1974). As a general rule, these same behaviors are play signals that serve to maintain play fighting bouts once they are underway (see Power, 2000). In contrast, play bouts are generally terminated when one of the participants leaves (rodents: Poole & Fish, 1975; squirrels: Steiner, 1971; bears: Henry & Herrero, 1974). After termination of a play bout, some animals, including rats (Hole, 1991) and wallabies (Watson & Croft, 1993), remain in close proximity to each other. PLAY FIGHTING IN BEARS Although social play has been fairly well documented in certain families of carnivores (e.g. canids, felids, and hyeanids), systematic studies that document play in bears (ursids) are somewhat limited. This discrepancy many be due to the fact that canids, felids, and hyeanids tend to give birth to larger litters, which facilitates the study of social play, particularly among littermates. Social play in bears, including play fighting, has been documented in studies on development (black bears: Burghardt & Burghardt, 1972; polar bears: Fagen, 1981; sloth bears: Heath & Mellen, 1983), on rearing conditions (giant pandas: Snyder et al., 2003), and on activity budgets (giant pandas: Wilson & Kleiman, 1974). These studies provide valuable information about social play in bears, but because of their overall goal, play fighting behavior is not described in great detail. Some studies on bears, however, have taken a more systematic approach to documenting play fighting behavior. For example, Henry & Herrero (1974) documented the motor patterns in social play in black bear cubs. The authors found that these patterns were similar to the motor patterns observed in other carnivores, namely canids. A second study,
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this one on giant pandas, documented specific behaviors that comprised play fighting and found sex differences in rates of behaviors, and that giant panda mothers and cubs play differently (Snyder et al., 2006).
PLAY FIGHTING AND PARTNER Social play between adults and young of the same species has been documented in a variety of animals (nonhuman primates: Bard, 1994; Biben & Suomi, 1993; Enomoto, 1990; Hoff et al., 1981; van Lawick-Goodall, 1968; Zucker et al. 1986; carnivores: Bekoff, 1978; Drea et al., 1996; Fagen, 1981; Heath & Mellen, 1983; Snyder et al., 2003; also see Kleiman & Malcolm, 1981). During these playful interactions, adults appear to play differently than their younger partners. Zucker and colleagues (1986), for example, found that adult play in orangutans was more sedentary and less diverse than for the younger animals in the group. These types of studies also show that carnivore mothers of different species play differently with their offspring. For example, coyote mothers wrestle and play fight with their pups, but they do not initiate these types of playful interactions with them (Bekoff, 1978). In contrast, Heath and Mellen (1983) found that a captive female sloth bear not only engaged in play fighting with her cubs, but also initiated much of the observed play bouts with her cubs. Polar bear mothers (Fagen, 1981) and giant panda mothers (Snyder et al., 2003) also initiate social play with their cubs. Additionally, during mother-cub play bouts, giant panda mothers engage in more biting behavior than cubs (Snyder et al., 2006). Similarly, existing data indicate that the play behavior of young carnivores might be affected by available partners. For example, single kittens direct more playful behavior toward their mothers than do kittens with siblings (Mendl, 1988). Additionally, young hyena cubs engage in more social play with siblings, when available, than they do with their mothers (Drea et al., 1996). Conversely, young giant panda twins engage in more play fighting with their mothers than they do with their siblings (Snyder et al., 2003). Giant panda cubs have also been shown to engage in more paw swatting behaviors than their mothers during play bouts (Snyder et al., 2006).
GIANT PANDA BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY AND CAPTIVE MANAGEMENT The taxonomic classification of giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) was debated for several decades after the species was discovered by the Western
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world. The majority of fossil, anatomical and molecular evidence, including mitochondrial DNA, however, suggests that giant pandas are members of the bear family (Zhang and Ryder, 1993, 1994). Therefore, giant pandas are classified taxonomically in the order Carnivora, family Ursidae (Ewer, 1973; Schaller et al., 1985). They are considered largely solitary, except during breeding season and when a female is raising a cub (Schaller et al., 1985). Giant pandas give birth in late summer to early fall in a cave or hollow tree. Newborn giant pandas are highly altricial, and remain with the mother in a den for 3–4 months (Zhu et al., 2001). Giant panda cubs remain nutritionally dependent upon their mothers for 12- 18 months (Lu et al., 1994; Snyder et al., 2003), and are not socially independent until at least 18 months of age (Lu et al., 1994; Schaller et al., 1985). In captivity, however, giant panda cubs are frequently removed from their mothers at a younger age than the two would separate in the wild, and these cubs are often given access to other cubs of the same age (i.e. “peer-reared”). Because of this, these cubs spend more time with other cubs than with a mother, which subsequently affects their opportunities to engage in social play, including play fighting behavior. We studied play fighting in giant panda cub-cub dyads and mother-cub dyads to determine if cubs play differently when paired with an adult versus another cub. Because cubs are reared differently in captivity than they are in the wild, we also wanted to determine if the social play experiences provided by an adult partner were measurably different than those provided by a peer. Giant panda behavior and management are of keen interest to scientists, but several factors complicate research on this species in the wild and in captivity. Giant pandas live in remote areas with mountainous terrain and dense vegetation, making them difficult to follow and observe in the wild (Durnin et al., 2004). Access to captive giant pandas for scientific study is also limited. Giant pandas are housed in only a handful of institutions outside China and most institutions outside and within China house a small number of individuals (i.e., often a male-female pair) These small sample sizes make hypothesis testing difficult. Two large giant panda breeding facilities, Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding (Research Base) and China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, located in Sichuan province, People’s Republic of China, are exceptions. The data for this study were collected from giant pandas housed at the Research Base and the Chengdu Zoo, which provided us with the opportunity to study a relatively large number of giant pandas. To date, few studies have been published that examine, in detail, play fighting in bears. Additionally, few studies have even systematically documented play fighting behavior in giant pandas. For example, data exist on the rates
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of behaviors in giant panda play fighting during mother-cub bouts (Snyder et al., 2003; Snyder et al., 2006), but these data document only play fighting in giant pandas under one year of age. Because previous work has been done on specific giant panda play fighting behaviors (see Snyder et al., 2003), and in order to assess whether differences exist in the behavior of cubs based on partner (e.g. mother or cub), behaviors were examined individually, in addition to categorically. Specifically, we hypothesized that the rates of initiation behaviors (bite move, paw move, re-engage), contact maintaining behaviors (bite, bite pull, lunge, paw swat), and termination behaviors (break away, push, struggle, turn) exhibited by cubs when playing with mothers would differ significantly from the rates of these behaviors when playing with cubs.
METHOD Subjects and Housing Nine giant panda cubs (4 males, 5 females) ranging from 5-35 months of age, and three adult females were included in this study. Tables 6.1 and 6.2 list the cubs and mothers included in this study, respectively. Table 6.1. Giant Panda Cubs Studied
Cub ID
DOB
Sex
# of Bouts Scored (Cub)
BX JW QZ LJ WJ SS DS XS YY
2000 1999 1999 1999 1999 1998 1997 1997 1997
Male Female Female Female Female Male Female Male Male
2 9 9 4 4 10 13 17 7
# of Bouts Scored (Mother)
# of Minutes Scored (Cub)
# of Minutes Scored (Mother)
3 2 1 9 11 14 8 12 16
4.5 12.7 14.8 8.1 6.4 15.1 12.3 49.0 17.6
5.6 7.4 1.7 15.3 27.6 53.7 18.7 61.9 71.2
Table 6.2. Giant Panda Mothers Studied Mother ID
DOB
Maternal History
# of Bouts Scored
# of Cubs Scored with Mother
# of Minutes Scored
QQ CC YaYa
1984 1985 1990
Multiparous Multiparous Multiparous
20 17 39
2 2 5
87.2 53.7 123.1
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Table 6.3. Housing Conditions of the Studied Cubs Cub ID BX JW QZ LJ WJ SS DS XS YY
Dam ID
Social Housing Year 1
BB MM MM YaYa YaYa CC QQ QQ YaYa
Dam (CC) + 1 Peer 1 Peer 1 Peer Dam (YaYa) + 1 Peer Dam (YaYa) + 1 Peer Dam (CC) Dam (QQ) + 1 Peer Dam (QQ) + 1 Peer Dam (YaYa)
Social Housing After Year 1 4 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3
Peers Peers Peers Peers Peers Peers Peers Peers Peers
All subjects were housed at the Research Base and the Chengdu Zoo in Sichuan Province of the People’s Republic of China. Mothers were never housed in the same enclosure with another mother during the study period, but some cubs were housed together. Table 6.3 presents social housing conditions for the cubs in the first year of life and after. All mothers and cubs were captive born at the Research Base or the Chengdu Zoo. All subjects, except DS, XS, and QQ were housed at the Research Base in indoor enclosures ranging from 17 m2–70 m2, and in outdoor yards measuring approximately 3000–3500 m2. The subjects mainly used the outdoor enclosures from 0700-1700. These enclosures contained grass, trees, shrubs, and a pool. During other hours, the subjects usually used indoor enclosures that contained concrete floors and metal bars or glass walls, sleeping platforms, and concrete water troughs. The number of enclosures to which the subjects had access varied, but in general, cubs were housed in smaller indoor enclosures until approximately 6 months of age. After this age, cubs were kept in a larger indoor enclosure, and typically had access to an outdoor yard. Two cubs, DS and XS, and their mother, QQ, were housed at the Chengdu Zoo in an open air roofed enclosure (70 m2) from 0800–1700 and an indoor enclosure (11.5 m2) during the other hours. Additional details regarding the housing of subjects can be found in Snyder et al. (2003). Data Collection All data were scored from videotaped play bouts. Video tapes were scored on cubs playing with other cubs, and also on these same cubs playing with mothers. A total of 151 play bouts was scored: 75 on cubs playing with other cubs, and 76 on cubs playing with mothers. Of the 76 bouts scored on cubs playing with mothers, 39 bouts included the mother YaYa, 20 bouts included the
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mother QQ, and 17 bouts included the mother CC. Although giant panda cubs sometimes play in triads or larger groups, we only scored play bouts between dyads because not all subjects had access to more than one play partner, and because dyads are the most common social unit for giant panda play. Procedure Play bouts were video taped opportunistically, and thus did not conform to an established observation schedule. Video tapes of play fighting were made from 1998 to 2001, between the hours of 0730 and 1630. To be included in the study, play bouts had to meet the following criteria: 1) it was classified as play fighting, 2) it was at least 60 seconds long, 3) it consisted of interactions between only two animals (one mother and one cub, or two cubs), and 4) both of the animals in the play bout were not scored as “not visible” during the first 60 seconds of the bout. Focal animal sampling and all-occurrence recording were used to score play bouts (Altmann, 1974). Each subject was coded once as the focal animal in each play bout. For some bouts, only one subject was observed as the focal animal, because some subjects were video taped more frequently than others. This was done to try to obtain an equal number of bouts for each subject that was also evenly distributed among the ages. Video scoring occurred on the entire play fighting bout if it met the aforementioned criteria, although the individual video taping the bout occasionally stopped recording before the bout had terminated. Although videos were scored from the beginning of the taped bouts, the play bouts were always in progress prior to taping, and thus data collection was not biased to a certain part of the bout. Generally, video tapes were scored for only one play fighting bout between two particular subjects on a given day. If, however, more than one play bout for two particular subjects had been recorded on a given day, more than one bout was scored if the following criteria were met: 1) the end of the first play bout was at least 120 minutes before the beginning of the second play bout, and 2) the first play bout was recorded during AM sessions (i.e. began before 1200) and the second play bout was recorded during PM sessions (i.e. began after 1200). The first criteria was set at 120 minutes to ensure that individual play bouts were distinguished from sessions of play bouts (see Chalmers & Locke-Haydon, 1984). If the second play bout did not meet the aforementioned criteria, the longest bout created on that day was scored to maximize the amount of available data. “Play fighting” was operationally defined as, “interaction between two individuals that resembles real fighting, in that each animal exhibits at least one initiation behavior, or at least one termination behavior, in addition to
Table 6.4. Ethogram of Behaviors Initiation Behaviors Bite Move (BM) Incomplete biting action. Mouth open, but not attempting to bite the other animal Head Shake (HS) Vigorously shaking head back and forth or up and down, usually while oriented toward another animal Paw Move (PM) Incomplete paw swat action. Holding up of paw(s), but not attempting to swat the other animal Re-engage (RE) After animal breaks away, reorienting toward animal and continuing in bout Contact Maintaining Behaviors Bite (BT) Mouth is placed on some part of another animal for at least one second Bite Pull (BP) Mouth is placed on some part of another animal. Pulling during bite, visibly stretching the animal’s skin Claw (CL) Vigorously swiping movements at another animal’s body with either front or back paws Lunge (LU) Rearing on hind legs from stationary position and thrusting body forward and contacting another animal Paw Swat (PS) Batting another animal with paw(s), making brief physical contact Termination Behaviors Break Away (BA) Breaking contact with other animal, and remaining without contact or orientation to the animals for at least five seconds Head Stand (HS) Head tucked under the body, with top of head resting on ground. Must last for five seconds, and may be followed by somersault Push (PH) Lifting of one or both hind paws and placing pressure on other animals to break a bite-hold Somersault (SO) Rolling headfirst, moving forward, until roll completed Struggle (SG) Attempting to break contact with other animal using behaviors not listed on ethogram Turn (TU) Twisting and/or rolling to break a bite-hold Other Behaviors Other (OT) Not Visible (NV) Pause (PU) Sexual (SX) Stationary (SA)
Any behavior not listed on the ethogram Focal animal is not visible to the observer Remaining in contact, but not actively participating in bout for at least ten seconds Mounting, pelvic thrusting, and/or rolling one leg laterally to expose the inguinal region Out of contact, and not actively participating in a bout for at least five seconds. If animal is stationary for at 20 seconds, the bout is considered terminated
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at least one contact maintaining behavior”. The behaviors included in these and other categories are presented in Table 6.4. This ethogram was adapted from ethograms developed by Bekoff (1977), Henry & Herrero (1974), R. Snyder (personal communication), and Snyder et al. (2003). All of the tested behaviors were categorized as behaviors that serve to initiate a play fighting bout, maintain contact during a play fighting bout, or terminate a play fighting bout. Bite move, head shake, paw move, and re-engage were categorized as initiation behaviors. These behaviors either did not involve actual physical contact with the play partner, but did involve orientation toward the play partner (bite move, head shake, paw move), or appeared to “restart” play (reengage). Contact maintaining behaviors included bite, bite pull, claw, lunge, and paw swat. These behaviors were categorized as contact maintaining behaviors because they required the subject to be in close proximity to, and in contact with, the play partner. Break away, push, struggle, and turn were categorized as termination behaviors. These behaviors either did not involve actual physical contact with the play partner and orientation toward the play partner (break away), or appeared to be used to end play (push, struggle, and turn). Reliability testing between the first author and another observer was conducted prior to the onset of data collection. Portions of videotaped play bouts that met the previously mentioned criteria were used for reliability testing. These depicted play fighting between mothers and cubs, and play fighting between two cubs. The bouts used for reliability testing were not included in data analysis used to test the hypotheses. The two observers obtained a kappa of .8657 for cub behavior and a kappa of .85 for mother behavior during play bouts (Martin & Bateson, 1993) prior to the onset of data collection. All data used in the analyses were scored by the first author. Data Analysis Descriptive statistics were calculated using Statistica 6.0 for all categories of behaviors and individual behaviors. Because of the small sample size included in this study, and because the data appeared skewed upon visual inspection, all hypotheses were tested using Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests (Sheskin, 2004). It should be noted the data used in this study violate the assumption of independence, because the same animals were observed over the course of the study, and some were observed in multiple years. Therefore, significant p values should be interpreted with caution. The data were first examined by behavioral categories (i.e. initiation, contact maintaining, and termination). Then, to specifically identify where differences in play existed for cubs playing with cubs versus cubs playing
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Table 6.5. Mean Rates (and Corresponding Effect Sizes) Tested for Effects of Partner Means for Mother as Partner
Behavior Initiation (category)
Means for Cub as Partner
ESd
.84
.79
.04
Initiation (individual behaviors) Bite Move Paw Move Re-engage
2.44 .05 .02
2.13 .13 .1
.20 .68 .97
Contact Maintaining (category)
.75
1.38
.41
2.46 .11 .02 .43
4.18 .13 .05 1.14
1.46 .03 .59 1.71
.54
.41
.29
.11 1.10 .53 .42
.25 .74 .44 .22
.98 .60 .29 .92
Contact Maintaining (individual behaviors Bite Bite Pull Lunge Paw Swat Termination (category) Termination (individual behaviors) Break Away Push Struggle Turn
with mothers, the behaviors from each of the categories were tested separately. Hypotheses were nondirectional and evaluated with two-tailed tests. Although hypotheses were evaluated using nonparametric statistical tests, means are reported here, as these values are more meaningful to the reader than ranks. Table 6.5 lists the means tested for each of these hypotheses, and corresponding effect sizes.
RESULTS: RATES OF BEHAVIORS Initiation Behaviors Cubs engaged in higher rates of initiation behaviors as a general category when playing with mothers (T+=22, N=9, p>.10), but this difference was not statistically significant (Figure 6.1). Testing initiation behaviors separately revealed that cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of re-engage (T+=2, N=7, p=.05) when playing with cubs. Cubs exhibited slightly higher rates of paw move (T+=6, N=7, p>.10) during play bouts with cubs, but this difference was not statistically significant. Cubs exhibited higher rates of bite move
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Figure 6.1. Effects of partner (mean ± SEM; n=9) on categories of behaviors in cubs. No significant differences were found between behavioral categories when examined by partner.
(T+=21, N=9, p>.10) with mothers, but this difference was not statistically significant (Figure 6.2). Contact Maintaining Behaviors Cubs engaged in higher rates of contact maintaining (T+=8, N=9, p>.10) behaviors when playing with cubs, but this difference was not statistically significant (Figure 6.1). When contact maintaining behaviors were tested
Figure 6.2. Effects of partner (mean ± SEM; n=9) on initiation behaviors in cubs. Cubs engaged in significantly higher rates of re-engage behavior when playing with other cubs.
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Figure 6.3. Effects of partner (mean ± SEM; n=9) on Contact Maintaining behaviors in cubs. Cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of bite and paw swat during play bouts with other cubs. (Bite T+=2, N=9, p=.02 ; Paw Swat T+=0, N=9, p=.01)
separately, we found that cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of bite (T+=2, N=9, p=.02) and paw swat (T+=0, N=9, p=.01) during play bouts with cubs. Cubs also exhibited higher rates of bite pull (T+=15, N=8, p>.10) and lunge (T+=0, N=3, p>.10) during bouts with cubs, but these differences were not statistically significant (Figure 6.3). Termination Behaviors Cubs engaged in higher rates of termination behaviors when playing with mothers (T+=8, N=9, p>.10), but this difference was not statistically significant (Figure 6.1). Testing termination behaviors separately revealed that cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of break away (T+=5, N=9, p=.05) when playing with cubs. Cubs exhibited higher rates of push (T+=7, N=9, p>.05), struggle (T+=18, N=9, p>.10), and turn (T+=10, N=9, p>.10) when playing with mothers, but these differences were not statistically significant (Figure 6.4).
