The Playing Learning Child: Towards a pedagogy of early childhood.

This study is a theoretical article designed to examine the basis and nature of children's play and learning in kindergarten and the early school years. Then the study will elaborate on past years’ research on children's learning in kindergarten and compare this research with curricula in the early school years. Finally, the study intends to contribute with recommendations for sustainable future pedagogics that do not separate play from learning.

The study concludes that playing and learning can be integrated and used in the form of developmental pedagogy at daycare centres. The researchers emphasise that playing is not the same as learning and vice versa, but there are dimensions of playing in learning and dimensions of learning in playing that are important to include when working with the learning and development of young children. These include creativity, "pretend-play”, mindfulness and possibility thinking. The way the child carer organises the child's surroundings and experiences are crucial for children's learning opportunities. Therefore, the child carer must internalise the pedagogical teaching framework and use it constantly in his work, which entails seeing opportunities everywhere in the child's environment, contributing to a challenging and rich environment, and applying his knowledge to create situations, play environments and tasks where playing and learning are integrated. The child carer must be able understand the child's world and the focus should be on the process of communication and interaction between child and adult so that the child is challenged continually and encouraged to continue to make sense of the world. This necessitates that the child carer focuses simultaneously on the child and on the learning object.

The study is a review of existing research with a view to developing a developmental pedagogy theory.

Samuelsson, I. P. & Carlsson, M. A. (2008). The Playing Learning Child: Towards a pedagogy of early childhood: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 52 (6) S. 623-641.