Source: Amazon.com
Editorial Reviews
From Scientific American
Play is under attack, argue the child development and learning experts behind this informative anthology. It is a victim of today’s trend to focus on a narrow set of cognitive skills, a downed bystander of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act. What has been neglected in this rush to reinvent education, these authors say, is the huge body of research buttressing the relation between types of play, a wide range of learning and school preparedness. Editors Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek lament a regression to 19th-century learning approaches, like memorization, in an era with “an emerging creative class that values conceptual knowledge and original thinking.” Children must know facts, but it is ironic that teachers now emphasize rote learning at a time when information constantly changes. “The power of knowledge,” they write, “comes from weaving those facts together in new and imaginative ways.” The power of this volume is its descriptions of the varieties of play—make-believe, storytelling and story-acting, mathematical—and of more than 40 years of research linking play to increased attention spans, creativity, constructive peer interaction and mental health, to list only a few benefits. The authors present surprising and often dismaying reports about recent actions that ignore the literature. We learn of an unprecedented rise in expulsions from prekindergarten classes, perhaps arising from children’s frustration as they are taught skills once thought appropriate for youngsters several years older. Academic tutoring for test score gains has lasting negative consequences, according to one author, including poorer study habits and lower achievement. The anthology grew out of a 2005 conference at Yale University funded by Fisher-Price, and editors and authors of the book have consulted for Fisher-Price and other toy manufacturers over the years. So it comes as no surprise that the book spends a little time examining what is known about the educational value of toys and videos. In a chapter on media, play, infants and toddlers, Fisher-Price manager of child research Deborah S. Weber cites studies of young children whose parents sing along and clap during, and talk to them about, age-appropriate television shows and videos. Teachers found that children who watch TV supported by this adult “scaffolding” were more ready to learn than children left to watch alone. Though well written, the chapters of Play = Learning demand great concentration and challenge the educated lay reader. But it is hard to fault the authors for their thoroughness. They are serious about play and offer convincing evidence that rather than being a distraction from learning, play is the thing.
Karen A. Frenkel
Review
“Early childhood educators are well aware of the importance of play in children’s lives. This volume is a wonderful collection of chapters by eminent authors, who have thought deeply about play and young children’s learning. Readers will find it challenging, provocative, reassuring, and enormously satisfying.”–Barbara Bowman, Erikson Institute
“In the current era of scientifically-based education and accountability, this book fills a critical gap in the knowledge base–providing an extensive research review of all the ways play enhances learning and development for all children, including those with special needs. This book should help teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and policy makers go beyond the either/or debates of the past. The evidence is clear–children need both hands-on, educationally enriching play experiences and teacher instruction.”–Sue Bredekamp, Ph.D., Director of Research, Council for Professional Recognition, Washington, DC, and Former Director of Professional Development, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
“This is a stunning and important book. The authors do more for play than anyone since Vygotsky. In the earliest years, play lays the groundwork for imitative learning, simulation, and contributes to socio-emotional growth. By the third and fourth years, play becomes a critical avenue by which the child experiments with virtual realities and explores future possibilities. Play is sometimes undervalued in the increasingly high-pressured world of child-rearing. This volume transforms how we think about play and is essential reading for developmental psychologists, practitioners, policymakers, and all those who wish to enhance the lives of children.”–Andrew N. Meltzoff, co-author, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
“In this wonderful book on play, a variety of leading researchers and scholars in the play and child development area review how play helps children develop and learn. There is a special focus on play and the learning process which involves the whole child. This book provides a fresh and up-to-date look at play and areas of adaptive functioning such as literacy, mathematics, and self-regulation. This is a much needed and timely book, as our culture is de-emphasizing the importance of play. Many authors discuss implications of play research for public policy. This book tells us why we, as a society, need to provide time, space, and guidance for children to play.”–Sandra W. Russ, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University
“…a realistic appraisal of what play can contribute to early learning such as the links between play and early literacy and language competence and the importance of recess in the primary grades.”–Young Children (November 2006)
Product Description
Why is it that the best and brightest of our children are arriving at college too burned out to profit from the smorgasbord of intellectual delights that they are offered? Why is it that some preschools and kindergartens have a majority of children struggling to master cognitive tasks that are inappropriate for their age? Why is playtime often considered to be time unproductively spent?
In Play=Learning, top experts in child development and learning contend that the answers to these questions stem from a single source: in the rush to create a generation of Einsteins, our culture has forgotten about the importance of play for children’s development. Presenting a powerful argument about the pervasive and long-term effects of play, Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek urge researchers and practitioners to reconsider the ways play facilitates development across domains. Over forty years of developmental research indicates that play has enormous benefits to offer children, not the least of which is physical activity in this era of obesity and hypertension. Play provides children with the opportunity to maximize their attention spans, learn to get along with peers, cultivate their creativity, work through their emotions, and gain the academic skills that are the foundation for later learning. Using a variety of methods and studying a wide range of populations, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the powerful effects of play in the intellectual, social, and emotional spheres.
Play=Learning will be an important resource for students and researchers in developmental psychology. Its research-based policy recommendations will be valuable to teachers, counselors, and school psychologists in their quest to reintroduce play and joyful learning into our school rooms and living rooms.
About the Author
Dorothy G. Singer received her doctorate in School Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is Senior Research Scientist, Department of Psychology, Yale University. She is also Co-Director, with Jerome L. Singer, of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center. An expert on early childhood development, television effects on youth, and parent training in imaginative play, she has written 20 books and over 150 articles. Her latest books with Jerome L. Singer are Handbook of Children and the Media, Make-Believe: Games and Activities for Imaginative Play, and Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age,=. She co-edited, with Edward F.Zigler and Sandra J.Bishop-Josef, Children’s Play: Roots of Reading,, which was selected for CHOICE’s Outstanding Academic Title list. Singer received the award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to the Media by Division 46 of APA in 2004.
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff obtained her doctorate from Cornell University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, she joined the University of Delaware. She holds an H. Rodney Sharp Chair in the School of Education, with joint appointments in Psychology and Linguistics. A Guggenheim Fellow and a James McKeen Cattell award winner, she has written dozens of journal articles, chapters, and academic books, the latest of which is Action Meets Word: How Children Learn Verbs (OUP 2005), edited with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. Committed to dissemination, Golinkoff lectures internationally and has written two popular press books with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: How Babies Talk and Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less, which was awarded the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Books for a Better Life award. Play=Learning is that book’s mantra.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University, where she serves as Director of the Infant Language Laboratory. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and her Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. Her research in the areas of early language development and infant cognition has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health and Human Development, resulting in 9 books and numerous publications. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, serves as the Associate Editor of Child Development, and is treasurer of the International Association for Infant Studies. With Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, she is co-editor of Action Meets Word: How Children Learn Verbs (OUP 2005) and co-author of How Babies Talk and Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Children Really Learn and Why They Need To Play More and Memorize Less. Hirsh-Pasek has published more than 100 professional articles and has given over 80 invited lectures around the world.
Click here to see more about this book.