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Figure 6.4. Effects of partner (mean ± SEM; n=9) on Termination behaviors in cubs. Cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of break away behavior when playing with cubs. (T+=5, N=9, p=.05)
DISCUSSION Partner was found to affect giant panda play fighting behavior. Specifically, cubs exhibited significantly higher rates of re-engage, bite, paw swat, and break away during bouts with cubs. Additionally, although not significant, cubs also exhibited higher rates of a number of other behaviors when playing with cubs. There are a couple of explanations for these findings. First, animals tend to play with partners that are similar to themselves, including those that are the same age and size (reviewed by Power, 2000; see also Byers, 1980; Jamieson & Armitage, 1987; Pfeifer, 1985; Watson & Croft, 1993). Additionally, during play animals are exposed to the consequences of these types of social interactions, and this exposure might train animals to tolerate at least some level of discomfort during play fighting (Potegal & Einon, 1989). Because play between two cubs results in a more evenly-matched pair than play between a mother and a cub, cubs might have a greater tolerance for the “discomfort” they experience during play bouts with other cubs. This might explain why giant panda cubs in this study exhibited higher rates of many behaviors, including some that maintain contact, when playing with other cubs. An alternative and quite plausible explanation for the findings, however, might be related to the size and strength of the play partner. In this study, during cub-cub play fighting bouts, the cubs were either playing with a twin sibling or with a peer that was roughly the same age and size. Mothers, on the other hand, were much larger than cubs. Because of this, maintaining contact,
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through biting and paw swatting was probably much easier when playing with another cub. Similarly, cubs could probably break away from another cub and re-engage with another cub with greater ease than they could with a larger, stronger mother. Significant differences were not seen in rates of initiation behaviors and termination behaviors with mothers, but both of these categories of behaviors occurred at higher rates in cubs during play bouts with mothers. Although not significant, several interesting trends were identified in individual termination behaviors. Specifically, cubs exhibited higher rates of most of these behaviors with mothers. Little work has been done to examine in detail play fighting between parents and offspring, but larger or stronger animals tend to inhibit their behavior when playing with weaker partners (Spinka et al., 2001). This tendency, generally referred to as “self- handicapping”, has been identified most commonly in the play behavior of primate adults and offspring (Baldwin & Baldwin, 1978; Biben, 1989; Biben & Suomi, 1993; Hoff et al., 1981), but has not been conclusively identified in giant pandas. In this study, the mothers might have modified their behavior when play fighting with cubs to allow the cubs to exhibit certain behaviors at higher rates with them. We observed that dams would often lie down or partially recline when playing with cubs as well. The finding that some behaviors occurred at higher rates with mothers suggests that the self-handicapping behavior in giant panda mothers is worth further investigation. Although it has been proposed that giant panda mothers engage in self-handicapping during play bouts with cubs (Wilson, 2005) additional data are needed to support this theory. Although it is difficult to determine the cause for the differences we found, it appears that mothers and cubs do provide different opportunities as play partners, allowing cubs to engage in certain play fighting behaviors at different rates. In a similar study, Mendl (1988) examined play behavior in kittens, including how the lack of a litter-mate affected social play. He found that wrestling behavior between mothers and kittens differed from wrestling behavior between two kittens. He further proposed that kittens without siblings had a different play experience than those with siblings. Our results provide support for these findings because giant panda cubs exhibited different rates of behaviors, some significantly different, when playing with other cubs. Additionally, it appears that cubs have more opportunities to engage in initiation behaviors and termination behaviors, as defined in this study, with mothers. We suggest that access to both an adult female and at least one peer is the ideal combination to prepare cubs for later interactions with other adult giant pandas in captivity. This type of difference is particularly relevant for captive giant pandas because rearing in captivity differs from rearing in the wild. Whereas the mother
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is the primary play partner for a cub in the wild, a cub in captivity might be reared largely with peers. Social play in young animals is negatively affected when mothers do not naturally rear their young (Paquett, 1994; Fox, 1971). Hand-reared gorillas, for example, engage in less social play than gorillas that are reared by their mothers (Meder, 1987), and peer-reared giant panda cubs are generally less active than those that are mother-reared (Snyder et al., 2003). It has also been demonstrated, however, that allowing young animals access to peers instead of their mothers reduces these negative behavioral effects. For example, rats that are reared in isolation do not show effects of early social deprivation if they are allowed the opportunity to engage in play fighting with peers for short periods of time each day (Potegal & Einon, 1989). In this study, we did find some significant differences in play behavior based on partner, and also some interesting trends in the data. Still, the play fighting behavior of cubs playing with mothers and cubs playing with other cubs was not entirely different. That is, the behavioral repertoires were similar, such that similar behaviors occurred regardless of partner. Further, there were no behaviors that cubs exhibited exclusively when playing with other cubs or exclusively when playing with mothers. In terms of play, therefore, peer-rearing might be considered “good enough” for captive giant pandas because play fighting behavior in giant panda cubs might not be significantly affected if cubs primarily have access to peers as play partners. Future studies in giant pandas, however, must examine whether play fighting behavior is related to later reproductive success in these animals, which would have management implications. Additionally, it should be noted that play fighting behavior is not the only measure that should be used to assess the potential behavioral differences that may result from peer-rearing. It is also quite likely that play experience is not the only type of social interaction that influences the development of young animals (Bekoff, 1978). Consistent with previous work (see Suomi & Harlow, 1972), we are not proposing that animals that have the opportunity to only play fight with peers are unaffected; instead, it appears that play fighting behavior itself is not significantly affected. The fact that some behaviors occurred at higher rates with mothers in this study provides a more complete picture of the behaviors of giant panda mothers and cubs during play fighting bouts. It appears that cubs attempt to break contact with mothers by pushing, struggling, and turning at higher rates than they do with cubs. It follows, then, that mothers might engage in high rates of contact maintaining behaviors when playing with cubs. Zucker and colleagues (1986) found that adult orangutans attempt to maintain contact more often than younger individuals during play fighting bouts. Additionally, giant panda mothers exhibit significantly higher rates of biting behavior during play bouts than do cubs (Snyder et al., 2006). Although this study did not
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specifically test hypotheses related to play fighting behavior of giant panda mothers, these data provide some support to existing studies that indicate that adults and young of the same species play differently. It should be noted that it is difficult to interpret these data because of the complexity of the topic of social play, and also because of the limitations of the study. For example, all cubs were combined into one category, regardless of sex, to tests the effects of partner. Sex differences have been observed in the play fighting behavior of giant panda cubs (Snyder et al., 2003). In a related study, Wilson (2005) found that sex, but not early rearing condition, affected play fighting behavior. Specifically, males engaged in more biting behavior than females, but this difference was not found when data from the nine giant panda cubs included in this study were analyzed. Unfortunately, the relatively small sample size prevented us from examining whether there was an interaction between cub sex and partner in this study because only three cubs were observed with both male and female partners. Previous work found that males engaged in more biting behavior when playing with female cubs (n = 4), but this result was not statistically significant (Wilson, 2005). The category of “mother as partner” included only three adult female giant pandas. These mothers were observed over the course of several years with a number of different cubs. Individual differences among the mothers might also have contributed to the results that were obtained when play fighting behavior of cubs was examined based on partner, although evidence of individual differences could not be detected in this study. Additionally, we attempted to score the same number of bouts on each cub at each age, but this was not possible. Therefore, there is a possibility that the data were biased toward one or two individuals that might have exhibited certain behaviors at higher rates than other cubs. Also, because play bouts included in this study were opportunistically recorded we were unable to determine if some subjects played more than others or were preferred over others as play partners. Future studies should examine individual differences in detail, perhaps by identifying behavioral profiles of individual animals (see Carlstead et al., 1999; Gold & Maple, 1994). Finally, although the data were collected over a period of years, we recognize that we had relatively few hours of data for our analyses. Despite these limitations we believe that the results from this study demonstrate that partner did affect certain play fighting behaviors in giant panda cubs. Overall, though, it appears that while playing with a mother might allow for slightly different opportunities for cubs, the behavior of cubs playing with other cubs is relatively similar. It is possible that the fairly common practice of peer-rearing cubs in captivity might not affect play fighting behavior to a large degree, but additional studies are needed to assess future behavior of the studied cubs.
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AUTHOR NOTE We are grateful for the cooperation of China’s Ministry of Construction, and appreciate the help provided by the staff at both the Chengdu Zoo and the Research Base. We acknowledge the support we received from Lincoln Park Zoo during portions of this project. This study was funded by Zoo Atlanta, the Chengdu Zoo, the Chengdu Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding, and the Center for Conservation and Behavior. Correspondence should be sent to: Megan L. Wilson, Assistant Curator of Carnivores. Zoo Atlanta, 800 Cherokee Avenue S.E., Atlanta GA 303151440. Email can be sent to
[email protected].
REFERENCES Altmann, J. (1974). Observational study of behavior: Sampling methods. Behaviour, 48, 499-509. Baldwin, J. J. & Baldwin, J. I. (1978). Exploration and play in howler monkeys (Aluotta palliata). Primates, 19, 411-422. Bard, K. A. (1994). Evolutionary roots of intuitive parenting: Maternal competence in chimpanzees. Early Development and Parenting, 3, 19-28. Bekoff, M. (1974). Social play and play-soliciting by infant canids. American Zoologist, 14, 323-340. Bekoff, M. (1977). Social communication in canids: Evidence for the evolution of a stereotyped mammalian display. Science, 197, 1097-1099. Bekoff, M. (1978). Behavioral development in coyotes and Eastern coyotes. In M. Bekoff (Ed.), Coyotes: Biology, behavior, and management (pp. 97-126). New York, NY: Academic Press. Biben, M. (1983). Comparative ontogeny of social behaviour in three South American canids, the maned wolf, crab-eating fox and bush dog: Implications for sociality. Animal Behaviour, 31, 814-826. Biben, M. (1989). Effects of social environment on play in squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus): Resolving Harlequin’s dilemma. Ethology, 81, 72-82. Biben, M. & Symmes, D. (1986). Individual- and sex-related strategies of wrestling play in captive squirrel monkeys. Ethology, 71, 229-241. Biben, M. & Suomi, J. (1993). Lessons from primate play. In K. MacDonald (Ed.), Parent-child Play: Descriptions and implications (pp.185-196). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Burghardt, G. M. & Burghardt, L. S. (1972). Notes on the behavioral development of two female black bear cubs: The first eight months. In S. M. Herrero (Ed.), Bears Their biology and management (pp. 207-220). Morges, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
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Byers, J. A. (1980). Play partner preferences in Siberian ibex, Capra ibex sibirica. Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, 53, 23-40. Byers, J. A. (1984). Play in ungulates. In P. K. Smith (Ed.), Play in animals and humans (pp. 43-65). New York, NY: Basil Blackwell. Carlstead, K., Mellen, J., & Kleiman, D. G. 1999. Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) in U.S. zoos: 1. Individual behavior profiles and their relationship to breeding success. Zoo Biol, 18: 17-34. Caro, T. M. (1981). Predatory behaviour and social play in kittens. Behaviour, 76, 1-24. Caro, T. M. (1995). Short-term cost and correlates of play in cheetahs. Animal Behaviour, 49, 333-345. Chalmers, N. R. & Locke-Haydon, J. (1984). Correlations among measures of playfulness and skillfulness in captive common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus jacchus). Developmental Psychobiology, 17, 191-208. Drea, C. M., Hawk, J. E., & Glickman, S. E. (1996). Aggression decreases as play emerges in infant spotted hyenas: Preparation for joining the clan. Animal Behaviour, 51, 1323-1336. Durnin, M., Huang, J., & Zhang, H. (2004). Non-invasive techniques for monitoring giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) behavior, habitat use, and demographics. In D.G. Lindburg and K. Baragona (Eds.), Giant pandas biology and conservation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Enomoto, T. (1990). Social plan and sexual behavior of the bonobo (Pan paniscus) with special reference to flexibility. Primates, 31, 469-480. Ewer, R. F. (1973). The carnivores. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fagen, R. (1981). Animal play behavior. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Feddersen-Peterson, D. (1991). The ontogeny of social play and agonistic behaviour in selected canid species. Bonner Zoologische Beitrage, 42, 97-114. Fox, M. W. (1971). Integrative development of the brain and behavior of the dog. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gold, K. C., & Maple, T. L. (1994). Personality assessment in the gorilla and its utility as a management tool. Zoo Biol., 13:509-522. Hayaki, H. (1985). Social play of juvenile and adolescent chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania. Primates, 26, 343-360. Heath, D. C. & Mellen, J. D. (1983). Development of maternally reared sloth bear cubs in captivity. Paper presented at the Sixth International Conference on Bear Research and Management. Grand Canyon, AZ. Henry, J. D. & Herrero, S. M. (1974). Social play in the American black bear: Its similarity to canid social play in an examination of identifying characteristics. American Zoologist, 14, 371-389. Hoff, M. P., Nadler, R. D., & Maple, T. L. (1981). The development of infant play in a captive group of lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). American Journal of Primatology, 1, 65-72. Hole, G. (1991). The effects of social deprivation on levels of social play in the laboratory rat Rattus norvegicus. Behavioural Processes, 25, 41-53.
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Jamieson, S. H. & Armitage, K. B. (1987). Sex differences in the play behavior of yearling yellow-bellied marmots. Ethology, 64, 237-253. Kleiman, D. G. & Malcolm, J. R. (1981). The evolution of male parental investment in mammals. In D. Gubernick and P. Klopfer (Eds.), Parental care in mammals (pp. 347-387). New York, NY: Plenum. Lawick-Goodall, J. Van (1968). The behavior of free-living chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Reserve. Animal Behavior Monographs, 1, 161-311. Lu, Z., Pan, W., & Harkness, J. (1994). Mother-cub relationships in giant pandas in the Qingling mountains, China with comment on rescuing abandoned cubs. Zoo Biology, 13, 567-568. Lawick-Goodall, J. Van (1968). The behavior of free-living chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Reserve. Animal Behavior Monographs, 1, 161-311. Martin, P., & Bateson, P. (1993). Measuring behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meaney, M. J., Stewart, J., & Beatty, W. W. (1985). Sex differences in social play: The socialization of sex roles. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 15, 1-57. Meder, A. (1987). Effects of hand-rearing on the behavioral development of infant and juvenile gorillas (Gorilla g. gorilla). Developmental Psychobiology, 22, 357376. Mendl, M. (1988). The effects of litter-size variation on the development of play behaviour in the domestic cat: Litters of one and two. Animal Behaviour, 36, 20-34. Paquett, D. (1994). Fighting and playfighting in captive adolescent chimpanzees. Aggressive Behavior, 20, 49-65. Pfeiffer, S. (1985). Sex differences in social play of scimitar-horned oryx calves (Oryx mothermah). Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, 69, 281-292. Poole, T. B., & Fish, J. (1975). An investigation of playful behavior in Rattus norvegicus and Mus musculus (Mammalia). Journal of Zoology, 175, 61-71. Potegal, M. & Einon, D. (1989). Aggressive behaviors in adult rats deprived of playfighting experience as juveniles. Developmental Psychobiology, 22, 159-172. Power, T. G. (2000). Play and exploration in children and animals. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schaller, G. B., Hu, J., Pan, W., & Zhu, J. (1985). The giant pandas of Wolong. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Schenkel, R. (1966). Play, exploration, and territoriality in the wild lion. Symposia of the Zoological Society of London, 18, 11-22. Sheskin, D. J. (2004). Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Procedures. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC. Smith, P. K. (1982). Does play matter? Functional and evolutionary aspects of animal and human play. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 139-184. Snyder, R. J. Personal communication. Snyder, R. J., Zhang, A.J., Zhang, Z. H., Li, G. H., Tian, Y. Z., Huang, X. M., Luo, L., Bloomsmith, M.A., Forthman, D.L., & Maple, T.L. (2003). Consequences of early rearing experience for captive giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanolueca). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 117, 235-245.
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Snyder, R. J., Hogan, B., Wilson, M. L., Lawson, Zhang, Luo, Li, & Maple (2006). Giant panda mother-cub play-fighting: Sex differences and targets of attack. Manuscript submitted for publication. Spinka, M., Newberry, R. C., & Bekoff, M. (2001). Mammalian play: Training for the unexpected. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 76, 141-168. Steiner, A. L. (1971). Play activity in Columbian ground squirrels. Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, 28, 247-261. Stevenson, M. F. & Poole, T. B. (1982). Playful interactions in family groups of the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus jacchus). Animal Behaviour, 30, 886-900. Suomi, S. J., & Harlow, H. F. (1972). Social rehabilitation of isolate-reared monkeys. Developmental Psychology, 6, 487-496. Symons, D. (1978). Play and aggression: A study of rhesus monkeys. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Wasser, S. K. (1978). Structure and function of play in the tiger. Carnivore, 1, 27-40. Watson, D. M. & Croft, D. B. (1993). Playfighting in captive red-necked wallabies, Macropus rufogriseus banksuanus. Behaviour, 126, 219-245. West, M. (1974). Social play in the domestic cat. American Zoologist, 14, 427-436. Wilson, M. (2005). An investigation into the factors that affect play fighting behavior in giant pandas. Dissertation, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. Wilson, S. & Kleiman, D. (1974). Eliciting play: A comparative study. American Zoologist, 14, 331-370 Zucker, E. L., Dennon, M. B., Puleo, S. G., & Maple, T. L. (1986). Play profiles of captive adult orangutans: A developmental perspective. Developmental Psychobiology, 19, 315-326. Zhang, Y. & O. Ryder. (1993) Mitochondrial DNA sequence evolution in the Arctoidea. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 90:9557-9561. Zhang, Y. & O. Ryder. (1994) Phylogenic relationships of bears (the URSIDAE) inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequences. Molec. Phylo. Evol. 3:351-359. Zhu, X., Lindburg, D. G., Pan, W., Forney, K. A., & Wang, D. (2001). The reproductive strategy of giant pandas: Infant growth and development and mother-infant relationships. Journal of Zoology London, 253, 141-155.
