Piaget’s stages of cognitive development have an affect on how a child’s thinking is developed throughout their childhood. However, this theory was understood in the late 1980s and since then, childrens stages of cognitive development have increasingly changed due to the child’s age. Nowadays, children develop much quicker than before, although the stages still work in conjunction to the cognitive development of children.
(Neil Moonie, Et Al, 2006)
Piaget’s Typology of Play
Piaget believed that play helps a child to think from concrete to abstract thoughts. He also believed that play can be progressed from solitary play or individual play, to social or group plays. The types of play that Piaget believed in link directly to his stages of development:
Practice Play
This type of play occurs during the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years). Children participate in practice play by gaining control of their own bodies and gaining control over objects. Practice play helps a child develop skills by repeating movements or sounds such as sucking, shaking, banging, babbling, and eventually peek-a-boo games. These skills are developed further through repetition, and eventually repeated out of pleasure once the child has mastered the skill.
As children learn about different objects, they begin to realise that their actions towards certain objects end in a result. They then manipulate the object as they begin to realise the affects it has on their environment. For example, when a baby starts playing with a toy, they begin to realise that if they press the button, it will result to a loud sound. The child then continuously repeats this action, as they know it will affect them emotionally, as they will gain pleasure out of it.
Symbolic Play
This type of play occurs during the pre-operational stage (2-7 years). At this stage children start to realise that objects have a name; they start matching objects with words. For example, telling a child that the animal in the park is a cat. The child then learns that every time he or she sees that particular animal, it is called ‘cat’. They then start to repeat this word. They also start to realise that their actions affect others around them. An example of this is if a child pulls a funny face. If the adults around that child start laughing, the child realises that by them pulling a funny face, it will have a positive outcome.
They then begin to take part in make-believe games from real life situations. For example, when the child is riding a bike, they will pretend they are driving a car, as this is the environment they surround. This shows that they pretend to play a particular game, as they cannot actually carry out the real life situation. Another example is when children pretend to be ‘doctors and nurses’. They take part in a game of pretending to be a doctor or a nurse, as they cannot actually be a real doctor or nurse at their age. This is also known as ‘pretend play’.
Games with rules
This type of play occurs during the concrete operational stage (7-11 years). During this stage, children begin to categorise activities and early logical operations occur. Rather than the child still thinking spontaneously, involving rules and the reasons for the rules changes their type of play. The child realises at this stage that their involvement in a game is focused on the social aspects of play and their acceptance by the participants, e.g. team games, board games, etc. (Neil Moonie, Et Al, 2006)
From my case study, Jayden, I can see that he has progressed through Piaget’s stages of development. From birth to two years old, Jayden developed the skills of repeating certain actions. His mother would always poke her tongue out and Jayden developed the skill of poking his tongue out too. He also developed the skill of sucking from birth, as this was how he used to drink milk from his mother’s teat. He then developed the skill of babbling and trying to say certain words. All these skills were encouraged by Jayden’s parents and therefore, Jayden would repeat the same skills that he had developed. He learnt that by repeating these skills, it made him happy.
He also learnt that some of his toys would make noises. Jayden had a particular favourite toy this toy created different sounds when the different buttons were pressed. Jayden developed the skill of pressing the buttons at the age of 7 months, as he realised by doing this, he would hear soothing sounds that he liked. He would then continuously press the buttons on the toy to hear the sounds again. These skills were learnt through practice play.
He then progressed onto symbolic play at a much earlier age. He reached this stage at the age of 1½. He realised at this stage that his actions affected others around him. For example, he used to love pretending that he was a clown. This would make his parents and siblings laugh a lot and would therefore repeat the same actions, as he realised this made them happy. It also made him happy knowing that he had achieved his goal of making others laugh. This also showed that he used to make-believe play by pretending to be a clown, which was another part of the symbolic play.
Jayden is now eight years old and I feel that he has progressed onto the last stage of games with rules at the age of 5. This is quite an early stage according to Piaget’s age group, however as I mentioned earlier, his theory was developed centuries ago, and since then a lot of new technology has been improved to expand children’s knowledge to the fullest. Therefore, enabling Jayden to reach this stage at an earlier age.
I feel Jayden has reached this stage, as he is now able to develop his social development to realise the importance of participating in a game appropriately. Jayden loves playing board games, which usually involves other participants. Jayden develops his skills to play with others and by abiding to the rules of the game. This shows that he is progressing in his ‘games with rules’ play as sometimes he finds it hard to accept someone else being the leader of a game and abiding to their rules.
Hughes (1996)
Hughes is another theorist who supports play. He believed that children actively participate in fifteen different types of plays:
Hughes’ Typology of Play
Symbolic play
Instead of children using real life objects, such as humans, this type of play uses different objects such as symbols so that they can learn and explore general ideas. For example, using a cardboard box to symbolise a house.
