The Program of Developmental (Narrative) Play Pedagogy

The importance of early learning and development is growing with new evidence from life sciences. But specific character of early learning and development often is understood from the point of view of rational adult logic and assessment criteria. This has limited the possibilities of fully exploiting the developmental potential of joint play in preschool age. Adult participation has been limited to guiding rational learning processes, and in the Scandinavian ‘free’ play, ideal children choose the play contents. Our aim is to construct joint narrative play environments of adults and children in order to introduce and study together basic human values and themes, to create dramatic collisions and make sense by participating in play events. Narrative learning environments have been implemented in two types of classrooms: (1) value-oriented before school clubs and (2) goal-oriented vertically integrated classrooms. Narrative play environment in clubs is constructed without explicit learning tasks. Themes introduce ideal forms of behaviour for children, teachers and parents. Children have a free choice to participate in activities derived from the themes. In goal-oriented classrooms, assignments are intertwined with the thematic storylines, and the story cannot continue before children have solved the tasks. Often children cross the boundary from narrative play world to their classroom in order to solve the task using rational logic. We suppose, based on our results, that our approach effectively utilises developmental potential of advanced play forms (role-, directors-, and rule-play) and promotes elaboration of the zones of proximal development.