Reconceptualising Children’s Play: Exploring the Connections Between Spaces, Practices and Emotional Moods

Abstract

Children play in all sorts of spaces and a close relationship exists between their emotions, the play spaces they inhabit and their play practices. In recent years descriptions of this relationship have been coloured by learning discourse. A large body of literature primarily sees children’s emotions, use of space and play practices as a source of learning and development (Valentine et al., 2004). Playgrounds have become learning spaces where children’s abilities are often viewed against a notion of the ‘normal’ child. Gagen (1998) describes the playground as a way of ‘getting hold of the children’, where they function as an ideal within a site of social control. This idea of play, drawing on a particular perception of what ‘play’ means, is chiefly based on a notion of ‘function’, which is to say that play is understood for its usefulness. As Sutton-Smith points out in The Ambiguity of Play (2001), this can dilute and trivialise understandings of the play activity. Rasmussen (2007) polemically asks whether spaces for children are defined as being orchestrated by adults or as organised by the children’s relationship to them and their emotional experiences of them. Focusing predominantly on a functional conceptualisation of play neglects the fact that children perform an essential role in making play happen, succeed and unfold. In other words, focusing solely on the function of play disregards the experiences of children (James et al., 1998).