Rough and tumble play
This type of play includes a lot of physical contact. It is more to do with touching, tickling, determining own strength, discovering physical flexibility and the excitements of what children can do, rather than promoting fighting. However, this could include playful fighting, wresting and chasing, as long as the children involved are not hurting each other and instead are enjoying each others company by laughing and giggling.
Socio-dramatic play
This type of play involves the children to act out real life situations as well as the child’s experiences through play. This could be anything from, strong personal, social, domestic or interpersonal nature. For example, acting out a row or playing mums and dads, etc.
Social play
This is a type of play, which is set around a basis of rules, which involves the participants of the game working together to amend and abide by the rules created. I.e. games, conversation, making something together.
Creative play
This type of play is the use of different materials and tools to alter information and understand how materials can be joined without the child realising the effects of joining the materials, i.e. the element of surprise. Creative play is purely for pleasure to enjoy creation.
Communication play
This type of play involves communicating using words and gestures. For example, acting out scenes, singing, debating and telling jokes.
Dramatic play
This type of play is when the child is not the main participant; the child is the sideline character when acting out dramatic events. For example, the child acting out that they are in a school playground where there are other children, as the child is not the main participant because of the other children involved.
Deep play
This type of play comes upon a child carrying out risky or even potentially life-threatening experiences, to develop survival skills and overcome fear. For example, balancing on a high beam or climbing up a tall ladder in order to overcome the fear of heights.
Explanatory play
This type of play involves children using their physical abilities to manipulate their skills from handling, throwing, banging or mouthing objects. For example, a child develops the skill of kicking a ball. The child then learns to manipulate his or her skills by developing the ability to throw the ball and perform more complex procedures with the ball.
Fantasy play
This type of play is when a child rearranges the world to play with or act out certain activities that they would like to perform. The child’s rearrangement of the world performs ideas that are unlikely to happen. For example, playing at being a pilot flying around the world.
Imaginative play
This type of play is when a child uses a figment of their imagination and pretends it is real so they can play. An example of this is playing on a set of drums that are not physically there.
Locomotor play
This type of play involves physical movement in all directions to stimulate joy. For example, a child spinning round-and-round in circles on the spot, to make the child dizzy.
Mastery play
This type of play involves the child using the natural world around him or her as a source of play. An example of this is using a tree for shelter.
Object play
This type of play involves the use of the child’s ability to hand-eye co-ordinate to entertain itself for playing. A typical example of this is a child bouncing a ball continuously on the spot.
Role play
This type of play is the use of re-enacting day-to-day activities, which are not personal. An example of this is pretending to ride a motorbike through town.
(Neil Moonie, Et Al, 2006)
Hughes theory of play related to Jayden in the sense that Jayden actively participates in all the types of play. His most common form of play out of the fifteen is locomotor play. This is because he is able to run around using all the physical abilities in his body. He loves running around, as he is a very hyper child, especially when playing with other children. His favourite type of locomotor play is when he plays chase and hide and seek with his other peers at school. This is because there is a lot of space in the playground for Jayden and his peers to run around during lunch times. This helps develop Jayden’s physical ability, as well as improving his circulation, his joints and limbs, his lung capacity, and above all, digests the foods he ate during lunchtime, providing Jayden with a good digestive system.
However, Jayden also enjoys object play. This is because he is able to learn different hand-eye co-ordinations. For example, Jayden loves playing on his bike; this involves Jayden using hand-eye co-ordination to make sure he steers the bike in a straight line, whilst knowing where to go. He also needs to make sure he has balance whilst riding the bike, or else he could fall off and hurt himself. Jayden is very good at riding his two-wheeled bike and never has problems with his balance. He also knows how to stay in a straight line whilst riding in confined spaces. As Jayden rides his bike a lot, I feel this is his other favourite form of play.
Overall, I feel Jayden participates in all the different plays, but I felt these were his two favourite forms of play out of the fifteen identified.
Stages of Play
Social play is developed through five stages, these are:
Solitary play
Solitary play is when children play by themselves up to the age of 2. They are too young to be interested in interacting with others, which is why they play alone. They enjoy exploring their environment at this age and trying new skills out. They are happy to explore and play on their own as they have not yet developed the ability speak and socialize with others. Solitary play may be adult-led by the adult playing peek-a-boo with the child, which makes the child happy.
This is common for Piaget’s first stage of practice play. Practice play involves a child up to 2 years as well, to develop new skills that are performed independently. As the child is very young at this age, both plays promote that they develop skills and play by themselves.