Part Three
ADULTS IN CHILDREN’S PLAY Commentary: Inquiries into the Role of Adults in Children’s Play Artin Goncu and Anthony Perone The effort to provide solely universalistic characterizations of childhood on the basis of children’s psychological abilities without reference to their context of development has long been over. Observed variations in children’s functioning in different communities have led social scientists to examine how children’s cultural and social contexts support and constrain their development. This examination has resulted in ever-increasing evidence that there are many childhoods in the world today as it has also enabled us to seek ways of supporting children that are consistent with the particular developmental expectations established for them by their communities. As part of this effort, social scientists began to question explicitly a number of practices that have not been addressed in the scientific literature. For example, we ponder the relative uses and potential harm of child labor (Rogoff, 2003) and question the meaning of trying children as adults in the court (Corriero, 2006). In a similar vein, a number of social scientists are now examining the place of play in children’s lives and its potential contributions to children’s development. The three articles by Factor, Patte, and Nwokah in the following section speak to this issue with the purpose of illustrating the significance of play in Western childhood and how it can be supported by adults. Corollary to this, the articles examine the role of toys, the amount and frequency of play time, and the kind of play that can/should be provided for children. At varying degrees of explicitness, the authors argue that the parents, teachers, and the interventionists must support play because play is a natural expression of children’s personal needs. Motivation for play comes from children themselves. Children work out issues of significance at their own will and in a manner that is comforting for them. Therefore, play of various sorts such as playing with language should be enabled (Factor), children should 125
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be given ample opportunities for recess so that they can play (Patte), and interventionists should carefully introduce toys and play activities to enhance children’s lives and assist them in their growth (Nwokah). We feel that the thesis advanced by these three scholars that play is an essential feature of Western childhood and therefore it should be supported as important and meaningful. However, we also add that this thesis raises three significant questions that need to be kept in mind in reading these papers and in making decisions about how to advance play theory and research in the future. The first important question relates to the assumption on which this thesis is based, namely, motivation for play is personal and intrinsic. In our view, attribution of why children play and how they do so, to children alone as individual agents of play activity, has hindered the advancement of convincing arguments about the role of adults in children’s play. By conceptualizing the motivation for play as intrinsic, we have ignored the role of other people in children’s lives and how their shared experiences lead children to play. In other words, the argument that motivation for play is intrinsic has lessened the responsibility the adults have about their role as those who may inspire children to engage in play. If adults understand that their experiences with children may be the source of children’s play, then it would be more plausible to convince them that they should think about whether or how they should support children’s play. For example, it is the child’s choice to pretend that she is a dead duck. However, what leads the child to this experience is not the child herself, but also the meaning she makes with others in the family around the message that the people eat ducks (cf., Piaget, 1945). Although it appears that the child is the sole agent of pretend, what causes this particular engagement is the experience created by the family. Therefore, it is plausible to argue that motivation for play is not only personal. Rather, it is relational. As a result, the family has an obligation to allow the child to deal with this anxiety provoking experience. When we educate adults about this kind of responsibility they have in motivating children to play, our task of making a case for them to make provisions for children’s play would be more convincing and easier. At the level of policy, the authors collectively agree that play should always be supported. For example, Factor argues that adults should not censor children’s language play, Patte argues that recess time should not be shortened, and Nwokah argues that play interventions should be tailored so that children benefit from the play activities and do so to the fullest extent. These authors argue that policies such as No Child Left Behind Acts lead to lessening of play time and this will result in the development of personal and educational difficulties rather than promoting learning. We agree with these authors. We feel that play is an essential feature of childhood, adolescents, and adulthood in our world. Therefore, we need to
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make provisions for people at all ages and for all people to benefit from play. However, we have a caveat to offer in making this statement: Unless play researchers make an effort to show that play contributes to individuals’ and communities’ development, we will not be offering a response that is stronger than the policies against which we are fighting. We will find ourselves in the middle of a battle that will never come to a resolution on either the level of theory or policy alone. We need data. A beginning example is offered in the work of Patte who provides teachers’ views indicating that children need recess time in order to learn and grow in school. This kind of work combined with future research that describes children’s own thoughts about their need for play will provide the strongest evidence and justification for their need play.
REFERENCES Corriero, M. A. (2006). Judging children as children: A proposal for the juvenile justice system. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Piaget, J. (1945). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapter Seven
“It’s Only Play if You Get to Choose”: Children’s Perceptions of Play, and Adult Interventions June Factor1
ABSTRACT The word “play’ has multiple meanings for adults. Primary-school-age children, however, appear to have their own clear understanding of what they mean by play. To view the rich panoply of schoolyard playlore from the children’s perspective, and to contrast it with adult notions and adult interventions, forces us to recognise sharp and sometimes disturbing differences. UNIVERSALITY AND CENTRALITY OF CHILDREN’S PLAY Let me begin, like the old exam question, to compare and contrast. Visualize four girls in a suburban Melbourne primary school in the 1980s, chanting the words and miming the actions of an old playground favourite: Firecracker, firecracker, Boom boom boom. Firecracker, firecracker, Boom boom boom. The boys have got the muscles, The teacher’s got the brains, But the girls have got the sexy legs So they win the game!2
In the Lodz ghetto early in the German occupation of Poland, two Jewish boys, standing on some bricks and facing each other, play a pretend game: one is a ghetto policeman, wearing a cap and armband; the other a Jew in trouble. The policeman has the enjoyable task of hitting the Jew (Stardgart, 129
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2005: picture no.11). No doubt the unfortunate victim would soon have demanded his turn to be the policeman. The author of the book, Nicholas Stardgardt, documents many such games in the ghettos and camps during the Second World War, and remarks: “The Jewish children . . . did not vie to be their elders, but their enemies” (Stardgart, 2005: 175). What makes us react differently to the Melbourne and Poland scenes? Both are examples of children at play. It is entirely our knowledge of the context. We smile at the exuberant energy of the youngsters safe in suburban Melbourne; something catches in the throat when we look at those two little boys in Poland and remember what was almost certainly their fate: hunger, fear, desolation, extermination. Yet to the children themselves, in the moments of play, those differences are of little or no account. And that is as near a miracle as I have come across: the power of play to lift children, however temporarily, from their immediate circumstances and fearful prospects, into a world which they control, created by their imaginations and the ceaseless, ever-changing traditions of playlore. In adult life, we may find such temporary transcendence in the arts. Robert Louis Stevenson made exactly that connection when he wrote in 1882: “Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child: it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life” (Stevenson, 1882). The Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, though he came at the matter from a different perspective, pointed to the power of play to lead children to think beyond the here and now (Vygotsky, 1933: 537-544). And the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who may never have come across Stevenson’s seminal article, through his own twentieth century decades of observation of children reached the conclusion that play is a central, crucial human activity, and the well-spring of later cultural behaviour among adults. According to Winnicott, play occurs in an “intermediate area of experiencing” in children’s lives, a “resting-place” from “the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated” (Winnicott, 1971: 3,). Play, like the arts, allows its participants freedom from the immediate environment, permitting exploration and experiment without much danger to limb or reputation. It is in this arena that we find the chanting girls of Melbourne and the ill-fated small boys of the Lodz ghetto, and all the other children at play, over countless generations, and in every human society. To assert this commonality of play, as well as its significance, is to court the frowns, disapproval and even contempt of those who insist that all or almost all human behaviour is socially constructed, the result of the specificities of a particular culture, of gender, class, ethnicity and ideologies.3 To suggest otherwise, they say, is to be guilty of biologism, or essentialism, or a-historicism – perhaps all three. Elsewhere I have developed my response
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to this line of argument in some detail,4 so here I will merely refer to what I have called the double helix of children’s play: “one strand representing the universal, ubiquitous features of child lore, the other the particular manifestations of children’s play lives which result from particular circumstances” (Factor, 1988: xiv). In Flemming Mouritsen’s words, “Play culture is at once completely local and extremely global. Children play everywhere . . . and they play differently everywhere” (Mouritsen, 1999: 16-17). Certainly there is a need to distinguish between adult theories and practices regarding childhood, which have always and continue to change – hence the seemingly endless supply of books about how to bring up your child – and the actual developmental and play lives of children. In the moderate, commonsense words of the English writer Nicholas Tucker, “In a crude sense, children are likely to show certain childhood traits in some broad areas whatever the culture. To ignore this and treat children simply as products of adult social expectations is bound eventually to lead to oversimplification” (Tucker, 1977). I quibble only with the word “eventually”. CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN’S PLAY For children, a primary significance of play is play itself. I once consulted a group of 7- and 8-year-old boys about the game of Marbles, which it seemed all the children at that inner-suburban Melbourne school were playing at the time.5 Many carried a container for their marbles, usually a cloth bag with a pull-string tie, or a screw-top plastic jar. The Swiss educator Piaget used the rules of Marbles to understand how children developed moral principles (Piaget, 1965: 13-76). I was also interested in the formulation of the rules of the game, and after getting a detailed description of what the boys called Spensley Street Marbles – a game they believed to be peculiar to their school, although to my more experienced eye it was conducted along fairly common lines – I said: “What happens if one player is so good he wins everyone else’s marbles?” “We have a rule for that,” they said. “What’s the rule?” “He has to put 6 marbles back into the ring, so the game goes on.”
Having children of my own, I thought to ask another question: “And what if he won’t?” “We have a rule for that.”
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“What’s the rule?” “We take the 6 marbles out of his pocket.”
Marbles is usually listed as a competitive game, but these children made it clear, through their rules, that there is an even higher purpose than winning: the continuation of the game. This truth of children’s traditional playlore is evident to any close observer of youngsters playing their own games, as distinct from the adult sports which well-meaning grown-ups increasingly urge on the young. Adult sports are vigorous activities which one side must lose so that the other will win. When a football or cricket match is over, that’s it: one team triumphs, the other is defeated. Contrast that perspective with the adaptation of an adult game devised by boys in a Brisbane school in the mid1970s. Using a tennis ball, and a rubbish bin for a wicket, the boys played a game they called “Continuous or Non-Stop Cricket”. According to the authors of a large study of schoolyard games in Brisbane, the players happily changed the rules of cricket and varied the length of the pitch, so that when the game slowed down because a batter was hard to get out, they “simply lengthen[ed] the distance of the run” (Lindsay & Palmer, 1981: 25-6). It kept the game interesting, and was fairer to all players, thus ensuring the game’s continuity. Adult sports require – revere – a high level of skill; children’s own traditions of play – including adaptations of adult games - tolerate considerable variation in performance. Across centuries and cultures, youngsters have played a game of throwing stones or bones or small rice bags into the air and catching them on the back of a hand. Girls in Australia play Knucklebones, also called Jacks. They like to win, but above all they want the satisfaction of successfully proceeding through a series of ever more difficult throwing, catching and picking-up manoeuvres. With practice – and children will practice for hours - the beginner becomes more proficient. But even children without much proficiency are acceptable playmates. In the 1980s at a Melbourne school with a considerable Indo-Asian immigrant population, the girls played Elastics. The Vietnamese girls could jump amazingly high, so that the elastic moved rapidly from “ankles”, “knees”, “underbum” and “waist”, until they were managing to o’er-leap what the children called “straight arm”. In a series of photos published in a study of the children’s games at this school, there is a blond girl holding one end of the elastic. The tallest of the children, she has the slightly bored look of someone who spends more time holding the end of the elastic than jumping over it. She was not a skilled performer, yet that didn’t prevent her from being an accepted member of this play group.6 All these examples illustrate what I’ve called children’s acknowledgement of the law of uneven development, “accepting that difference in performance
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is inevitable but not necessarily a barrier to play and friendship” (Factor, 1988: 24). Bernard Mergen put it well, though perhaps too unconditionally: What all players learn . . . is that the participants must practise reciprocity, respecting each other’s feelings and making adjustments for weaker or less skillful players’ (Mergen, 1982: 134)
In the domestic realm, and in school playgrounds where children are free to mix across age and gender, it is common to see younger children watching older ones at play, and over time gradually joining in; they are initiated into the playlore of a particular group, sometimes receiving coaching and encouragement from the more experienced players. Almost all successful folkloric play requires a high degree of collaboration and cooperation, whether it is a counting-out ritual, a clapping game, or the elaborate moves when boys and girls kiss in “Spin the bottle”. In a recent variant of “Spin the Bottle”, the children – or at least the girls – have devised an elaborate hand ritual which preserves the kissing which is the climax of the game, yet ensures that each kisser’s lips meet only his or her own hand. The hands are held between the players’ faces, such that lips touch hands only. Whether modesty or hygiene is a factor in this elaborate artifice, it is clear that the improvised, invented ritual gives a great deal of pleasure to the participants. True to the history and character of all folklore, here an old courting game has been amended to suit the times and the players.7 Elsewhere in Melbourne in the 1980s, the children at one multicultural school accepted en masse the newly-arrived Vietnamese children’s technique of shooting a marble from the middle finger – what became known as the Chinese flick. – because it was so effective (Russell, 1986: 27).8 As Winnicott noted of all cultural phenomena, “the interplay between originality and the acceptance of tradition . . . [is] the basis of inventiveness” (Winnicott, 1971: 117). And traditions change in order to survive.
PLAY AND FRIENDSHIP The arena of play is also, for most children, an essential domain of friendship. The 9-year-old girl who wrote to me that “to play with friends and have fun” is what she likes best about school,9 was expressing a view widely held by the many hundreds of children who have written to me following the publication, over a period of more than 20 years, of the Far Out! series – collections of children’s playground verbal lore.10 Children hunger for friendship almost as much as for love. Friendships are made, consolidated and sometimes broken in play.11 Friends usually make up the core social group for any play activity
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in the school playground. To be rejected when you ask “Can I play?” is one of the most painful experiences of childhood, essentially because it marks you out as friendless. Hence the stratagem recorded by a researcher in NSW, who questioned a number of late-primary age children about their school friendships. It emerged that most of the children had “contingency” friends – friends to fall back on when you had had a fight with your best friend, or he/ she was away. There was even a hierarchy of “contingency” friends, a kind of spectrum of preference (Davies, 1982: 70-6). Pity the child without such emergency back-stops, for we are a sociable species, and never more so than when young.
CHOICE AND SUBVERSION IN PLAY It is in this context that choice becomes critical. The small girl who declared “it’s only play if you get to choose” was expressing a fundamental truth about children’s playlore: it must be undertaken voluntarily. This is as true of the play of puppies and tiger cubs as it is of human young, and it generally applies equally to any genuine and continuing involvement in adult cultural activities. Here lies one explanation for the oft times negative reactions of youngsters beyond the preschool age to “play” activities organised by their elders, such as in Physical Education classes. A well-meaning “Let’s all take turns turning the rope to skip” is an invitation, at best, to passive cooperation – out of politeness or apprehension. By themselves, the children may start the skipping game with a counting-out ritual to determine who takes the ends of the rope (a recent example is “Coconut, Coconut, Coconut Crack”),12 or they may simply argue it out. There is a lot of argy-bargy in play, and those who seek adult-type “useful” reasons for supporting children’s right to their own play-ways may take heart at the continuing practice in negotiation and compromise such arguments provide.13 Choice is also a marker of growing independence from adult direction. Youngsters everywhere may choose to play ball against an out-of-bounds wall, or speak in Pig Latin or Cow French, or mock the habits and values of their elders in parodic rhyme and song: My Daddy lies over the ocean, My Daddy lies over the sea, My Daddy lies over my Mummy – And that’s how they got little me. God save our gracious cat Feed her on bread and fat
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God save the cat. Keep her from harm and traps Don’t give her any raps Long to reign over us – God save the cat!
The major take-away food chains are labelled “chucky chicken” and “chew and spew”. There are topsy-turvey rhymes (“Ladles and Jellyspoons/ I come before you/ To stand behind you/ To tell you something I know nothing about . . . ”) and a million riddles and jokes, ritual in form and playful in tone.14 All these modes of subversion knit the young into their rich and diverse subculture of playlore, while cocking a snoot, as it were, at the grown-ups who think they know everything and rule the roost. Children, though small, weak and ignorant compared with adults, are not without resources; play allows them an authority and freedom unthinkable in non-play life. As Mergen suggests, “More than solitude, children seek autonomy, freedom from adult supervision” (Mergen: 1982: 658). And if danger threatens – should a parent or teacher loom grimly – the young can fall back on the classic defence: “We’re only playing!” or “It’s only pretend!” Who says children have no sense of irony?
ADULT NEGLECT OF CHILDREN’S PERSPECTIVES Thus far I have focused on play from the children’s perspective. The increasing intervention of adults into the play lives of school-age youngsters is most evident in countries we call economically advanced. In many such countries, including Australia, the intervention grows daily more intense and severe. The reasons for intervention vary, but there appear to be two common elements across the globe: adults’ ignorance of the significance of children’s playlore,15 and their disregard for the views of the young on this (and many another) subject.16 The commonality of this latter neglect – which is often as basic as never asking children their opinion – is nicely illustrated by a tongue-in-cheek “cartoon” strip. A sequence of nine drawings illustrates a school’s response to the children’s request for a tree swing, showing in turn the very different notions of the swing held by the teachers, the parents, the principal, the school council, the art teacher, the bursar, the education department, and maintenance. The last drawing shows the children’s simple desire: an old tyre at the end of a rope, swinging from the branch of a tree. But no one had asked them. With little change, this cartoon has been used at two Melbourne schools, first in its original version in 1973 and then, with slight amendment at another
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school, in 1993. The 20 intervening years appear to have produced little improvement in school practice, and I predict the cartoon’s continued relevance in many a school today.17 The discrepancy between adult and child visions of a tree swing is replicated many times in other situations. Yet that is a modest oversight compared with the determined and destructive epidemic of censorship, restrictions and forbiddings that has engulfed so many schools. The ignorant assurance that adult-devised exercise and sport are “better” for children than their own seemingly chaotic and unplanned play, together with a genuine fear of litigation if little Betty or Johnny hurt themselves while playing, and a misplaced belief that schoolwork alone is what school is for, have combined to create an atmosphere profoundly unsympathetic to the traditions of reasonably free, child-directed play in the school yard.18
PLAY SPACES As for the Biblical injunction: And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing . . . (Zechariah 8:5), that is long out of date. The streets were a playground for the children that Breughal painted in 1560 in what is now Belgium, and in a hundred thousand streets and lanes across the world before and since then.19 Today in many countries street play has almost disappeared, thanks to the ubiquitous motorcar and the widespread adult fear for their children of stranger-danger. Municipal parks permit some forms of play, but in Australia at least focus attention on a generally narrow and repetitive range of mostly fixed play equipment – what one writer has described as the “homogenous, height-restricted, low-risk, candy-coloured jungle gym and plastic slides” (Guilliatt, 2000: 26). All of which makes school playgrounds ever more precious spaces. As Alasdair Roberts documented as far back as 1978, “the school playground is now the principal social centre, and the place where most traditional games are passed on” (Roberts, 1978: 41). Sadly, there is an increasing tendency to limit and control what children may play at school, and almost all the examples of destructive adult intervention that follow are school-based.
