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In this article, the authors problematize the dichotomization of play and learning that often shapes the agenda of early childhood education research and practice. This dichotomization is driven in part by the tendency to define learning in terms of formal learning (i.e. learning as an outcome of direct instruction and school-based approaches that focus on teacher-led, goal-directed activities and declarative knowledge). The authors argue for a reconceptualization of early childhood education that understands learning and development not as an outcome, primarily, of instruction and teaching, but as an outcome of play and exploration. They develop this argument by drawing on Vygotsky’s theories of play, imagination, realistic thinking and creativity. These theories challenge another dichotomy – that between imagination and reality – by arguing that imagination is implicated in the meaning-making of both play and exploration. Instead of relating play to learning where play is characterized by imagination and learning by reality, the authors’ reconceptualization relates play to exploration and proposes that learning, defined as leading to human development, is an outcome of both of these activities. The authors further develop their argument by presenting ethnographic material from a qualitative research project implemented in three Swedish preschools whose practices are influenced by the Reggio Emilia pedagogical approach. The research conducted in this study contributes to new perspectives on the relationship between play and learning by introducing exploration as a counterpart to play, and this new perspective has implications for the design and practice of early childhood education, as well as for early childhood education research.

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Abstracte ideal of modern western childhood, with its emphasis on the innocence and malleability of children, has combined with various social conditions to promote adult's direction of children's play towards adult-determined developmental goals, and adult's protection of children's play from adults. However, new forms of play, in which adults actively enter into the fantasy play of young children as a means of promoting the development and quality of life of both adults and children, have recently emerged in several countries (Sweden, Serbia (the former Yugoslavia), Finland, Japan and the United States). In this paper we discuss the theoretical support for this new form of activity: we argue that Gunilla Lindqvist's reinterpretation of Vygotsky's theory of play, with its emphasis on the creative quality of play, is unique amongst contemporary Western European and American theories of play. And we describe a series of formative interventions that are both instantiations of this new form of activity and an investigation of its theoretical support, which are being conducted in the United States and Sweden. Researchers at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego have implemented and studied Lindqvist's creative pedagogy of play in U.S. early childhood public school classrooms. Over the past year the central component of this pedagogy, playworlds, has been introduced and studied in three Swedish Reggio-Emilia inspired preschools. In conclusion, some of the ndings from these research projects are presented.