For Hughes’ theory, the best form of play to best describe solitary play would be object play. This is because the child can play by themselves as well as developing skills from it. For example, developing hand-eye co-ordination by trying to reach a toy and pick it up. This is hard for babies to develop at first, once this skill is mastered, they can learn how to hold objects in their hand without dropping it, etc.
Solitary play also involved Jayden for when he was less than 2 years old. He learnt the skill of poking his tongue out through adult-led play. He also developed the skill to understand his environment to adapt his play according to his surroundings. For example, being able to focus his sight sense on a bright light that he knew was placed in the middle of his room.
Parallel play
Up to the age of two, children become more aware of each other and like to play alongside other children. This often involves no interaction between the two children, although they would usually play parallel to each other. This is because at this age they still do not understand how to socialize with other children, they would purely be focusing on their own play.
This has a slight comparison to Piaget’s theory of symbolic play. Although the child is aware of the other child, they do not interact. This fits in with symbolic play as this involves being aware of other people.
This type of play does not fit in with Hughes theories, as none of plays state a child interacting by itself but acknowledging the other child.
However, when Jayden was 2 years old, he used to participate in parallel play. This was because he had a cousin who was a year younger than him. Both parents would put Jayden and his cousin together to encourage them to play with each other. Jayden would not play with his cousin, although he would sometimes look at his cousin to reassure his existence, and then carry on playing by him self.
Looking-on play
Looking-on play usually occurs up to the age of 3. This involves a child observing other children’s play. By observing other children’s play, the child learns to copy the same actions to enable confidence to try the same activity.
This is also shown through Piaget’s theory of symbolic play. This is by repeating the actions of existing thoughts. For example, the child will learn to repeat the actions of the other children and changing its existing ideas of play mentally.
Hughes theory also adapts to this type of play through role play. This is because the child learns how to play the same game by re-enacting the play to its own accordance.
Jayden also learnt how to use looking-on play by copying those at school. He would watch the other students at school to see how they would play different games or activities. He would then copy these games to support his confidence of learning different skills through different activities.
Joining-in play
Joining-in play also occurs up to the age of 3. This is when the children learn to interact with other children and develop their social interaction skills. This type of play is organised by an adult, as they are not able to take responsibility for themselves to co-operate fully yet. The children learn how play can be more interesting at this stage when others are involved.
This is also shown through Piaget’s theory of symbolic play. For example, by a young boy interacting with another child, he realises that the other child wants to interact with him just as much as he does. This is because the young boy has learnt that by him playing with the other child, the young boy realises the child’s emotions of being happy.
Hughes theory also adapts to this type of play through social play. This is because social play involves socialising with other children to interact and play.
Jayden also learnt how to use joining-in play by interacting with children at his nursery and making friends. When he was 3 years old he needed adult help to help support his social interaction with other children. He progressed on this stage however and soon became confident enough to interact with others independently.
Co-operative play
Co-operative play occurs from 3½ years old and involves children playing actively together happily. This involves the children to co-operate with each other, share ideas and take on different roles. This stage of play helps children learn the importance of being honest. They also learn that cheating and physical abuse will not be tolerated and will lead to them being excluded. By the age of 7, co-operative play involves rules to the games played, as they are able to clearly explain what the game is about at this age.
This definitely works in conjunction to Piaget’s theory of games with rules. This is because Piaget believes at this stage the children learn to play games that consist of rules. The children also learn how to socially interact with each other to allow acceptance in the games played.
This also works with Hughes theory of social play. This is because social play is set around the basis of rules. The participants must abide by the rules to be accepted in the game.
Jayden is also involved in co-operative play as he has now learnt how to interact with other children confidently. He has also developed the skills needed to make up rules and abide to other people’s rules too. He also understands the importance of being accepted by behaving appropriately.
(Neil Moonie, Et Al, 2006)
Below are the toys that Jayden used throughout each of the stages of play:
Solitary play:
()
Parallel play: ()
Looking-on play: ()
Joining-in play: ()
Co-operative play: ()
I undertook three observations of Jayden, to show the theories of play in action. Each observation was different to get a broader analysis of the theories of play. The three observations conducted were:
- Playing in the park with peers
- Drawing a picture
- Imaginative play
(See appendixes 1, 2 & 3 for all three observations in detail)
Observation 1 – Playing in the park with peers
I observed Jayden playing in the park with his peers. There were not a lot of people in the park. Other than Jayden and two of his friends, there were only another two people in the park walking their dog. The aim of the observation was to conduct how Jayden and his peers interacted with each other and their actions of play.
I found that Jayden started playing a game called tag. All the children started running around the park and hiding into confined spaces so that they could not get tagged. Jayden started the game off by offering to play tag. When his peers agreed to play, Jayden then made up his rules of how to play. His peers abided to these rules and they started to play.