CENSORSHIP OF PLAYLORE David Holbrook, a leading British writer and critic on culture and education, produced a small collection of his country’s children’s games in 1957. It was an exercise in painful nostalgia, for he feared the traditions he was recording were dying, soon to disappear. (That view, as we know, has a long history and
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can still be heard.)20 In an admirable introduction, he wrote of the narrative games and verbal lore: Children play seriously and energetically . . . they need to, to develop their power over the experiences of life . . . The games enact aspects of life, and in doing so enact a criticism of life: in them the child asks, How to Live? . . . [I]n the games the disturbing subjects are suspended . . . in the poetry and ritual, the word-culture, in which they are enacted . . . The songs and rhymes are a kind of liturgy, an attempt to impose ritual patterns on experience . . . they are . . . a criticism of life as the child sees it, embryonic drama. (Holbrook, 1957: 10, 19, 21)
Is it children’s “criticism of life” which so offends or frightens some adults? That has certainly been my experience, though the teachers, and the occasional parents, who want to ban even the written texts of children’s “poetry and ritual” usually insist that they are defending the higher ground of morality and public order. Thus the first publication, in 1969, of an uncensored collection of Australian children’s rhymes, Cinderella Dressed in Yella (Turner, 1969), was for a time denied the then-existing postage discount for books because a postmaster declared the contents obscene. Public amusement and ridicule saw that ruling overturned; but not all attempts at censorship of children’s playlore are publicised and thereby defeated. In 1991, about 8 years after I began to compile the collections of children’s rhymes, riddles and jokes that have become known as the Far Out! series, I discovered, through the research of two school library academics, that these books made me the second most censored children’s writer in Australia; only Judy Blume, an American writer popular with Australian children at the time, beat me to the top of the books-queried-in-school-libraries list (Williams & Dillon, 1993). (Since then, other Australian children’s writers have probably overtaken me on what I have come to think of as an honours list.) Yet the material which caused some people so much angst was not my work – it consisted entirely of the oral play traditions of children from across the country. Moreover, I had deliberately chosen to exclude the overtly vulgar and obscene from the collections, knowing that the gatekeepers of the culture would prevent anything too “rude” from reaching the young. I made this clear in a short essay for adults at the end of Far Out Brussel Sprout! and referred to the limitations of the material in similar pieces at the end of each book. But for some adult “protectors” that made no difference. The true authors of the books were the very people to be prevented from reading them. One stanza in one rhyme in particular became a kind of touchstone of adult outrage (which I should stress was the exception rather than the rule in the general community, where the books were most warmly received). “When
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Susie was a baby” is not so popular in Australian children’s playlore today, but it was widely known and performed in the 1980s and 90s and I included it in All Right Vegemite!, the second book in the series. It is a life-cycle drama, in which two children – usually girls – stand opposite each other, sing the words and perform the actions appropriate to each stanza: When Susie was a baby, a baby, a baby, When Susie was a baby A baby Susie was – She went ‘Whaa, whaa, whaa whaa whaa.’ When Susie was a schoolgirl. . . . She went ‘Miss, Miss, I can’t do this.’ When Susie was a teenager. . . . She went ‘Ooh, aah, lost my bra, Found my knickers in my boyfriend’s car.’ When Susie was a mother . . . She went ‘Rock, rock around the clock.’ When Susie was a grandmother . . . She went ‘Knit, knit, you’re a twit.’ When Susie was a dead . . . She went [silence]. When Susie was a skeleton . . . She went ‘Rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle.’ When Susie was a ghost . . . She went ‘Shoo-oo-oh-oh-oh’. When Susie was an angel . . . She went ‘Flip flap flip flap flap.’
What we have here is a child’s version of commedia dell’arte, with the raucous energy of the young constructing – and deconstructing – an unsentimental facsimile of adults’ division of time (Factor, 1988: 176), a mimicry and a mockery of the comedy of life. I especially enjoyed the actions I would sometimes see during a performance (embryonic dramas, as Holbrook said), when Susie the mother didn’t rock her baby in her arms as I expected, but instead rocked as if at a disco.21
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But that wasn’t the offending stanza – it, of course, was Susie as teenager. The notion that children might read the briefest of mocking references to adolescent sexuality has been enough to get the book removed from library shelves in a number of schools – regardless that children collectively created both the words and the actions, and that there has been no reported outbreak of pre-adolescent sexual encounters in cars. Mostly this censorship is done silently, without consulting parents and sometimes against the wishes of teachers. But in 1992 I got to hear of an attack from a different quarter: a Sydney couple was shocked, they told the local paper, that their 7-year-old son should bring home a book with such rhymes in it. Books like this plant seeds in children to believe that all teenage girls are like Susie, said the mother. (I am confident planting seeds was an unconscious allusion.) She was also upset by a very old rhyme with the lines “Truth, truth, nobody’s daughter/ Took off her clothes and jumped in the water.” She believed books such as All Right Vegemite! encouraged children’s bad behaviour (Gardner, 1992). There was quite a fuss. As a historian once commented wryly: “There is no knowledge that doesn’t have a politics.” (Dening, 1998: 9). The story featured on the front page of the local paper; the school hastily withdrew the book for review; the parents asked the local Member of Parliament to contact the Education Department. He did, and the result of the review was announced by no less than the New South Wales Minister for Education: The School Council spent considerable time considering the book before deciding to retain it in the school library. The President of the School Council randomly surveyed parents within the school community whose children either owned the book or had borrowed the book from the library. The President did not receive one complaint. A further survey of children in Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 showed that more than a quarter of children in each class owned the book. (Gardner, 1992)
Should we regard this outcome as a triumph for good sense via democracy? Perhaps, but I remain unreconciled to the notion that the value of a book can be decided by a head-count, quite apart from the lack of any articulated defence of children’s oral literature from the school. And we should note, with a shudder, that the school agreed to closely observe the reading material the complainants’ child chose when in the school library (Gardner, 1992). Such episodes – and there have been others – remind me that it is possible to undertake a primary teacher education degree in most parts of Australia without ever studying children’s traditional playways and considering their importance for the young. From reading and conversation with colleagues in the UK and the US, it seems that is not a deficit peculiar to Down Under.
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RESTRICTIONS ON PLAY IN SCHOOL The removal of books is bad – but children’s play traditions have existed aeons before books and do not depend on the printed word either for quantity, variety or distribution. When schools begin to restrict and forbid play activities, however, the situation could well be more serious. In Mouristen’s apt phrase, the educational project turns . . . into a “project of demolition” (Mouritsen, n.d.). In May 2004, a Melbourne newspaper featured a picture of gloomy parents and children from a Catholic primary school in a comfortable suburb. The opening paragraph of the article read: A Melbourne primary school has banned children from playing before school starts, prompting outrage from parents who describe the move as bizarre and draconian. (Tomazin, 2004)
The school defended its action on the grounds that it would help children enter the classroom in a calm manner, as well as its growing concerns about safety issues and legal responsibilities in our “before school” routine. But the parents were having none of it. They protested vigorously. (The article doesn’t include any of the children’s views.) After a few days the paper reported that the ban had been lifted: a rare instance of the triumph of play, and good sense, over timid and ignorant bureaucracy. But none of the education and health experts quoted in the article, though they disagreed with the ban, mentioned the importance of supporting children’s own play ways; instead they spoke of activity versus obesity, and play being a way to let off some energy (Tomazin, 2004). A few years ago I wrote an article about the invisible play-lines in school playgrounds – the way in which children mark out the territory: here for this game, there for that. I commented on the destruction to these play-lines, and therefore to play, caused by well-intentioned adults who remove a fallen log that has always been a space ship, or discourage Marbles games played on manhole covers or in gutters (Factor, 2004). Then there are the forbiddings. The words of a 12-year-old girl from NSW, describing the frustrations of teacher prohibitions, are worth quoting here: It’s like they get joy out of saying ‘you can’t do that’ . . . All the games we want to play, they keep banning. At the beginning of the year we started playing kickball, where you run on the basketball court, kick the ball and run around bases. It got banned. I don’t know why, they reckoned we might run over a little kid – like, there was no evidence that we’d ever done it or anything. Then we started playing brandings, and they thought we might throw the ball too hard –
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which we hadn’t ever done and we had a soft ball anyway! So that was banned. Then we started playing goalbreak and then that got banned. That was sort of like tip, and I think it got banned ‘cause we played grab 1 2 3, where you don’t just tap them, you gotta grab them and hold on for 1 2 3. And then that wasn’t allowed, but we played it still for a while . . . So they get pleasure out of saying ‘you’re not allowed to do that’ and we get pleasure out of saying ‘just watch me!’ (Dockett & Fleer, 1999: 267)
Are we witnessing a moral cum litigation panic that will pass, or have we entered an era of ever-tighter control and direction of the young? In whose interests? When children are forbidden to run and throw balls, and free time to play at school is cut or eliminated, I am reminded of something Brian Sutton-Smith wrote back in 1985, when these tendencies were just beginning; it has a prophetic ring: [T]here is a common romantic assumption that play is functional and is always worthwhile. At the same time, adults are in general so scared of it that, unless it is called ‘game simulation’, or ‘adjustment’, or ‘cognition’, or ‘problem solving’, they would rather have nothing to do with it. By calling all of a child’s intelligent activities ‘play’, the modern generation of educators and psychologists manages to suppress play on behalf of education and supervision. Present trends indicate that there will be much more of such usurpation of play’s potential to go wherever the players want to take it . . . (Sutton-Smith, 1985)
RECOGNITION OF IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN’S PLAY Surely it is our responsibility to challenge this usurpation, wherever and whenever we can. Even the instrumentalist arguments about usefulness are on our side, at a time when neuroscience is providing the hard evidence of the essential connection between juvenile play and brain development, suggesting that there is enormous cognitive development in play and that play is a sign of healthy development (Furlow, 2001: 29-31); and a philosopher argues for the importance of pretend play, which has as a principal function giving children experience manipulating and reasoning about representations that are discordant with reality (Garfield). In a different arena of importance, UNESCO has recently listed the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection on its Australian Memory of the World register, so that now an archive of children’s lore and language sits, as it were, side by side with Captain Cook’s journals and a few other illustrious documents.
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SURVIVAL OF CHILDREN’S PLAY Usefulness and glory aside, in the end, we have the comfort of knowing that the adult straighteners strive in vain to control the life force that is children’s rich inheritance, to which each generation of children adds, subtracts and amends. There are examples aplenty, from many parts of the world, which confirm the enduring power of play. Let me mention a handful from disaster areas of the last two decades. In a newspaper report in November 1991, we read a description of the terrible circumstances of the people living in Osijek, a largely Croation town in Yugoslavia then under siege from the Serb army. Shells pound the city day and night, people live in air raid shelters. The wounded and sick lie on stretchers, the shelters are cold and dark. Amidst the misery and fear, a journalist noted, children play hopscotch in the ill-lit passages (Tanner, 1991). In 1994, the slaughter in Rwanda results in more than 250,000 refugees in just one region. As well as homelessness and the threat of further attacks there is every sort of illness and a lack of food -- all reported at length in the media – including the following two sentences in a newspaper report: The children carry on living, too. One boy drags a stick as if it were a pet dog. A dozen youngsters play a sort of primitive roulette, tossing the couple of shillings they have between them on to numbers penned on corrugated cardboard (Age 1994). In southern Africa in 2002 there is a famine. An Australian journalist goes to Malawi to assess the impact of the famine on the people there, especially the children. She describes the hunger, with children whose bellies are swollen, and arms stick thin and skin dry and flaky with malnutrition. She also observes youngsters making balls from crushed plastic bags of newspaper, held together with rubber bands, and boys playing with little wagons made from wire (Bone, 2002). Reading these reports, I remembered the children in Nazi-occupied Europe, who played in the ghettos and the camps while there was strength in their limbs and breathe in their bodies.22 A woman who helped organize games in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp and who survived the war, later wrote of the children at play: it is an urge that springs from the children themselves . . . they show their desire to live, to play, a desire stronger than they are themselves (Levy-Haas, 1982: 259). In the controversial Italian film Life is Beautiful, the father tries to shield his small son from the horror and terror of a Nazi concentration camp by persuading the boy that it is all an elaborate game of make-believe.23 Those who condemned the film for its seeming frivolity did not recognise that is was only through this pretend play that the loving father could maintain his
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child’s spirit. In far far gentler circumstances, we too have a choice: to accept our responsibility to the young – to protect and enhance their freedom to play. And to remember the words on this subject from a 6-year-old in Edinburgh: Trust me, I’m an expert.24
NOTES 1. This paper was originally presented as the keynote address at the May 17-20, 2006 conference of The Association for the Study of Play at Brock University, St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada. It was illustrated with many slides which unfortunately cannot be reproduced in this published version. 2. Unless otherwise indicated, all examples of children’s playlore in this paper come from the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, Museum Victoria, and from my series of books of children’s verbal lore, Far Out Brussel Sprout!, All Right Vegemite!, Unreal Banana Peel!, Real Keen Baked Bean!, Roll Over Pavlova! and Okey Dokey Karaoke! , published by Brolly Books, Melbourne. 3. Those with a strong determinist social causation perspective who insist that childhood is an adult creation generally exempt infancy from their argument, presumably because it is impossible not to recognize that food, warmth and a modicum of intimacy are essential for the survival of human young, regardless of culture. 4. See J. Factor (1988) Captain Cook Chased a Chook: Children’s Folklore in Australia; and J. Factor (2001) ‘Three Myths about Children’s Folklore’ pp.24-36. 5. The word ‘game’ has obscure origins: perhaps from the Old English ‘gamen’ (‘ga’ = together), and the Indo-European ‘ghent’ (to leap joyfully). Much play, including verbal play, has a joyful, even euphoric quality. 6. Photos by Heather Russell, Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, Museum Victoria, Australia, and included in Heather Russell, (1986) Play and Friendships in a Multi-Cultural Playground. 7. Judy McKinty, fieldwork at West Preston Primary School, Melbourne, 2005, held in the National Library of Australia. 8. This is just one of a number of instances of cross-cultural transference from immigrant to local children recorded in the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, Museum Victoria, Australia. 9. Private correspondence, 1986. 10. See note ii. 11. In Kidspeak: a Dictionary of Australian Children’s Words, Expressions and Games, (2000), I recorded approximately 350 insults. 12. Judy McKinty, op cit. 13. One of the many seeming paradoxes of children’s playlore is the way in which the play is entered voluntarily, yet is often tightly structured and rule-governed. 14. Through such language play, children reinforce, via nonsense and inversion, the structures and usage of the language. For an interesting analogy with the purposes and effects of children’s subversive language play, see M.A.K. Halliday’s discussion
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of adult ‘anti-languages’ in Language as Social Semiotic, University Park Press, Baltimore, (1978). 15. Economically illustrated by the remark of a teacher watching a child playing Hoppy, in Anne Manne, ‘Sweet bird of youth’, The Age, (1998), cited in J. Factor, ‘Three myths about children’s folklore’, op cit, p.34. 16. I am not referring here to the larger subject of the instrumentalist uses of play by adults for either commercial or educational purposes. For evidence, and discussion, of the broader neglect of children’s views within the education structures, see C. Burke & I. Grosvenor, The School I’d Like: Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century, ( 2003); J. Factor, ‘A Power Station and a Flower Garden’, (2005); and J. Factor, ‘Hear the voices of the voiceless’, (2005). 17. Cartoon strip drawn by Peter Fawcett, Eratica, Era School Magazine, Melbourne, c.1973; amended by Jenny Rayner for Moonee Ponds West Primary School, Melbourne, c.1993. See also Rogert Hart, Children’s Experience of Space, (1979). 18. Examples of restrictions resulting from fear of litigation include a Brisbane school reported in January 2006 as having set out to ban Chasey games in the playground because of fear of litigation and the cost of insurance against it, (The Age, ‘3.5m are missing in action’, 9 January 2006); a post-2000 British government-sponsored report on play and playgrounds which refers to ‘the growing blame culture and litigation’ which leads to play facility providers being ‘more and more concerned to minimize the chances of even minor accidents for fear of being taken to court’ (Frank Dobson et al, ‘Getting serious about play: a review of children’s play’, (2004); and a public school district in Atlanta, USA, in 1998, which determined to eliminate recess because the time could be better spent on school work (D. Johnson, ‘All work and no play: should schools really skip recess?’, (1988). 19. Pieter Breughal, 1560, ‘Children’s Games’, in Kuntzhistorische Museum, Vienna. 20. For a discussion of the theories of one well-known exponent of the ‘children’s free play is no more’ school of thought, Neil Postman (The Disappearance of Childhood), see Captain Cook . . . op cit pp.195-222. 21. For a discussion of the widespread international distribution of this rhyme, see Andy Arleo, ‘The saga of Susie: the dynamics of an international handclapping game’, in Play today in the primary school playground, op cit, pp.115-132. 22. See George Eisen, (1988) Children and Play in the Holocaust; and N. Stargardt, Witnesses of War . . . op cit. 23. Roberto Begnini (director), (1997) La Vita e Bella. 24. Cited in Sandra Marwick, (1994) ‘Out of the mouths of babes’, Museums Journal, p.21.
REFERENCES Arleo, A. (2001). ‘The saga of Susie: the dynamics of an international handclapping game’, in Play today in the primary school playground, (eds) J. Bishop & M. Curtis. Buckingham & Philadelphia: Open University Press.
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Bone, P. (2002).‘I wonder if I will ever get that boy out of my mind’. Melbourne: The Age, 31 August. Burke, C. & Grosvenor, I. (2003). The School I’d Like: Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century. London: Routledge Falmer. Davies, B. (1982) Life in the Classroom and Playground: The Accounts of Primary School Children. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dening, G. (1998). Melbourne: Australian Book Review, April. Dobson, F. et al, (2004). ‘Getting serious about play: a review of children’s play’. UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Dockett, S. & Fleer, M. (1999) Play and pedagogy in early childhood: Bending the rules. Sydney: Harcourt. Eisen, G. (1988). Children and Play in the Holocaust, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Factor, J. (1983-2005). Far Out Brussel Sprout!, All Right Vegemite!, Unreal Banana Peel!, Real Keen Baked Bean!, Roll Over Pavlova! and Okey Dokey Karaoke! Melbourne: Brolly Books. Factor, J. (1988). Captain Cook Chased a Chook: Children’s Folklore in Australia, Melbourne: Penguin. Factor, J. (2000). Kidspeak: a Dictionary of Australian Children’s Words, Expressions and Games, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Factor, J. (2001). ‘Three Myths about Children’s Folklore’ in Play today in the primary school playground, (eds) J. Bishop & M. Curtis, Buckingham & Philadelphia: Open University Press. Factor, J. (2004). ‘Tree stumps, manhole covers and rubbish tins: the invisible playlines of a primary school playground’, Childhood, vol. 11, no. 2, May. Factor, J. (2005a). ‘A Power Station and a Flower Garden’, Prime Focus: Journal for Australian Primary School Leaders, no. 43, Summer. Factor, J. (2005b). ‘Hear the voices of the voiceless’, Melbourne: The Age, Education supplement, 30 May. Furlow, B. (2001). ‘Play’s the thing’, New Scientist, 9 June. Gardner, N. (1992). Sydney: St George & Sutherland Shire Leader, November. Garfield, J. et al, ‘Let’s Pretend: how pretence scaffolds the acquisition of theory of mind’, www.smith.edu/philosophy/jgarfield/html Guilliatt, R. (2000). ‘Playing it safe’, Melbourne: The Age Good Weekend Magazine, 17 June. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic. Baltimore: University Park Press. Hart, R. (1979). Children’s experience of space. New York: Irvington Publishers. Holbrook, D. (1957). Children’s games. London: Gordon Fraser. Johnson, D. (1988). ‘All work and no play: should schools really skip recess?’, International Herald Tribune, 8 April. Levy-Haas, H. (1982). Inside Belsen. New Jersey: Barnes & Noble. Lindsay, P. L. & Palmer, D. (1981) Playground game characteristics of Brisbane primary school children. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Manne, A. (1998). ‘Sweet bird of youth’, Melbourne: The Age, 31 January.
