Play Theory Tina Bruce.Link to practice

Theories Relating to Play and Playwork

Play is an important part of child development. Play provides children with natural opportunities to engage in concrete and meaningful activities that enhance physical, language, social and cognitive development. During play children increase their knowledge and understanding of self, others and physical word around them. While play children develop language skills. Children experiment with language during play and use words to express their thought and ideas. Children use language during play to solve problem and communicate their desires.

Playwork practitioner includes working with children aged from birth up to five years, no never professionals working in early childhood education and care of children. Playwork is driven by the belief that the game is very valuable, high factor in the development of the child. In practise, playworkers base their work on general principles and values such as: children right, enabling the children with a chance for growing up in health and safe conditions.

Tina Bruce (1997) talks about free-flow play are encourages imaginative play. First experience is crucial. Bruce using what is learnt and talk about how games help children understand external pressure. Free-flow play gives kids a strong signal and a message about what you need to do now and what will be needed.
While placement, a child asking to help make a paper plane. The child has clearly initiated the activity because without the child's idea wouldn’t be even thinking of paper planes. At the same time are leading possibly then providing a step-to-step guide to instruct and show a child how to fold a paper plane.
Conversely other activities are setting up the physical area in a never-seen-before way of own choosing which captures children's imaginations. Or putting a big lump of snow on a table, walking away and letting the children get on with it! In such a case, are not defining how a child interacts with it, and they are free to explore and investigate it, and adapt it, in a way of their own choosing, and establish and meet their own goals. In that sense, they are leading their own play. The role was to provoke it.

Bruce (1991) shows different ways of looking at child. As long as there is a clear way of seeing the children cannot begin to work with them. It is not easy to work in collaboration with other teachers, parents or guardians, because our assumptions about the child are crucial in shaping our practice. Bruce (1991) cites that it is easy to say that the only thing that matters in working with young children is to love them and nurture, and involvement in supporting their maximum development. There are three main attitudes towards child.
The first is the empiricist shows a deficit model of child. The role of adults is to identify skill gaps to select the appropriate experience and pass them to the child. This rule came to the fore in a clear surge of traffic education in the late 1960s with Bereiter and Engelman as clear supporters.
The second is a nativist suggests that human are biologically programmed to develop in a certain way. Tom Bower (1974) describes the nativist that human knowledge and human skills have been built into the structure of the body.
Robert Dearden (1968) philosopher and psychologist Kathy Sylva (BAECE Lecture, 1995) suggest that nationalistic attitude has a dominant influence on the tradition of early childhood. This tradition shows that adults may interfere with the themes of children learning.
The third is interactionism Bower (1975) concludes. Bower (1975) shows that not only the structure of the children interact with each other, but also to change each other. There is no interaction with what is outside, but the impact of the child through the senses. Of the early childhood tradition, an adult role is critical. Adults are not seen as instructors empiricist distribution of information and knowledge.
This is seen as a mechanism in which children can develop their own strategies, initiatives and responses, and build up their own rules, which allow for their development. The key to the interactionist approach to early childhood education is based on the concept of reciprocity or give and take, it means that sometimes a child leads, and sometimes an adult.

As many a Statement of Educational needs say - children have a right to access the National Curriculum, practitioner required to deliver it to them as well as can. This puts the National Curriculum at the centre of what to do. However, if think back to what Tina Bruce says about the curriculum the National Curriculum is only a part of what are about. Practitioner must not get side tracked into focusing on a narrow band of content. Bruce (1997)

People have personal theories about how children develop and learn, but do not always realize that they have. This is a good solution for those who do not work with children, but it is not right if they are. Bruce (2006) To work with children, it is important to have a sense of professional identify, and be able to locate each other so that the practice is compatible and has internal logic, so that it does not arise out of fashion education. This will ensure that the practice does not work rutine.People should consider and discuss their practice together child at the centre to self evaluate.

It is important playworkers main task is to support the children's playground. Playworkers are other aspects of their work. For example, to administrations, teamwork and management responsibilities, they must carry out their work with due reference to the relevant provisions. They need to know their responsibilities for health and safety, child protection, equal opportunities, registration and control and so on. Playworker aspects of work are similar to other work with children and young people, although from the point of view of the introduction of the game at the heart of everything they do. Bob Hughes (2001) said playworkers are responsible for the physical and emotional safety, and intervene to prevent damage. Reflective practice is an essential element of good practice playwork. Children are human beings to each other, and engage in the game for many reasons, including the construction of their own social life, such as children, the causes of therapeutic, cultural and recreational activities, as well as the exploration and understanding. Given the variety of games, it's unpredictability and its role in the lives of children, the role of playworker is complex and sometimes contradictory. Playworkers should understand the art of creating physical and affective environment that support a wide range of experience in the area as possible.