Adults’ Involvement in Social Pretend Play in the Context of Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Educational positions on adult involvement in social pretend play vary. Some view it as an interference that could disrupt children's play (e.g., Korat et al., 2002), while others believe that adult involvement could enhance the quality or complexity of children's play, leading to improved learning and social development (e.g., Bodrova et al., 2013; Weisberg et al., 2013). The role that adults take on during play matters. Research suggests that less involved behaviour, such as running back and forth or being unavailable is negatively related to children’s engagement in play (Singer et al., 2014). On the other hand, taking a more active role as a co-player or play leader has been shown to increase children's social interactions with peers and their level of social play (Gaviria-Loaiza et al., 2017). We conducted a controlled intervention study with a pre-, post-test, and follow-up design on pretend play tutoring and children’s social development. The study sample consisted of 27 Swiss play groups with N=215 three- to four-year-old children, who were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: Pretend play tutoring, provision of role play material, or usual interaction. The results showed that taking an active role in children's pretend play improved the quality of their play compared to solely providing play materials or usual interaction. This ultimately enhanced children's social competencies (Kalkusch et al., 2020; Jaggy et al., 2023). Implications for the design of child-centered learning environments that encourage peer interactions and social development are discussed.).