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Marwick, S. (1994). ‘Out of the mouths of babes’, Museums Journal 94 no.10 Oct. Mergen, B. (1982). Play and Playthings. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Mouritsen, F. (1999). Child Culture – Play Culture. The Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies, Odense University, University of Southern Denmark. Mouritsen, F. ‘Project demolition: children’s play-culture and the concept of development’, Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies, Odense University, University of Southern Denmark, n.d. Piaget, J. (1965). The Moral Judgement of the Child. New York: Macmillan. (Orig. pub. 1948.) Postman, N. (1982). The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Delacorte Press. Roberts, A. (1978). ‘Extraversion and outdoor play in middle childhood’, Educational Research, vol.21 no.1, November. Russell, H. (1986). Play and Friendships in a Multi-Cultural Playground. Melbourne: Australian Children’s Folklore Publications. Stargardt, N. (2005). Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis, London: Jonathan Cape. Stevenson, R. L. (1882). ‘A Gossip on Romance’, Longman’s Magazine, vol.1 no.1, London: Longmans, Green & Co. Sutton-Smith, B. (1985). ‘Projections: the future of play’, in B. Sutton-Smith (ed.), Children’s Play: Past, Present & Future. Philadelphia: Please Touch Museum. Tanner, M. (1991). ‘Osijek’s “walking dead” play for their salvation, not liberation’, Independent, reprinted in The Age, 26 November. Tomazin, F. (2004). ‘”No-fun” school takes morning play off the timetable’, Melbourne: The Age, 7 May. Tucker, N. (1977). What is a Child? London: Open Books. Turner, I. (1969). Cinderella Dressed in Yella. Melbourne: Heinemann. Vygotsky, L. S. (1976). ‘Play and its role in the mental development of the child’, (orig. pub. 1933), in J. Bruner et al (eds), Play – its role in development and evolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Orig. pub. 1933.) Williams, C. & Dillon, K. (1993) Brought to book: Censorship and school libraries in Australia. Port Melbourne: ALIA Thorpe. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Chapter Eight
The State of Recess in Pennsylvania Elementary Schools: A Continuing Tradition or a Distant Memory? Michael M. Patte ABSTRACT A student participatory survey research project conducted by undergraduate early childhood education majors at a public state university examined the state of recess in Pennsylvania elementary schools. Subjects were 60 elementary school teachers and administrators representing 60 public elementary schools throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The research project found that public school personnel believed recess to be a necessary part of the school day; that the recent trend toward eliminating recess was a mistake with serious implications for children, that the decision to eliminate/reduce time devoted to recess was not based on solid research, and was politically motivated; that recess contributed to the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of elementary school children; that most schools in the project devoted daily time to recess; and that due to increased pressure for academic achievement, some schools decreased daily time devoted to recess. The results suggest an inconsistency between school personnel’s positive beliefs concerning the benefits of recess and the dwindling time devoted to it as well as a need to advocate for the inclusion of recess in the daily landscape of elementary school in the present day climate of greater teacher and school accountability.
INTRODUCTION Recess time has been a staple of the elementary school day for generations. Playing games like kick ball, four square, knock out, king of the hill, freeze tag, kick the can, dodge ball, and capture the flag provided hours of unstructured fun in the sun. The colors, sights, and sounds experienced during recess 147
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etched lasting memories and impressions still vivid today. Such experiences offered a break from the rigors of the school day and provided the physical, cognitive, and social rejuvenation that our developing bodies and minds longed for. But are these experiences available for children today, or are they no more than a faded memory from the nostalgic past? While fond memories of recess abound for grown-ups, many elementary school children today will have much different memories. Many school districts across the country are reducing or eliminating time devoted to recess due in part to increasing school and teacher accountability for student performance on state mandated standardized tests and the belief that time is more wisely spent on academics. This trend is not new. Doris Sponseller in Play as a Learning Medium (1974) espoused similar concerns over thirty years ago: When early learning is defined as being only academic learning, play is often taken out of the curriculum to achieve these goals. The elementary school years have traditionally valued work in the classroom and have relegated play to recess time only. Kindergarten teachers are reporting that with increasing emphasis on accountability for reaching early academic objectives, there is now less time for play in their classrooms. And often the movement toward educational content in the preschools is interpreted in ways which cause downgrading or even abandonment of play time in preschools as well.
More recently, since 1990, 40 percent of the nation’s 16,000 school districts have either modified, deleted, or are considering deleting recess from the daily elementary school schedule due to increased pressure from numerous sources to improve achievement (American Association for the Child’s Right to Play, 2004). But does reducing or eliminating time devoted to recess benefit academic learning? Or can recess actually improve student academic success in school? Recent studies challenged the belief that reducing or eliminating recess will improve children’s academic achievement. For example, Healy (1998) found that excessive periods of academic instruction may impair ability to learn and retain material. Similar research reported by Jarrett et al. (1998) found children’s attention to be greater on the days when they had recess. According to Skrupskelis (2000) the phenomenon of reducing time for recess has no credible research to back it up, and is actually counterproductive to increasing the academic achievement of students. Further, a series of studies conducted in Canadian schools by Martens (1982) speaks to the importance of recess as a vehicle for improving academic success. The schools in the studies increased the time children spent engaged in physical activity to one-third of the total school day. Though the students
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spent significantly less time on academic subjects, scholastic achievement levels increased. Each semester, as I have read my undergraduate early childhood field journals, I noticed student comments referencing, in many of their field sites, a lack of free time devoted throughout the school day for children to play. The journal entries further exposed a culture where students were stressed-out and overwhelmed by the demands for academic success. These experiences were similar to the ones I encountered in the later stages of my twelve year elementary school teaching career. In my school, many of the extra-curricular activities that provided freedom and outlets for both students and faculty fell by the wayside in favor of additional time for structured academic learning. In response to the comments from the field journals and my own elementary teaching experience, I designed a student participatory survey research project for undergraduate early childhood education students to carry out in school districts throughout the state of Pennsylvania, to see just how widespread or far-reaching these practices endangering recess might be. The research project sought to unearth teacher and administrator perceptions about the importance of recess in each of their schools. The sixty undergraduate early childhood education students conducted the research project in the Pennsylvania school district from which they graduated. These sixty schools represented rural and urban districts ranging in size from small to large throughout the Commonwealth. The undergraduate early childhood education students conducted face-to-face interviews with elementary school personnel and obtained answers to questions from a twelve question recess survey. Students then used the data gleaned from the interviews to write a final report documenting the importance of recess in a particular elementary school in Pennsylvania. The data from the student final reports is shared in this research article. The interview questions asked of the Pennsylvania teachers and administrators included: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Do you believe recess is a necessary part of the school day? Do you believe recess contributes to child development? Does your school devote time for recess each day? How many minutes are devoted to recess each day? How many minutes do you believe should be devoted to recess each day? Has the time devoted to recess in your school decreased/increased recently? 7. To what do you attribute the decrease/increase in time devoted to recess? 8. Was the decision to decrease/increase the time devoted to recess in your school made collectively or unilaterally? 9. Do you believe eliminating/reducing time for recess is a mistake?
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10. Do you believe eliminating/reducing time for recess will have implications for children? 11. Do you believe eliminating/reducing time for recess is based upon solid research? 12. Do you believe eliminating/reducing time for recess is politically motivated? Why is this information important? Information gleaned from this research project can shed light on the trend towards eliminating or reducing the time devoted to recess in Pennsylvania public elementary schools. Further, this research may provide answers concerning how the current education climate stressing higher levels of student and teacher accountability and increased academic achievement, but lower levels of time devoted to recess, may affect the attitudes of students, teachers, and school administrators towards recess. Finally, what implications does such a recess policy hold for the overall development of elementary school children in Pennsylvania? We sought to unearth teacher and administrator perceptions about the importance of recess in elementary schools throughout Pennsylvania in a climate of heightened demand for teacher and student accountability and measurable outcomes for school programs.
RECESS DEFINED According to Pellegrini and Smith (1993), recess is a period of active, free, usually outside play during the day set aside for elementary and sometimes middle school-age children. An essential element of recess is student choice. In other words, recess is unstructured and undirected. When children are inside of the classroom they are restrained by specific limits, which is not the case during recess. Teachers also benefit from recess by interacting with students in a less formal environment and showing a side of themselves not often seen in a more formal classroom setting.
LITERATURE REVIEW When children are engrossed in recess, learning takes place in ways not possible inside the classroom. A substantial body of research highlights the benefits of unstructured outdoor recess for children including brain development, health and physical development, social and emotional development, and improved classroom behavior.
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Brain Development The recent research on brain growth and development stresses the importance of active, physical, and cognitively stimulating play for all children (Zwillich, 2001). According to Brink (1995) recent studies highlight the importance of motor stimulation on the mental functioning of people spanning a large range of ages. Similarly, animal research conducted by Healy (1990) suggests that physical exercise and movement promote the growth of brain cells. Other data involving brain chemistry suggest that physical exercise during recess provides fuel for the brain in the form of oxygen which causes the release of mood-enhancing chemicals called endorphins. Research suggests that the capacity to master new information and recall past information is enhanced by biological and chemical changes in the brain caused by exercise (Brink, 1995). Kinoshita (1987) also found the chemical called brain-derived neurotropic factor, which is released by physical activity, enhances long-term memory formation. A related line of research examines the role of physical activity on attention and memory. One of the great challenges teachers face daily is how to keep students engaged as they explore new content and topics. One can look to the adult workplace to understand the relationship between recess breaks and productivity. Minimum paid rest period requirements under state law require employers in all lines of work to provide adult workers with breaks scheduled throughout the day (US Department of Labor, 2006). A taken for granted truth in the adult workplace is that employees are more satisfied, alert, and attentive when provided with daily breaks. Research supporting this position asserts that the brain operates on a cycle of 90 to 120 minutes, and over the duration of each cycle, the brain becomes alternately more and less productive in the processing of either verbal or spatial information (Klein and Armitage, 1979). During the down time of the cycle, a break is required. Similarly, Rossi and Nimmons (1991) point out that twenty minute mental breaks throughout the day enhanced productivity. The brain performs poorly when attempting constant intense attention, and is reduced to ten minutes or less of continuous focus on external stimuli. Health & Physical Development Daily recess provides many benefits for children including enhanced: aerobic endurance, muscle strength, motor coordination, and attentiveness. According to Clements and Jarrett (2000) children’s bodies experience heightened physical growth between the ages of 4 and 12, and vigorous physical activity during recess stimulates the development of the heart, lungs, and other vital organs. Waite-Stupiansky and Findlay (2001) found that children’s participation in
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vigorous physical activity in the schoolyard surpasses that which occurs during school physical education classes. Further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2004), reports that regular physical activity is associated with healthier lifestyles and greater life expectancies. In addition, Rivkin (2001) found that most children who play outside on a regular basis are healthier, and physically active children are more likely to become physically active adults. Two theories exploring why physical activity improves children’s attentiveness and decreases restlessness found in the research include the surplus energy theory and the novelty theory (Jambor, 1994). The surplus energy theory views recess as a means for children to burn off excess energy that accumulates over time from sitting in a formal classroom. Although this theory is still accepted widely, Smith and Hagan (1980), among others, charge that there is no credible criterion constituting surplus energy and that the notion of building up energy just to discharge it makes no sense physiologically. Further, Evans and Pellegrini (1997) highlight that children often continue playing even after they are exhausted. The novelty theory asserts that as class work becomes less appealing, children become less attentive and seek playtime to reinstate novelty (Evans & Pellegrini, 1997). This theory supports the notion that recess provides opportunities to explore activities starkly different from academic learning. Upon returning to class after recess, children view academic learning as novel once again. Social and Emotional Development Rogers and Sawyers (1988) found that through outdoor play, children develop social and emotional skills. Jambor (1999) also recognized the playground at recess time as one of the few places where children can actively confront, interpret, and learn from meaningful social experiences. When children organize their own games, they exhibit a wide range of social competencies including respect for rules, self-discipline, leadership skills, aggression control, conflict resolution, and an appreciation for the culture and beliefs of others (Jarrett and Maxwell, 2000). Research by Pellegrini (1992b) suggests that social relationships developed on the playground facilitate relationships and learning inside the classroom as well. In terms of emotional development, recess may serve as a valuable outlet for reducing anxiety and serve as a means by which children learn to handle stress and develop self-control. As stated earlier, recess is one of the few times during the day when children control and organize the direction of their own activities. Such activities provide children with feelings of control and positive self-esteem. Jensen (1998) found a lack of control over events can
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contribute to impaired problem-solving abilities. Positive social and working relationships with peers allow children to develop social and emotional competence. Classroom Behavior Research by Bogden & Vega-Matos (2000) suggests that students are more focused on their teachers and school work after recess. Allowing time for a mental break in the form of recess may minimize disruptive behavior once students return to the classroom. Therefore, recess can be viewed as an important component of classroom management. A study by Pellegrini & Davis (1993) found that children became fidgety and less attentive in the absence of recess, while children engaged in vigorous playground activity were less fidgety and more attentive after recess.
METHODS The research project was conducted during the spring 2005 semester by undergraduate early childhood education students enrolled in the Introduction to Early Childhood Education (62.121) class. A twelve question recess survey created by the author was used to generate the data on teacher and administrator perceptions about the importance of recess in each of their schools. Participants of the Study Participants in the research project included sixty undergraduate early childhood education majors and a combination of sixty teachers and school administrators representing public elementary schools throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The undergraduate students served as the researchers in the project and were selected due to fact that they enrolled in the Introduction to Early Childhood Education class. Conducting the research project was a course requirement for all students. The public school teachers and administrators were selected by the student-researchers. The researchers selected participants from the Pennsylvania school district from which they graduated. Interviews The format of the interviews was semi-structured and included the twelve research questions shared earlier. Interviews allowed the researchers to explore
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emerging issues and provided the participants with opportunities to clarify their meanings. Notes were taken during each interview and expanded as needed afterwards. Data Analysis The interview notes recorded during the face-to-face interviews were used to generate data concerning teacher and administrator perceptions about the importance of recess in each of their schools. Data analysis proceeded in four phases: (1) initial reading; (2) second and third readings to begin to extract themes and patterns; (3) creation of meaningful categories and subcategories; and (4) reporting of initial findings. At the completion of the analysis phase, an outline was developed to frame the study in an effort to create a clear picture of teacher and administrator perceptions about the importance of recess. The outline was expanded to include excerpts from the interviews. Quotations which were representative of the themes contained in the outline were chosen from the original data set. The quotations which provided the richest illustration of the themes were included in the findings.
RESULTS Elementary school teacher and administrator ideas and responses to the recess survey questions have been synthesized here, using categories denoted by the questions asked. Do You Believe Recess Is A Necessary Part Of The School Day? An overwhelming 98 percent of participants believed recess was a necessary part of the school day. The variety of reasons justifying their position are similar to those highlighted in the literature review, explored further below. Do You Believe Recess Contributes to Child Development? Altogether, 98 percent of participants believed recess contributed to the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children. In terms of cognitive development, participants found plenty of opportunities on the playground for cognitive development including “engagement in thought provoking activities, implementation of strategies, development of problem solving skills, experimentation with assimilation and accommodation, enhancement
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of auditory, perceptual, and visual skills, and opportunities for discovery, exploration, and investigation.” In addition, many participants believed that recess breaks throughout the day improved children’s attentiveness and decreased restlessness, a finding in line with Jambor’s (1994) surplus energy theory. A teacher expressed this view by saying, “Recess provides the children with time to expend energy without which the children would be unable to concentrate on afternoon lessons.” An additional participant shared, “Recess is the time when students can let all of their stress from academics out into the open and relieve their minds of work. They feel relieved and fresh to learn more and be more focused after their recess time.” Finally, a teacher shared a growing frustration felt by many, as schools decrease time for recess in favor of additional time preparing for standardized achievement tests with, “Children need a break from learning at times. It allows them to get their energy out and simply be a kid, instead of just putting their nose to the grindstone to measure up to some testing standard.” Participants also found daily recess to be necessary as such open-ended experiences provided opportunities for diversion from boredom and increased on-task attention, an assertion also advanced by the novelty theory (Jambor, 1994). Summarizing this theory, one teacher explained, “The students need a break throughout the day, otherwise instruction would be ineffective and students would be off task.” Other teachers expressed similar sentiments, “When children are given a short period of time to exercise and get fresh air, they are much more willing and able to concentrate in class,” and “most kids need a brain break throughout the day.” Providing opportunities for social and emotional development were additional reasons the participants believed recess was a necessary part of the school day. Teachers highlighted this belief through such comments as: “Children learn how to solve problems on the playground,” “Children need recess for developing social skills,” “Interacting with diverse groups of people is a by product of daily recess,” “Developing conflict resolution skills outside of the classroom is a social benefit of recess,” “Practicing morals and learning right from wrong are life lessons learned on the playground,” “Developing empathy and peer mediation skills are valuable social skills honed through daily recess.”
An additional benefit of recess identified by participants was improved classroom behavior. One teacher summarized this idea by sharing, “Children need time to let loose and play so they don’t do it in the classroom.” Another
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teacher agreed, “Recess makes a huge difference in how children behave for the rest of the day!” A school principal shared similar feelings, “Recess gives children time to burn off excess energy with their friends, energy not needed in the classroom.” These school personnel believe recess may minimize disruptive classroom behavior, a finding consistent with that of Bogden & Vega-Matos (2000). Does Your School Devote Time for Recess Each Day? Altogether, 97 percent of the Pennsylvania school districts represented in the research project offered daily recess. Most of the recess time took place directly following lunch period in the late morning or early afternoon. This finding is encouraging in the present-day climate of increasing teacher and school accountability for student academic performance pressuring time devoted to daily recess. The 97 percent of Pennsylvania elementary schools included in the research study that offered recess exceeded the 90 percent of schools offering recess in a 1989 survey of school systems in the United States (Pellegrini, 1995). How Many Minutes Are Devoted to Recess Each Day? The time devoted to daily recess among the sixty Pennsylvania school districts represented in the research project varied from school to school but averaged 20 minutes. This daily recess time was in line with the schools included in a 1989 survey of school systems in the United States, which reported an average of 15–20 minutes devoted to daily recess (Pellegrini, 1995). How Many Minutes Do You Believe Should be Devoted to Recess Each Day? The participants believed an average of 30 minutes should be devoted to daily recess in their schools. This represents ten minutes more than the average time presently offered throughout the sixty Pennsylvania school districts studied. How does 30 minutes of daily recess time compare to the time devoted to daily recess in other countries? According to Pellegrini (1995), some British primary schools have three recess periods a day – 15 minutes in the mornings and afternoons and 80–90 minutes at lunch. Japanese schools have 10-20 minute recess periods between 45 minute lessons or 5 minute breaks between lessons, with a long play period after lunch (Lewis, 1995). Finally, Pelligrini (1995) found schools in Taiwan have several recess periods
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throughout the day including a 5 minute transition period after recess before they are expected to settle down to their assigned work. Has the Time Devoted to Recess in Your School Decreased/ Increased Recently? How Many Minutes was Recess Decreased/Increased? Half of the Pennsylvania school districts represented in the research project decreased daily recess time recently, while none of the schools increased daily recess time recently according to the participants. Of the schools that decreased daily recess time recently, an average of 15 minutes was lost and reassigned to other academic tasks. This finding correlates with a study which found 40 percent of our nation’s 16,000 school districts have either modified, deleted, or are considering deleting recess from the daily school schedule (American Association for the Child’s Right to Play, 2004). To What Do You Attribute the Decrease/Increase in Time Devoted to Recess? According to participants, the school districts that decreased daily recess time felt pressure to do so due to increased school and teacher accountability for student performance on state-mandated assessments, and due in part to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). This argument was also advanced by Jambor and Guddemi (1992) and Pellegrini (1995) who identified an argument school districts use to justify the reduction or elimination of recess: there is no time for recess because more instructional time is needed. The following participant comments highlighted the pressure to perform on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) test: “The only reason we were asked to decrease recess time is to allow more preparation time for the PSSAs,” “Our recess time decreased due to an increased focus on teaching the state academic standards in class to prepare students for success on the PSSA,” “Recess seems to be an endangered species, at one time it was central to education and now it is being pushed aside in favor of test preparation,” “Teachers are also experiencing the burden of reduced time for recess because less time on the playground means more time spent in the classroom,” “I am often put in the position of having to skip my afternoon recess unless all of my children had a great day and accomplished all of their learning activities.”
