The authors investigated the outdoor physical play of Norwegian first graders in after-school programs using a study that viewed play from the children's perspective. The authors identified three themes of the physically active play they observed--"playing with friends," "no one decides," and "I can do it." Their…

In this article, the author deploys Erving Goffman's concept of territories of the self as an analytical tool to understand the challenges and opportunities a childcare setting presents for children engaged in social fantasy play. He uses this concept to unpack the unique institutional play habitat of a childcare facility and shows how Goffman's…

The authors explore children's symbolic play that involves themes of fear and darkness, and they investigate the nature of children's binary oppositions, particularly between self and other. Their account is based on a year-long qualitative study they conducted with seven children, four to ten years of age. They observed the children engage with…

People, the author holds, instinctively believe quitting a game to be a simple choice: you are either playing or you are not. But she finds quitting play more complex. To understand better the whole ecosystem of play, she maps out the reasons Finnish players abandon or reduce their gaming and examines these reasons through the lens of specific…

The authors examined technological and traditional infant toys to understand the U.S. toy market facing today's care givers. They found significant differences in the two types of toys in terms of their developmental targets--with more traditional toys aimed at physical development and more technological toys aimed at cognitive development. Given…

The author argues that play always occurs within a social context and in relation to the various cultures that coexist within the classroom and the school setting. She uses Vygotsky's definition of play as dramatic or make-believe play for preschool children, and she applies Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian theories, including Daniil Elkonin's…

The author draws on Lev S. Vygotsky's conception of play and Gunilla Lindqvist's methodology concerning the aesthetics of play to discuss play practice in early childhood classrooms. Based on the study of an educational experiment at a primary school, she discusses how children in a school setting simultaneously engage in developed forms of…

The authors surveyed public libraries to learn about the opportunities for play they offered and children's freedom to engage in such play without adult supervision. The authors conclude that, in recent years, public libraries in the United States have increasingly created spaces and programs enabling free play for children and teens. These…

The authors consider play to be critical and intrinsic to healthy human life and development, and they argue that children's right to play should be supported by the environment in which they live. Their study seeks to understand what children do when they appear not to play during free play periods at early childhood education and care…

The author examines guided play among students in a South African classroom using a play-and-write workshop constructed by her and her students. She determines that the workshop displays the characteristics of playful learning, lies on the playful learning spectrum, and fits the criteria for guided play. She concludes that, given the benefits of…

The authors investigate the personality traits of parents and children and their significant influence on the behavior of the other. Using the HEXACO model of personality, the authors examine the behavior of one hundred parent-child dyads on a playground to understand broader parent-child relationships. Their analyses reveal two opposed types of…

Using interview data from six Black content creators for "The Sims 4" (2014), the authors consider the politics of representation and self-expression in computer games. Black content, the authors find, consists not merely of depictions of skin tones, but also of the diverse global cultures of Black lived lives and Black…

Drawing connections between anti-Black racism, surveillance, and the criminalization of Black bodies, and using an autoethnographic approach, the author discusses the effect of racism on Black play. She analyzes her personal encounters and the public accounts of others to illustrate how white supremacy uses scrutiny and its attendant actions by…

The popularity of "Pokémon GO" has been credited to its branding by the Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company Nintendo, the technological innovations of the game's developer Niantic, and the historical traditions of European avant-garde locative play. The author, instead, offers a different explanation that…

Investigating the potential of video games as an aid to community mapping and participatory architectural design, the author discusses the use of the sandbox game "Minecraft" by the Block by Block Foundation in collaboration with Mojang Studios, Microsoft, and UN-Habitat for three projects--Model Street (Dandora Phase 2, in Nairobi,…