By critiquing universal approaches to addressing children's play, this study aims to examine early childhood pre-service teachers' discourse on young children's play in a local context. With a multivocal ethnography, pre-service teachers in Myanmar, South Korea, and the United States participated in a project in which they created, exchanged, and discussed digital photo essays cross-culturally. The findings suggest the prevalence of dominant play discourse (i.e., western developmental psychology in children's play) in pre-service teachers' digital photo essays. However, the way participants interpret play varies depending on the local context and cultural values. Cross-cultural exchange on digital photo essays and further discussion enabled pre-service teachers to understand the complex interplay between global discourse and local experiences on the conceptualization of young children's play. We discuss the implications of encouraging pre-service teachers to promote culturally inclusive and contextually appropriate conceptualizations of children's play in various cultural settings.