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Likewise, Pennsylvania school districts felt the pressure to reduce or eliminate daily recess time due to the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Participants highlighted this pressure by stating: “The No Child Left Behind Act has pretty much cut the time for all in school extra-curricular activities like recess in favor of more academic tasks,” “Since the passage of NCLB our school district is under pressure to promote academics ahead of other areas of child development,” “Recess in our school district is on the ropes due to the NCLB legislation,” “I find it hard to believe that even though there are plenty of studies and research proving recess is essential for learning, schools are being forced to eliminate recess time because of the NCLB Act,” “Since the passage of NCLB, recess has been taken out of our curriculum,” “The elimination of recess in our district stems from the panic of NCLB and the pressure administration is putting on our faculty and staff.”
Was the Decision to Decrease/Increase the Time Devoted to Recess in Your School Made Collectively or Unilaterally? Altogether, 93 percent of Pennsylvania school districts that reduced daily recess time, made the decision to do so unilaterally, without input from the teachers or parents. Only 7 percent of school districts involved other stakeholders in the decision to reduce daily recess time. Do you Believe Eliminating/Reducing Time for Recess is a Mistake? All of the participants viewed the elimination or reduction of time devoted to daily recess as a mistake to be avoided. This universal consensus, we recognize, may reflect a degree of questionnaire bias, in that interviewees did not have the reply option to say that eliminating recess was beneficial. Still, there were extensive reasons suggested describing the harmful effects of reducing or eliminating recess, as discussed further below. Do You Believe Eliminating/Reducing Time for Recess Will Have Negative Implications for Children? Fully 100 percent of the participants believed that eliminating or reducing time for daily recess would have negative implications for children. A summary of the negative implications provided by teachers included: “Lacking social interactions possibly leading to personality disorders.” “Lacking the proper social skills to get along with others.”
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“Becoming antsy and being unable to concentrate.” “Lowering the self-esteem of children who are non-academic.” “Decreasing classroom energy and enthusiasm for learning.” “Becoming bored and just going through the motions.” “Reducing the quality of student work.” “Becoming academically burned-out.” “Impacting the development of the whole child.” “Increasing problem behaviors in the classroom.”
All of the negative implications of eliminating recess identified by participants correspond to outcomes associated with not having daily recess, identified in the research literature. Do you Believe Eliminating/Reducing Time for Recess is Based Upon Solid Research? Among those interviewed, 97 percent of the participants did not believe eliminating or reducing daily recess time was based upon solid research, but rather due to pressure demanding increased school and teacher accountability for student academic performance. A sample of teacher responses summarizing this notion include: “I have not found any research that shows how eliminating recess correlates to improving our test scores,” “It’s amazing how adults are manipulating other adults to believe something is true when there is little to no research supporting the elimination of recess,” “It is more like scare tactics. In order to meet adequate yearly progress goals, schools are forced to increase instructional time and decrease non-instructional time,” “The people making policies affecting classroom practice and causing us to decrease recess time are not connected to the classroom and do not have a clue as to how drastically eliminating recess is hurting children,” “I don’t see how it could be, because children learn a great deal at recess.”
The political nature of eliminating or reducing daily recess time is explored in the next section. Do You Believe Eliminating/Reducing Time for Recess is Politically Motivated? Altogether, 92 percent of the participants believed eliminating or reducing daily recess time was politically motivated. This political pressure was exerted by the federal No Child Left Behind Act and its call for greater school
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and teacher accountability for student academic performance (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Participants exhibited strong beliefs about the shortsightedness of a philosophy that deemphasized daily recess time: “I believe NCLB has many falsehoods that have been sold to the public by the media through politicians,” “The elimination of recess is politically motivated and driven by intense competition as schools reach for the title of best district with the highest test scores,” “Absolutely, NCLB may sound good on paper to our politicians, but very few of them have ever taught,” “Sure, even real estate firms tout the school districts with the highest test scores as the most attractive places to live,” “Yes, it is definitely political when policies are made based upon scores from one test.”
IMPLICATIONS & DISCUSSION Emerging from this research project are several implications for teachers and schools. Advocate for Recess at the Local, State, and National Level An overwhelming 98 percent of the participants believed recess was a necessary part of the school day as it contributed to the overall well-being and development of their children. However, many of them felt powerless to turn the tide on the recent trend to reduce daily recess time in favor of increased time for academic activities. School administrators and teachers alike face mounting pressures from federal and state policies demanding increased teacher and school accountability for student performance on standardized achievement tests leaving little time or energy for non-instructional tasks. Many families and communities across the United States concerned about the elimination of daily recess enacted a grass-roots movement to reclaim recess as a regular part of the elementary school day. Altogether, 97 percent of parents in a national survey advocated guarding the right of recess for their children (cited in Cromwell, 1998). Many states have yet to see results. According to Johnson (1998), “School districts in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and New Jersey are opting to eliminate recess, even to the point of building new schools in their districts without playgrounds” (p. A1). However, advocacy efforts in Michigan, Virginia, and Connecticut have resulted in state-
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wide mandated recess (State of Connecticut, 2004; State of Michigan, 2000; State of Virginia, 2000). When individuals and organizations committed to a cause join forces, advocacy efforts gain momentum and strength. There are many existing resources to support those who advocate the necessity of play as a vital part of the elementary school day. For example, The American Association for the Child’s Right to Play maintains a Web site (www.IPAUSA.org) complete with timely research touting the benefits of play, links to various organization’s position statements, lists of “recess advocates” by state, and “recess news” from across the United States. In response to current trends to limit or eliminate recess from the daily landscape of elementary schools, many national organizations have issued position statements highlighting the benefits of recess to the development of the whole child (National Association for Sport and Physical Education, 2001; National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1997; National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education, 2002; The Association for Childhood Education International, 2004). The responsibility for all early childhood professionals to advocate for daily recess in the lives of all children is highlighted in the preface of AECI’s position statement on play titled: Play: Essential for All Children (Isenberg & Quisenberry, 2004): Children are growing up in a rapidly changing world characterized by dramatic shifts in what all children are expected to know and be able to do. Higher and tougher standards of learning for all populations of students are focusing on a narrow view of learning. Consequently, students have less time and opportunity to play than did children of previous generations. Few would disagree that the primary goal of education is student learning and that all educators, families, and policymakers bear the responsibility of making learning accessible to all children. Decades of research has documented that play has a crucial role in the optimal growth, learning, and development of children from infancy through adolescence. Yet, this need is being challenged, and so children’s right to play must be defended by all adults, especially educators and parents. The time has come to advocate strongly in support of play for all children.
Document the Positive Outcomes Associated with Recess In a similar vein, 98 percent of the participants believed that recess contributed to the development of the whole child, while 97 percent found the elimination/reduction of daily recess time was not based upon solid research. Both findings suggest that participants have a wealth of knowledge grounded in research concerning the positive outcomes associated with offering children
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time to engage in daily recess. Teachers need to share this knowledge with parents, colleagues, principals, superintendents, school board members, and policy makers to prevent the elimination of recess based upon current political motivations. Initiate Public Discourse Concerning Recess All of the participants believed reducing or eliminating daily recess time was a mistake which held negative implications for children. Such a finding suggested that the participants held strong feelings about the importance of recess in each of their school districts. Yet, when decisions affecting the amount of time devoted to daily recess were made, only 7 percent of the participants had a voice. In 93 percent of the Pennsylvania school districts that reduced daily recess time, the decision to do so was made unilaterally, with no input from community members, parents, or teachers. Any school decision affecting such a large number of children and families should be debated in an open forum with opportunities for all sides to share their positions before a final decision is made. Such a forum would bring the issue out into the light of day, validate the feelings of all of the stakeholders, and apply some political pressure to those making the final decision. Hold Public Officials Accountable for Policies That Impinge upon Daily Recess Among those interviewed, 92 percent believed the movement to reduce or eliminate daily recess time was politically motivated and due in part to various aspects of the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Teachers participating in the study expressed displeasure with politicians who enacted policies viewed as detrimental to the overall development of children. One teacher highlighted this displeasure saying, “If President Bush sat in my classroom for one day and observed how the children reacted to school without recess then he might have a different view of appropriate amounts of instructional time.” Teachers can endorse candidates for local, state, and national public office that support a balanced approach to educational reform holding high academic standards, but also including recess as a vital part of the school day. Final Remarks The primary impetus for this research project was exploring teacher and administrator perceptions concerning the importance of daily recess in Penn-
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sylvania elementary schools, during a time of heightened teacher and school accountability. The results suggest a chasm or disconnect between the positive attitudes and beliefs held by the participants concerning recess and the dwindling amounts of time devoted to recess in some of the Pennsylvania elementary schools. Those who believe recess to be a frivolous activity, and schools to be places where children are prepared for adult life and professional careers, undervalue the importance of recess on the development of the whole child. Interview data from this study concur with my twelve years of elementary school teaching experience, testifying to the importance of providing children with daily, voluntary, unstructured time for recess.
REFERENCES American Association for the Child’s Right to Play. (2004). Recess news. Retrieved from www.ipausa.org/recess.htm Bogden, J. F. & Vega-Matos, C. A. (2000). Fit, healthy, and ready to learn: A school health policy guide. Part I: Physical activity, healthy eating, and tobacco-use prevention. Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Boards of Education. Brink, S. (1995). Smart moves: New research suggests that folks from 8 to 90 can shape up their brains with aerobic exercise. U.S. News & World Report: May 15, pp. 76-84. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2004). Prevalence of overweight among children and adolescents: United States, 1999-2000. Clements, R. & Jarrett, O. S. (2000). Elementary school recess: Then and now. National Association of Elementary School Principals, 18(4), 1-4. Cromwell, S. (1998). Should schools take a break from recess? Education World. Retrieved from www.educationworld.org/a_issues/issues042.shtml Evans, J., & Pellegrini, A. (1997). Surplus energy theory: An enduring but inadequate justification for school break-time. Educational Review, 49(3), 229-336. (ERIC Journal No. EJ556417) Healy, J. M. (1998). Failure to connect: How computers affect our children’s minds – for better and worse. New York: Simon and Schuster. Healy, J. M. (1990). Endangered minds: Why our children don’t think. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jambor, T. (1999). Recess and social development. Retrieved from www.early childhood.com/Articles/index.cfm?FuseAction=Article&A=39. Jambor, T. (1994). School recess and social development. Dimensions of Early Childhood, 23(1), 17-20. Jambor, T. & Guddemi, M. (1992). Can our children play? In M. Guddemi & T. Jambor (Eds.). A right to play: Proceedings of the American affiliate of the international association for the child’s right to play. Little Rock, AR: Southern Early Childhood Association, pp. 3-5.
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Jarrett, O. S. & Maxwell, D. M. (2000). What research says about the need for recess. In R. Clements (Ed.), Elementary school recess: Selected readings, games, and activities for teachers and parents. Lake Charles, LA: American Press, pp. 12-23. Jarrett, O. S., & Maxwell, D. M., Dickerson, C., Hoge, P., Davies, G., & Yetley, A. (1998). The impact of recess on classroom behavior: Group effects and individual differences. Journal of Educational Researcher, 92(2), 121-126. Jensen, E. (1998). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ERIC Document No. ED434950. Johnson, D. (1998, April 7). Many schools putting an end to child’s play. New York Times, pp. A1, A16. Isenberg, J. P. & Quisenberry, N. (2004). Play: Essential for all children. Retrieved from www.acei.org/playpaper.htm Kinoshita, H. (1987). Run for your brain’s life. Brainwork, 7(1), 8. Klein, R. & Armitage, R. (1979). Rhythms in human performance: 1 ½ hour oscillations in cognitive style. Science, 204(4399), 1326-27. Lewis, C. C. (1995). Educating hearts and minds: Reflections on Japanese preschool and elementary education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Martens, F. L. (1982). Daily physical education: A boon to Canadian elementary schools. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance 53(3), 55-58. National Association for Sport and Physical Education. (2001). Recess in elementary schools. Retrieved from www.aahperd.org/naspe/pdf_files/pos_papers/current_res .pdf National Association for the Education of Young Children. (1997). The value of school recess and outdoor play. Retrieved from www.naeyc.org/resources/ eyly/1998/08.pdf National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education. (2002). Recess and the importance of play. Retrieved from http://naecs.crc .uiuc.edu/position/recessplay.html Pellegrini, A. L. (1995). School recess and playground behavior: Educational & developmental roles. Albany: State University of New York Press. Pellegrini, A. L. (1992b). Kindergarten children’s social/cognitive status as a predictor of first-grade success. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 7(4), 565-77. Pellegrini, A. L. & Davis, P. (1993). Relationships between children’s playground and classroom behavior. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 63 (1), 88-95. Pellegrini, A. L. & Smith, P. K. (1993). School recess: Implications for education and development. Review of Educational Research, 63(1), 51-67. Rivkin, M. S. (2001). Problem solving through outdoor play. Scholastic Early Childhood Today, 15(7), 36-43. Rogers, C. S. & Sawyers, J. K. (1988). Play in the lives of children. Washington, DC: The National Association for the Education of Young Children. Rossi, E. L. & Nimmons, D. (1991). The 20-minute break: The new science of ultradian rhythms. Los Angeles: Tarcher. Skrupskelis, A. (2000). A historical trend to eliminate recess. In Clements, R.L. (Ed.). Elementary school recess: Selected readings, games, and activities for teachers and parents. USA: American Press, pp. 124-126.
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Smith, P., & Hagan, T. (1980). Effects of deprivation of exercise play in nursery school children, Animal Behaviour, 28, 922-928. Sponseller, D. (Ed). (1974). Play as a learning medium. Washington D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children. State of Connecticut: General Assembly. (2004). Raised Bill No. 5344: An act concerning childhood nutrition in schools, recess, and lunch breaks. Retrieved from www.cga.state.ct.us/2004/TOB/h/pdf/2004HB05344-R00-HB.pdf State of Michigan: State Board of Education. (2000). Policies for creating effective learning environments. Retrieved from www.michigan.gov/documents/bdpolicy 001214_16470_7.pdf State of Virginia. (2000). 8VAC20-131-80. Instructional program in elementary schools. Virginia Register, 16(25) The Association for Childhood Education International (2004). (Online at http:// www.acei.org/) U.S. Department of Education. (2002). Executive Summary of the No Child Left Behind Act. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/print/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm .html U.S. Department of Labor. (2006). Minimum Paid Rest Period Under State Law for Adult Employees. Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/esa/programs/whd/state/ rest.htm Waite-Stupiansky, S. & Findlay, M. (2001). The fourth R: Recess and its link to learning. The Educational Forum, 66, 16-25. Zwillich, T. (2001). Brain scan technology poised to play policy. Retrieved from http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/MEDIA/RH/rh.html
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The Toy Bag: An Examination of Its History and Use in Early Intervention for Infants and Toddlers with Special Needs Eva Nwokah BACKGROUND The use of toys as an integral and essential part of therapy for young children with delay and disabilities has stimulated published resources that describe or advertise toys suitable for early intervention. Such resources show how toys may be used in both assessment and treatment (Schwartz, 2004). How toys are altered, adapted or used depends on the child and the nature of the disability or disorder. Toys may help infants with special needs “tune in”, “reach out”, “make discoveries”, or increase “sensory awareness” (Segal, 1988). Some toys may be adapted for children with physical or visual challenges, for instance, through the use of activation switches, modified knobs and handles, or securing a toy to a stationary surface (Musselwhite, 1986). Early intervention services to children aged 0-3 years support the child and the family in enhancing the child’s skill development. Intervention builds on the child’s strengths and improves those developmental domains (such as communication or locomotion) to help the child reach full potential. As early intervention services became federally mandated to be provided in the child’s familiar or “natural environment,” professionals typically carried toys and materials in a “toy bag” to a home or day-care. The theoretical rationale for the role of toys as part of play in early intervention, the history of this aspect of the material culture of early intervention, and the changed focus of early intervention services related to the use of toys are the topic of this article.
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RATIONALE The rationale for early intervention is that the plasticity of the human brain and the critical periods for learning at this age make it possible to impact developmental trajectories, by supporting change, compensating for deficits, and optimizing learning. Early intervention can lessen the impact of many biological and environmental risks and disorders (Sameroff, 1993). Early intervention personnel, also termed “providers” (of early intervention services) include, for example, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speechlanguage pathologists, dieticians, audiologists, special education teachers, psychologists, vision specialists, teachers of the deaf, and developmental therapists or rehabilitation specialists. Nearly all these providers include the use of toys and play settings and/or consultation on toys and play as part of their early intervention with young children. From infancy through early childhood, children learn and develop primarily through play (Klass, 2003). Toys form part of the manipulation and adaptation of play activity, play space and play materials to enhance the child’s learning opportunities (Rodger & Zivianni, 1999). Riddick (1982) argued that “Because play is such an integral part of a child’s development it should be taken seriously and not treated as something frivolous and irrelevant to the real business of learning.” Gonzales-Mena & Widmeyer Eyer (1993) also stress that “a main component of any infant or toddler program should be play.” A common view of the critical features of play is that play is pleasurable and enjoyable, has no extrinsic goals, is spontaneous and voluntary and involves some active engagement (Garvey, 1977). Because play has been linked with cognitive skills, creativity, social development, and language development, its role in many assessment tools and remedial intervention approaches and curricula is prominent (Gonzales-Mena & Widmeyer Eyer, 1993).