This shows that Piaget’s last stage of play, games with rules, had a great affect on how the children played. This is because the children wanted to participate in Jayden’s game of tag. To do this they had to accept Jayden’s rules to feel socially included.
This also shows that Hughes’ theory of social play had a great affect on how the children played as well. This is because the children abided by Jayden’s rules. They worked together to play the game and also interacted with each other.
Once the children became bored of playing tag, they started playing with a ball. This consisted of the ball being kicked around to each participant. They all seemed very engaged in the game and seemed to enjoy themselves.
The interaction between the ball and the players showed that these actions were being repeated continuously. Kicking the ball to each participant and repeating this action is known as ‘secondary circular reaction’ from Piaget’s theory.
Also Hughes theory shows the effects of kicking the ball to each participant through exploratory play and object play. Exploratory play was used when kicking the ball because it involved a lot of physical movement. As they carried on kicking the ball to each other, they would use tricks that have been manipulated from their physical skills to enable more complex procedures with the ball.
Object play was also used to develop the childrens’ hand-eye co-ordination. This was achieved by each child obtaining the ball correctly and also kicking it to the right participant. I could see this skill developing the more they played with the ball.
Observation 2 – Drawing a picture
In this second observation, I observed Jayden drawing a picture. He was very engaged in the drawing of his picture. He used a range of materials, such as paintbrushes and pens. He was by himself at the time of drawing the picture, as he didn’t feel the need to interact with others during this play.
The picture was of the park he played at earlier with his two peers. The picture had a lot of creativity to it; for example, the sky was painted a warm purple colour with the three children made out of different textures. He captured the image of the park in his head and changed these images to be creative and imaginative.
From this I could see that Piaget’s theory of play was definitely used. This was from the idea of changing existing schemas into the new ideas. Jayden was able to use symbolic play, by capturing the image in his head and drawing this on paper. This showed a lot of expression and feeling to the picture.
He also drew the picture on his own, without interaction from others. This shows that he was using practice play to develop his skills and understanding all by himself. He did not feel the need to interact with others when drawing his picture, as he was very contented.
This observation also showed me that Hughes’ theory of creative play was also used. He used a lot of different materials such as paintbrushes, pens, textured fabrics, glue and scissors to alter the information in his head to create a different experience of the park through his drawing. I could see that he was also enjoying the creation of his drawing.
Imaginative play was also used, as some of the images created on the drawing were made up. They were not real, but were imagined by Jayden to create an imaginative picture.
Observation 3 – Imaginative play
I observed Jayden playing by himself. He was pretending that he was driving a car by making the noises and actions, without the car being physically there. He ran around the whole living room pretending to drive a car by making skidding noises when turning corners and making really loud noises when ‘horning’ the imaginative horn.
He seemed very happy playing this by him self and even made up new ideas to the game as he continued playing. For example, adding an imaginary person into the play as well. He would continue to talk to himself, pretending there was someone there with him, filling up petrol for his ‘car’.
He then carried on playing the game with the imaginary person being non-existent once again. He finished the game off by pretending to park the car in his garage. He did these actions very well by pretending to check in each mirror and being extra careful when reversing back. He then sat down after being exhausted of playing.
This shows me that Jayden’s imaginative play had an affect on Piaget’s theory of play. This is because of Piaget’s stage of symbolic play. This is when Jayden begins to make-believe games from real life situations, i.e. the car existing in real life is imagined in the game to be real. Driving cars are surrounded in Jayden’s environment, which is where I think he got the idea of pretending to drive a car. This is because he is not able to drive a car in a real life situation, as he is too young. By Jayden imagining this play, it has made him feel good about himself as he feels that it is the closest he will get to drive a car at this time in his life.
This also develops Piaget’s last stage of games and rules. This is because Jayden made up his own rules of his play. He thought about this before playing his game. This shows that he was able to abide by his own rules by planning out what he set out to achieve from the game. Practice play was also used as Jayden interacted with the game on his own. This is because other people would not understand what Jayden is imagining mentally, as everybody thinks different.
Lastly, Hughes’ theory of imaginative play also had an impact on Jayden’s play. Hughes believed that imaginative play is when a child uses a figment of their imagination and pretends it is real so they can play. This is definitely the idea that Jayden had in mind, as he was thinking of cars in his head, and then decided to pretend play with cars.
This also works in conjunction with Hughes’ theory of fantasy play. This is because this type of play is used when a child rearranges a real life situation to act it out. This is acted out, as it is unlikely to happen. This is the case with Jayden. He has acted out a play to drive a car, as he knows he cannot drive a car in real life at his age.