HISTORY In the 1600s-1700s the English philosopher John Locke’s writings on educating the young child were pivotal in the view that toys and play could be used to educate children. He produced a set of letter blocks for teaching the alphabet (Almquist 1994; Sutton-Smith, 1986). In the early 1800s a German educator Froebel set up the first kindergarten and emphasized a link between playthings and the child’s development. Other influences related to toys and playthings as support for child development have included: Montessori, who designed educational toys in the 1920’s and Vygotsky, who devised theories
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based on work with children with intellectual disabilities in the 1920s and 1930s (Lambert & Clyde, 2003). In the 1940s, Piaget’s writings (Piaget, 1962) led to a change in the content of child-care manuals for parents, which previously focused on topics such as feeding. Following the impact of Piaget’s work, parents were advised to “stimulate” thinking and problem solving in their young children through recommended forms of play. Still, play has limitations that have since been acknowledged, as applicable to toys. Riddick (1982) argued that, theoretically, toys are not necessary for a child to play and that many substitutes could be found. Based on her observational experience as a psychologist who ran the first professionally staffed toy library in the UK, she noted that it was not so much the toy itself but the way it was presented to the child by the adult and how the child was helped in playing with it that was important. Sutton-Smith (1986) rightly argued that toys typically are introduced by parents for the purpose of children being able to play alone and amuse themselves and that play with toys is a largely nonsocial, solitary activity in small nuclear families within Western culture. He listed the types of toys that are largely for social use versus solitary use for different ages. Certainly, most parents do not want to play with their children all the time and after initially introducing them to the toy and if necessary, showing them how it works, toys then give the children something to do on their own. Based on this perspective on toys, why would toys have any purpose in therapeutic intervention?
TOY USE IN THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION Toys are used in therapeutic intervention within the context of social interaction and adult direction and support. Such object play may be used to address sensory, perceptual, motor, cognitive and communicative goals. Pierce (1997) has presented detailed case-based examples of the power of object play in meeting such goals. She noted that the simplest use of object play in intervention is as “a therapy lure.” In this case a toy is used to motivate the child to participate in another activity. Examples would be placing a toy out of reach to have the child try to crawl towards it when the primary goal is to encourage the child to crawl. If a child had limited use of the left arm or hand, for example, placing a toy on the left side could motivate using that arm or hand to reach out. In speech therapy, toys are frequently used as “communication temptations,” when children need to communicate to request a toy (Wetherby & Rodriguez, 1992). Toys may be used to enhance and improve spatial negotiation; temporal awareness and sequencing; social object play; touch perception; balance and visual processing; auditory perception and
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discrimination between sounds; physical strength, endurance and coordination; physical stability and movement; and object contact and manipulation (Pierce, 1997). To aid in acquiring the skill of holding an object while walking, for example, a physical therapist might give a child a large soft toy to carry while he/she toddles across the room. Pushing down the lid on a pop-up toy might help increase the strength of muscles in the hand. Some intervention includes showing and teaching parents how to play with their child with toys based on the view that children benefit from parent-child interaction and many parents may not know how to play with toys with their children. Rodger and Zivianni (1999) mentioned this aspect of intervention that involves helping the parent learn to “play” with a child who may not play in a typical way or show any interest in playing with objects. One example of such intervention is Klein’s (2003) description of a three-year-old child in Israel with language delay and sensory integrative dysfunction whose father could not engage her with a basket of toys. Practitioners used videotapes of the caregivers’ interactions with the child to change their style of interaction. The caregivers were coached, for example, to avoid fragmented stimulation and an over-didactic approach in their language but rather to follow the child’s lead, choosing objects she selected, increasing her duration of attention and providing her with the words and emotional cues related to the object or event. Klein observed that this intervention (MISC- Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers) resulted in increased social engagement and language skills and an improved level of play. Schwartz (2004) emphasizes how playing with toys can help children with language delay. Working with parents related to play may involve addressing problems such as “the parent did not understand the importance of play and did not provide materials appropriate for the infant’s skill level; the infant showed no interest in play with objects; or the infant did not initiate play with materials and was mostly a passive observer” (Bromwich, 1981). Goldberger (1984) has discussed the use of toys with hospitalized children and states that for this group of children “toys without the warmth of human interaction are likely to carry little usefulness.” She distinguished between play that is “therapeutic” versus “haphazardly recreational,” and that children in intensive care, for example, are unlikely to interact with a toy without an adult participant present. A number of researchers have proposed a bidirectional view of parents and infants in play where the infant is an active participant. This theoretical consideration can be found in the work of Bruner (1975), Stern (1985), and Fogel (1993) who show that in the play between caregiver and child (with or without objects), there is on ongoing exchange of behaviors that show a sharing and mutual influence in both communication and emotional expression. Fogel (1993) describes in detail how an object is transferred from the
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mother’s hand to the child’s hand in a co-regulated activity where the change happens by a combination of simultaneously occurring behaviors. The active involvement of both partners is then crucial for the optimal framing of reciprocal communicative and play interaction. Yarrow, Rubenstein and Pedersen (1975) found that the development of cognitive skills was related to the infant’s play with responsive mothers with responsive toys. In therapeutic intervention (Rodger & Zivianni, 1999), toys may be introduced as educational materials provided by the therapist, or the intervention may utilize the toys children already own, or those which children create from objects in their environment. One way of modelling how to play with a toy for a child with limited play skills might be for the adult and child to have identical toys and the adult demonstrates appropriate play such as pushing a small car. When novel toys are used to gain the child’s attention and visual regard towards the adult, the toy may be held near the adult’s face to encourage direct eye contact. Encouraging the use of toys in play clearly may require varying degrees of physical and/or verbal support by the adult. Such support is consistent with Bruner’s (1975) notion of “scaffolding” which derived from Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development and the view that children could accomplish a task with adult help (Vygotsky, 1978). “Scaffolding” has come to refer to physical and verbal support with the elements of a task so that the child is able to achieve and succeed in a task that would otherwise prove too difficult. The adult gradually reduces the support as the child masters the task. The aim would be for the child to eventually perform on his/her own (Lambert & Clyde, 2003). Scaffolding is a strategy used frequently in early intervention services even though it is not a term commonly used in professional terminology. The therapist may “scaffold” a child’s play with toys physically, with some hand-over-hand support, or hold a toy so the child can manipulate it more easily. The therapist may “scaffold” by verbally creating a conversational framework in pretend play that guides what a toy says or does (e.g., “The dog goes . . . . . . ”; “Dora says. . . ..”). The use of playthings in intervention involves mutual participation and guidance between adult and child. This means that social interaction is instrumental when toys are used therapeutically. The implied activity is not solitary on the child’s part.
EARLY INTERVENTION IN “NATURAL” ENVIRONMENTS The 1997 amendment of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education ActPublic Law 105-17) stated that
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To the maximum extent appropriate to the needs of the child, early intervention services must be provided in natural environments including the home and community settings in which children without disabilities participate. Natural environments means settings that are natural or normal for the child’s age peers who have no disabilities.
In order to meet these requirements, therapists traveled by car (or plane!) to visit young children wherever they typically lived or stayed such as their home, a neighbor’s house, a family daycare or a local day-care center. At first therapy in “natural environments” was taken to refer to the same services presented in the same way as at the clinic or early intervention site, but delivered instead at home or daycare. As an expanded definition of the concept of natural environment developed, it included any setting or situation that was part of the child’s life. Therapists were encouraged to meet the family and conduct sessions at a local park, library, or even McDonalds. The time of the visit was also meant to be adapted to the family’s needs as much as possible, extending to evening visits, if the parents were working during the day and wanted to be present during a session. As therapists traveled to homes, day care centers and public arenas, they packed up the materials previously used at the clinic, or purchased toys and transported “toy bags” to the child’s home or day care. The toy bag thus emerged as a common tool for intervention service delivery in natural environments. The ‘toy bag” could be a case, box, plastic container, tub, cart, or several bags but was typically a large plastic or canvas bag with or without a zipper that could carry all the items needed for a one hour visit with the child client. When traveling to the homes or day cares of 5-6 children a day, the therapist’s vehicle would be loaded with a bag for each child or a few bags to be used for all children and disinfected between sessions. The “toy bag” had many advantages in that therapists were able to preplan a session with a child. They might use a theme-based approach such as a book, puzzle, stickers, puppets and vehicles around the theme of fire trucks and fire fighters. The novelty of looking forward to the visit and exploring items brought by the therapist motivated the child and supported attention to the therapist. Many parents looked forward to the therapist coming to also learn ideas about suitable toys to buy and activities and therapeutic approaches related to such items. An unintended consequence of the use of toy bags in home and day care based settings occurred when some families expressed disappointment with therapists who brought very old toys or no toys at all. Parental expectations would sometimes provoke families to request a different therapist, based on attention to material rather than content issues. Information about creating a toy bag can be found in many publications, and seems to be promoted by some writers. For example, Klass (1996) argues that in order to give a family total focus, home visitors should prepare and
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organize all their materials prior to the visit. She suggests these materials might include individual family folders, parent handouts and toys that would be suitable for children of different developmental levels. Wasik and Bryant (2001) also emphasize the importance of preparation of materials prior to home visits and include toys, books, and items that the home visitor makes. On the other hand, a home visitor mentioned by Klass gave reasons for using the child’s own toys. These reasons are first, to introduce innovations on what the child does with his/her toy that might not have occurred to the parent. Second, use of the child’s own toys helps the family feel that they made good choices in what they purchased for their child. In cases when the child has no toys, household objects could be suggested as playthings to the parents. Parent involvement in early intervention sessions was initially seen as simply ensuring that the parent was engaged in the play and the session. In the 1980s this changed (Harbin, McWilliam and Tocci,1998). Dunst (1985) and others suggested an expanded view of engagement. Parent involvement came to mean the purposeful establishment of relationships with families that aimed at empowering parents to take initiative, make decisions about the course of intervention, and build their confidence and competence about their child’s learning (Bruder, 2000). As therapists embraced the concept of family empowerment, the practice of bringing toys into the home – which had not been selected by the parent, may not have been within the family’s budget, and may have provoked distress when removed from the children at the end of the session – declined, since it seemed inconsistent with the goal of family empowerment. Within natural environments, the use of the “toy bag” is currently seen by many professionals in the early intervention field as an antiquated notion of therapy that does not reflect current views of best practice. An older, outmoded model of early intervention is one in which McWilliam (1999, 2004) argues that “the toy bag set the agenda,” the home visitor worked with the child, and the involvement of the family was often negligible or non-existent. This traditional approach meant showing up at the home with a toy bag and a list of developmental skills which had been selected by the therapist as needing work. In this case the focus was on how the child functioned related to different developmental skills and activities (McWilliam & Scott, 2001). Toy bag treatment sessions are described as “decontextualized interventions that do not promote functional skill use and learning in everyday settings” (Shelden & Rush, 2006). Still, this outright condemnation of the toy bag does not reflect on the reality of past toy bag use. Admittedly, the toy bag was sometimes the total focus of a session. But while there were therapists, especially those with less experience with home-based intervention who would “teach to the toy bag,” this was not the whole story. Use of the toy bag
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varied extensively from one therapist to another and one child and family to another. The shift from a medical, child-focused model to a family focused and family driven model that includes parent-child interaction represents a new era in best practice (Baird & Peterson, 1997). As training in newer approaches to early intervention, that do not support carrying a bag of toys into the home, continues to expand from one state to another and information is disseminated and taught through various training programs, there is no doubt that the use of the “toy bag” as a common practice will continue to be re-evaluated and that the “toy bag” will eventually become extinct. However, even with these changes there are many valid ways of incorporating the use of toys into various service delivery approaches. Most children live within a community and a family. Each community and family has different perceptions and needs in terms of what might benefit them and their child. Families’ views about the importance and use of toys and their role in the child’s life will also vary. Five underlying components are characteristic of providers who practice family-centered services effectively: positiveness, responsiveness, orientation to the whole family, friendliness, and sensitivity (McWilliam, Tocci, & Harbin, 1998). These qualities can be found in many providers who still use a toy bag as part of their intervention. Most speech-language pathologists, for example, are trained to consider the use of routines in planning intervention (Sussman, 1999), as in “R.O.C. K. in your routines” in the Hanen materials. The Hanen approach “encourages caregivers to integrate language learning into day to day routines, and to recognize opportunities for increasing language in everyday activities” such as feeding a pet, visiting a store or washing dishes. R.O.C.K strategies are: R-repeat what you say and do, O-offer opportunities for your child to take a turn, C-cue your child to take his turn, and K- Keep it fun! Keep it going! However, the Hanen approach is primarily a parent training approach in contrast to a consulting or collaborative approach (Kashinath, Woods, & Goldstein, 2004; Hanft, Rush, & Shelden 2004). Many therapists use triadic or group interaction with parent, child, sibling(s), and therapists together, practicing word games, songs, crafts, book-sharing, and household play that consists of activities in which the family normally engages (such as making pudding or cookies) or can repeat together between sessions. Toys and other materials are frequently lent or given to families. McBride and Peterson (1997) conducted an observational study of 160 early intervention providers in Iowa in 1993-1994. They found that almost half of the time (45%) the providers were in joint triadic interaction with the parent or another professional and the child, and 26% of the time, they interacted as a dyad with the child. It is clear that the parent or caregiver was not only
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present but that provider and parent communicated with each other for a large part of a session.
THE ROLE OF THE TOY-BAG IN CHILD-CENTERED VS. FAMILY-CENTERED MODELS Dunst (2000) divides the various models of early intervention into old models (treatment expertise, deficit-based, service-based and professionally centered models) and new models (family-centered, empowerment model, strengthbased models, and resource-based models). According to Dunst, moving to a family-centered approach involved a change in philosophy and principles. He argues that although the new philosophy and principles have been widely accepted, changes in practices are still ongoing and in progress. The importance of a family-centered approach for enabling the self-sufficiency and self-esteem of families is part of a relationship-based model that has been presented for many years by many professionals in the early intervention field (Trout & Foley, 1994). One family-centered approach is that of McWilliam (1992,1999, 2004) who has advanced the use of RBI (routines-based intervention) for young children. The RBI model is now widely used in many states. This approach places an emphasis on involving the family in planning and discussing how steps towards particular goals for a child can be incorporated into the daily routines of a child (waking up, dressing, cleaning teeth, having breakfast) (McWilliam & Scott 2001). One rationale for using this approach is that it vastly increases the number of learning opportunities and practice opportunities beyond a weekly “therapy” session. By involving the family in supporting their needs and daily planning, this emparts empowerment and confidence in their role in helping their child. In interventions where the family is involved in planning and decision making, the impact and parent satisfaction is reported to be much higher. Other models such as the FGRBI (Family Guided Routines Based Intervention) (Kashinath, Woods, & Goldstein, 2004; and Woods, Kashinath, & Goldstein, 2004) present similar methods for working with children with specific challenges such as autism. Based on the requirements connected to “new models” of early intervention, “overcoming” the use of toybags has been the focus of projects such as FACETS (Family-Guided Approaches to Collaborative Early-Intervention Training and Services), a joint project of Kansas University Affiliated Program and Valdosta State University. “Ten Step Program to Decrease Toy Bag Dependence.”1 is the actual title of a FACETS publication. This publication directs early intervention personnel to identify materials and toys available in
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the home or other setting, and plan ahead for the next visit to incorporate these items into activities. Other strategies include planning a special activity such as at a park or a play date with other children and caregivers/parents instead of having a visit centered on the bag of toys. Another example of a strategy is to gradually decrease the size of the bag and only include one or two toys in the bag. Following decreasing the size of the bag, the next step is to leave the toy bag at the door and join in the child’s activities, only producing the bag if needed or requested. The last step is to leave the bag in the car. Two other suggestions are to pretend to forget the toy bag (asking the child to suggest other activities) or to bring items like those the child already has (asking the child which one should they use and suggesting uses for his/hers). Another suggestion is taking an empty bag in which to put the child’s things.
IS THE TOY-BAG NOW EXTINCT? The use of the toy bag and a variety of different related practices in early intervention still exists in many parts of the country. There are numerous examples of descriptions of typical intervention for parents that refer to the toy bag, such as an excerpt from the Northwest Baby and Child Regional Newspaper (2006): The professionals work with the parent and child together, through activities that help stimulate and strengthen the baby’s skills. It usually looks more like play than work, as it should, for children learn best through play. Therapists often find themselves affectionately referred to as “the toy lady,” arriving at the child’s home each week with a bag full of interesting toys and activities, settling on the floor for a session of fun developmental play with parent and child together.2
Comments by parents on websites about how providers have helped their children contain similar descriptions such as R. (2002-2003) He has a wonderful personality, and loves to play. He would greet his therapists at the front door when they arrived. Holding on to their toy bag, he would walk them into the living room and then wait expectantly for the first toy to be brought out. R. preferred that ALL the toys be brought out immediately, which is typical, but that would not teach him the skills we wanted. One of his skills we were working on was to learn turn taking and to ask for more. In working with one object at a time we could better facilitate his learning.3
At the same time, however, there are some states or locations within states where intensive training at all levels of early intervention have resulted in no
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longer using toy bags. Toy rooms in centers that were previously used to store toys and accessed by providers have been converted into toy and assistive technology lending libraries.
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON PLAY AND TOY USE In early intervention when relying on materials in the child’s environment we are faced with the dilemma of the number of families living in poverty who have no toys or few suitable toys for their children, families in transition or homeless, and families for whom books are not present in the home. There are also cultural differences in views on play and toys, for example, the value of play, how vigorous or gentle the physical play should be, and what are suitable toys for children. There are cultural differences in families’ perspectives on parent-child interaction. In some cultures adults do not sit on the floor with children, may not address children directly until they learn to talk and when a child learns to talk may be less important than whether he is polite, listens well and follows directions. Subcultural differences within a culture may also exist that reflect religious, philosophical, and social class differences in attitudes and beliefs related to play and toys. Cultures vary in the amount that infants are allowed to explore, and the features and amount of social interaction (Fogel, 1993). The access to resources differs by culture; for example, water play with toys and objects where there is a dire water shortage would be regarded as wasting resources. There are many cultures where commercially made toys are unavailable or too expensive to buy. In such cultures, “toys” are made out of local materials by adults or children themselves or children have many pastimes such as pretend masquerading or games such as hopscotch in the sand that reduce the dependence on individualized toy play (Nwokah & Ikekeonwu, 1998). At the other extreme, in American culture children see toys through the media, in stores, at day care, and held by other children. Children in this consumer society are exposed to toys advertised on television, in books, magazines newspapers, often closely linked to popular characters and trends (Cross, 1997). Innovations quickly become widely disseminated (Fogel, 1993). Multicultural awareness and cultural sensitivity are strong components of much early intervention training (Catlet, Winton & Hamel, 2004). Adaptations are usually made by providers related to obvious cultural mores regarding food, greetings, language (using interpreters), and respecting household customs such as removing shoes. Less obvious is that intervention practices are intrinsically linked to the assessment tools used to determine delay, disorder or disability. These tools are normed on Western populations or based
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on culturally expected ages of skill development that are biased (Chu, Lee, Leung and Wong, 2006). Nuanced training for providers on sub-cultural differences and cross-cultural differences regarding play and toys would support more understanding of differences in how families use playthings in interaction or in independent play.
CHALLENGES TO FAMILY INVOLVEMENT AND TOY USE Many of the children who receive early intervention services are from lower socio-economic households where toys may be scarce, broken, or age inappropriate. In some cases, families may have little interest in toys or present problems of resistance, disinterest, or other challenges (Shelden and Rush, 2001). It may be necessary to address emotional, health or material needs before or at the same time as other kinds of support using a social worker or case manager/service coordinator. Therapists who have difficulty discarding the toy bag might ask the question “How do we embed natural environment therapy practices into our therapy when children live in homes with virtually no toys or books?”(Shelden & Rush 2006). One approach is to discover how the child spends his time and what objects in the environment are used as play objects whether these are sticks, rocks, cooking utensils or similar. In other words, the provider is expected to support the family with what they have, where they are and using their priorities. If a family wants to obtain toys, the suggestion is that the provider help them to identify resources where they can obtain things for themselves such as garage sales, toy lending libraries, Goodwill stores etc. (Note that the lack of toys would then become a primary focus of the provider.) Another issue relates to what to do if the child watches TV all day, has broken toys, and the parent is unconcerned. The response to that issue is that watching TV and playing with broken toys can still be considered to provide learning opportunities. The responsibility of the provider is to use what is available to the family, a more sensitive approach than using toys from a toy bag. The objection to either bringing toys or giving toys to a family is based on the need to help the family have the capacity to find such resources themselves. Providers are cautioned not to use objects such as a therapy ball that are not typically found or used in homes and again represent decontextualized practice. From such programs as Early Head Start, it is well known that there is a distinction between ideal and impoverished environments. It is also known that some environments are optimal to support children’s learning for school readiness. Achieving balance between meeting the needs of the child, empowering
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the parents, and maintaining respect for cultural practices is more relevant that ever in discarding the practice of turning to the therapist’s own toys and materials.
THE FUTURE OF THE TOY BAG A shift to embedding therapeutic activities into the child’s daily routines as an alternative to bringing clinic toys and equipment into the home does raise a number of problem-solving situations for the provider such as those just mentioned. The challenge is to find innovative ways of appropriately utilizing and enhancing the material play culture of the home to enrich the child’s experiences, without the “toy bag.” The toy bag may evolve into an item that is on loan, donated, co-created by the family and therapist rather than originating as a “treatment bag.” Toy bags may continue to exist in other contexts. For example, some public libraries have a toy and book bag lending section. Surveys of early intervention providers show a large number who would prefer the return to a center-based approach where children and their families come to a key location for services. This is especially true for those providers who had the experience of working in centers before a change in policy mandated the provision of services in natural environments (Campbell & Halbert, 2002). Overburdened states (as recently occurred in North Carolina) have been forced to tighten service eligibility. Still, policies remain in place to serve children in natural environments, a situation unlikely to change.
CONCLUSIONS The toy bag is not yet extinct but precise information on best practice alternatives (that involve the child’s toys and other materials in the environment) needs further and continued dissemination. There are many alternatives to carrying toys into the home with or without a fixed accompanying plan and agenda. The paucity of research studies on actual practices in the use of toys and other objects in early intervention in different states suggests we still know little about this topic. Continued examination of evidence-based practices of service delivery models for children needs to include a deeper understanding of the role of material culture of toys and objects in providing those services. This would include information on how various playthings are used by providers and families with children of different developmental ages and disorders, to elicit or practice new developmental skills and/or increase person-object related
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interaction. Other studies might examine specific toys and how they are used, such as the responses of children to a particular toy in parent-child interaction or in solitary play. Continued systematic investigation of training methods and preferred practices in different settings with rural and urban populations and with different providers is needed. We also need to evaluate providers’ knowledge of culturally-sensitive practices in play-related activities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Portions of this paper were presented at the North Carolina Speech, Language and Hearing Association Conference, Raleigh, NC April 2007, and The Association for the Study of Play Conference, Brock University, St. Catherine’s Ontario, May 2006. Several colleagues and associates are gratefully acknowledged for contributing their ideas, resources and suggestions to the topics discussed in this paper. Particular thanks go to Hope Gulker, Assistant Clinical Professor, Purdue University, Indiana, Charese Motta Payne, Rehabilitation Specialist, Cheshire Center, Greensboro and Karyn Helms, Clinical Supervisor, Cheshire Center, Greensboro, North Carolina.
NOTES 1. Retrieved 5.20.07, from http://www.parsons.lsi.ku.edu/facets/pdf/10stepprogram .pdf 2. Retrieved 5.20.07, from www.nwbaby.com/archive/2002/april2002/3.html 3. Retrieved 5.20.07, from www.pediatricservices.com/caseriley03.htm
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Campbell, P. H. & Halbert, J. (2002) Between research and practice: Provider perspectives on early intervention. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 22, 4, 213-226. Catlet, C., Winton, P. M. & Hamel, S. E. (2004) Walking the walk. A guide to diversity resources for trainers. Chapel Hill, N.C.: FPG Child Development Institute. Chu, M. M., Lee, W. C., Leung, J. L. & Wong, V. (2006) Modified symbolic play test for Oriental children. Pediatrics International, 48 (6), 519-524. Cross, G. (1997) Kid’s stuff. Toys and the changing world of American childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dunst, C. J. (1985) Rethinking early intervention. Analysis And Intervention In Developmental Disabilities, 5, 165-201. Dunst, C. J. (2000) Revisiting “rethinking” early intervention. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 20 (2), 95-104. Fogel, A. (1993) Developing through relationships. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. Garvey, C. (1977) Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goldberger, J. (1984) The use of toys with hospitalized children. Children’s Environments Quarterly, 1, 3, 57-61. Gonzales-Mena, J. & Widmeyer Eyer, D. (1993) Play as curriculum (pp. 61-83) Infants, toddlers and caregivers. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Hanft, B., Rush, D. & Shelden, M. (2004) Coaching colleagues and families in early childhood intervention. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Harbin G., McWilliam, R. A. & Tocci, G. L. (1998) Family centered services: Service providers’ discourse and behavior. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 18, 4, 206-222. Kashinath S., Woods J., & Goldstein, H. (2004) More than modeling: consulting with families in natural environments. Presentation at American Speech Language Hearing Association Convention, Philadelphia. Klass, C. S. (1996) Home visiting. Promoting healthy parent and child development. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Klass, C. S. (2003) The home visitor’s guidebook. Second Edition. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Klein, P. (2003) Israel: A mediational approach to early intervention. In Odom, S. L., Hanson, M., Blackman, J. A., & Kaul, S. (Eds.) Early intervention practices around the world Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Lambert, E. B. & Clyde, M. (2003) Putting Vygotsky to the test. In D. E. Lytle (Ed.) Play and educational theory and practice (Play and Culture Studies vol 5, pp. 6098). Westport, CT: Praeger. McBride, S. L. & Peterson, C. A. (1997) Home-based early intervention with families of children with disabilities: Who is doing what? Topics In Early Childhood Special Education, 17, 2, 209-233. McWilliam, R. A. (1992) Family centered intervention planning. A routines-based approach. Tucson, AZ: Communication Skill Builders. McWilliam, R. A. (1999) Controversial practices: the need for a re-acculturation of early intervention fields. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 19, 189-193.
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McWilliam, R. A. (2004) A support framework for effective home visits. Keynote address presented at Kentucky Early Intervention Conference, Owensboro, KY, August. McWilliam, R. A. & Scott, S. (2001) A support approach to early intervention: A three-part framework. Infants and Young Children, 13, (4), 55-66. McWilliam, R. A., Tocci, L., & Harbin, G. L. (1998) Family-centered services: Service providers’ discourse and behavior. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 18, 206-221. Musselwhite, C. R. (1986) Adaptive play for special needs children. San Diego, CA: College Hill Press. Nwokah, E. & Ikekeonwu, C. (1998) A sociocultural comparison of Nigerian and American children’s games. In Duncan, M., Chick, G., and Aycock, A. (Eds.) Diversions and divergences in fields of play. (pp.59-76).Greenwich, CT: Ablex. Pierce, D. (1997) The power of object play for infants and toddlers at risk for developmental delays. In Parham, L. D. & Primeau, L. (Eds.) Play and occupational therapy.(pp.86-111). St. Louis: Mosby. Piaget, J. (1962) Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York; Norton Press. Riddick, B. (1982) Toys and play for the handicapped child. New York: Routledge. Rodger, S. & Zivianni, J. (1999) Play-based occupational therapy. International Journal of Disability, 46, 3, 337-365. Sameroff, A. J. (1993). Models of development and developmental risk. In C. H. Zeanah, Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of infant mental health (pp. 3-13). New York: Guilford Press. Schwartz, S. (2004) The new language of toys. Teaching communication skills to children with special needs. A guide for parents and teachers. (3rd Edition) Bethesda, MD: Woodbine House. Segal, M. (1988) In time and with love. Caring for the special needs baby. New York. NY: Newmarket Press. Shelden, M. & Rush, D. (2001) The ten common myths about providing earlyintervention services in natural environments. Infants and young children, 14, 1, 1-13. Shelden, M. & Rush, D. (2006) www.coachinginearlychildhood.org Stern, D. N. (1985) The interpersonal world of the infant. New York: Basic Books. Sussman, F. (1999) More than words: Helping parents promote communication and social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: The Hanen Center. Sutton-Smith, B. (1986) Toys as culture. New York: Gardner Press. Trout, M. & Foley, G. (1994) Working with families of handicapped infants and toddlers. In K. G. Butler (Ed.) Early intervention II. Working with parents and families. pp. 177-187. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind and society. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press Wasik, B. H. & Bryant, D. M. (2001) Home visiting. Procedures for helping families. Second Edition. London: Sage. Wetherby, A. & Rodriguez, G. P. (1992) Measurement of communicative intentions in normally developing children during structured and unstructured contexts. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 130-138.
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Contributors
Cindy Dell Clark has taught about and studied children’s health, play and cultural participation, most recently at Penn State University (Brandywine). Her many writings include two child-centered ethnographies, Flights of Fancy, Leaps of Faith: Children’s Myths in Contemporary America (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and In Sickness and In Play: Children Coping with Chronic Illness (Rutgers University Press, 2003). She also conducts child-centered qualitative research in applied settings. E-mail:
[email protected] Julie Dunn is a Senior Lecturer within the Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia where she works with undergraduate and post-graduate students in Applied Theatre and Drama Education. Her research work is focused on play and drama in real and virtual worlds. Julie has a number of key publications in the drama field including the award winning “Pretending to Learn” (co-authored with John O’Toole) which has been translated for use in European and Asian contexts. Address: School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane. 4111 Telephone: +61-7-3735-5720 E-mail: j.dunn@griffith .edu.au June Factor is a writer, historian and folklorist, currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia. She has published widely in the field of children’s lore and language, and is co-editor of the online publication Play and Folklore, and co-founder of the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, now housed in Museum Victoria. Together with a number of colleagues, the National Library of Australia and 183
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Contributors
Museum Victoria, she is engaged in a four-year research study of children’s playlore in Australia, funded by the Australian Research Council. Address: Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Vic. 3010, Australia Telephone: 613 9499 6151 Email:
[email protected] Suzanne Gaskins received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is Professor of Psychology at Northeastern Illinois University. She studies the influence of cultural processes on children’s development through daily activites such as work and play and has studied Yucatec Maya children and their families in a rural village in Mexico for over 30 years. She has also studied children and their caregivers as informal learners in children’s museums. She has written many articles and chapters about culture, development, and learning, including a co-edited volume, Play and Development: Evolutionary, Sociocultural, and Functional Perspectives, Erlbaum, 2007. Address: Department of Psychology, NEIU, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave., Chicago, IL 60202 Telephone: 773-442-4903 Email: <mailto:
[email protected]>
[email protected] Artin Goncu is professor of Educational Psychology and Early Childhood Education in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology. His publications include Goncu, A., & Gaskins, S. (Eds.) (2007) Play and Development, LEA, and Goncu, A. (Ed.) (1999); Children’s Engagement In The World, Cambridge, and Goncu A., Klein, E. (Eds.) (2001). Children In Play, Story, And School,; Guilford. E-mail:
[email protected]. Robyn M. Holmes is Professor of Psychology at Monmouth University in New Jersey where she teaches courses in anthropology, child development, play, children’s folklore, and qualitative methods. Her most recent research has focused upon cheating during play and play during mealtime. She is the author of two books How Young Children Perceive Race and Fieldwork with Children and numerous articles and chapters on play. Address: Department of Psychology, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ 07764-1898; Telephone: (732) 571-3508; e-mail: rholmes@ monmouth.edu C.L. Li is affiliated with Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, in China.
Contributors
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Luo Lan is a freelance environmental educator and translator in Chengdu, China. Previously, she was an environmental educator at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Terry L. Maple is President/CEO of the Palm Beach Zoo and Elizabeth Smithgall Watts Professor of Conservation & Behavior at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jay Mechling is Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He teaches courses on children’s lives and men’s lives, and his book, On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, was published in 2001. Address: American Studies Program, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616 E-mail:
[email protected] Peggy J. Miller is Professor in the Department of Communication and the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught courses on theories of communication in context, ethnographic methods, and developmental cultural psychology and has published extensively on childhood socialization and everyday narrative. She was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2006-2007 and is a co-editor of the forthcoming Chicago Companion to the Child (University of Chicago Press.) Avigail Morris received her M.A. and Ph.D in anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University of the Negev respectively. Both degrees focused on the area of play and culture. In 1988 she developed a program for teaching anthropology in elementary schools and has been teaching anthropology to children on various levels ever since. She has taught several introductory courses in anthropology as well as a course on the Anthropology of Play, Games and Sports for undergraduates. At present she is also teaching at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and is the representative of Applied Anthropology for the Israeli Anthropological Association. Eva Nwokah is Associate Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has teaching and clinical experience in several countries including specialization in early intervention in Indiana and Texas. Her research interests and publications are
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Contributors
in typical and atypical play and communicative interaction in children, socialemotional development and models of early intervention service delivery. Address: 313 Ferguson Building, Dept. of Communication Sciences & Disorders, PO Box 26170, NC 27402-6170 Telephone: 336-334-4657 Email:
[email protected] Michael M. Patte is an Associate Professor of Education at Bloomsburg University. He teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in early childhood education, has published several articles advocating the importance of play in the lives of children, and has shared his research at various international and national conferences. In addition, he serves as the professional book review editor and board member at large for the Association for the Study of Play. Address: Bloomsburg University, 1107 McCormick Building,, 400 East Second Street, Bloomsburg, PA 17815-1301 Telephone: 570-389-4026 Email:<mailto:
[email protected]>
[email protected] Anthony Perone is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on a life-span approach to pretend play activity and the role of improvisation in formal learning environments and in teacher education. Jill K. Procaccino is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Educational Psychology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has recently co-authored two articles which will appear in forthcoming issues of Early Childhood Development and Care and The Journal of Sport Behavior. E-mail:
[email protected] R. Keith Sawyer is Associate Professor in Education at Washington University. He is the author of ten books and over 50 articles, including Pretend Play As Improvisation (Erlbaum, 1997) and, most recently, Group Genius: The Creative Power Of Collaboration (Basic Books, 2007). Please visit http:// www.keithsawyer.com for more information. Address: Department of Education, Campus Box 1183, St. Louis, MO 63130. Telephone: 314-935-8724, Email:
[email protected] Helen B. Schwartzman is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. She is a psychological anthropologist who specializes in the study of childhood development and play and the anthropology of work and organizations. Her publications include Transformations: The An-
Contributors
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thropology of Children’s Play, Play and Culture (editor), The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities, Ethnography in Organizations and Children and Anthropology: Perspectives for the 21st Century (editor). Rebecca J. Snyder is Curator of Carnivores at Zoo Atlanta, Vice Chair of the Giant Panda Species Survival Plan, and is adjunct faculty at Georgia State University. She has been studying giant pandas in captivity since 1997. Megan L. Wilson is an Assistant Curator of Carnivores at Zoo Atlanta. She has managed a variety of species in captivity, including invertebrates, fishes, birds, reptiles, and mammals, but her primary research focus has been the behavior of captive giant pandas. E-mail:
[email protected] Zhi Zhang is affiliated with Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, in China.
Index
Adults: neglect of child perspective, 135-36; role in child play, 125-26 Aggressive play: in bears, 105; in fraternity hazing, 49, 51-57; in panda cubs, 116-19 Autism (ASD) 86-89; and forms of play, 93-100 Bateson, Gregory, 3 censorship: of books, 139; of play, 136-39, 140-41; of hazing, 48-51, 58-59 Corsaro, Bill, 63 culture: hazing and, 46-48; play and, 1-4, 5-18
rope skipping, 134; spin the bottle, 133 Goffman, Erving, 53, 68 hazing, 45-59; opposition to, 48-51 homoeroticism, 47, 56 imaginary companion, 9 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 170-71 initiation of play, in pandas, 113 kindergarten, 148 laws, against hazing, 50 Life Is Beautiful (film), 142 Locke, John, 167
Dundes, Alan, 56 emotion, expressed in play, 9-18 European Americans: cultural background, 6-7; emotional trauma in, 13 family-centered intervention, 174 friendship, play and, 133-34 Games: elastics, 132; jacks (knucklebones), 132; marbles, 132;
Malawi, 142 Maya, Yucatec, 1-2, 5, 7-8, 10-18 men’s roles: in hazing, 47, 52-53 metacommunication, in dramatic play, 67-83 Montessori, Maria, 167 No Child Left Behind Act, 157-58 nudity, 47, 55-56 pandas, play in 64, 113-19 189
190
Index
Papua New Guinea, 4 parents, role in play, 7, 10, 14-15, 17, 117, 168, 169-70 Philippines, 4 Piaget, Jean, 63, 69, 88, 168 play therapy, 5, 11 playgrounds, 136 pretend play, 1-2, 9 recess: defined, 150; importance of, 150-53, 158-62; reduction in, 148, 157, 160 resilience, through play, 142 Rwanda, 142 scaffolding (of play), 64, 88, 89, 97, 170 speech therapy, 168, 169 street play, 136 subversion, through play, 134-35 Sutton-Smith, Brian, 53, 141, 168 termination of play, in pandas, 115
The Association for the Study of Play (TASP), vii, x Tonga, 2-3, 22-41 toy bag (therapeutic): demise of, 17276; use in therapy, 171-72 toys: in autism, 92, 95-99; in early intervention, 166-79; provided by family, 6-7, 14-15, 168 transactional process, play as, ix Trobriand Islands, 4 universality, of play, 125, 129-31 Vygotsky, Lev, 69, 89, 97, 130, 167-68, 170 women’s roles: in Tonga games, 25-41; in hazing, 58 Yugoslavia, 142 Zone of proximal development, 170
