Although many studies have examined parental decision-making patterns in regard to early childhood care and education, few studies have examined how parents' perceptions on play influence those patterns. This study explores parental perceptions regarding play in early education and the broader socioeconomic context within which these perceptions emerge. Twenty parents of preschool-aged children completed questionnaires comprised of ratings and open-ended questions. Findings indicate that the parents in this study defined play and learning in binary terms as opposed to mutually constitutive processes. Subsequently, while parents rated play as important, they also described it as peripheral to, and less important than, the acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills. This study argues that this binary thinking is an outgrowth of neoliberalism and ultimately undermines child well-being.
Described as an “outlaw sociologist” and political radical, social theorist Alvin Ward Gouldner is most widely recognized for his critical intervention in mid‐century American sociological theory during a historical moment marked by the dominance of structural functionalism. Gouldner's criticisms of academic sociology were as tumultuous to the discipline as was his biographical reality. His life and career seemed to be beset with contradictions and intellectual turmoil, evidenced most profoundly in his retreat to the Swiss mountains in search of a refuge conducive to his intellectual and political projects (which were inextricable for Gouldner). Both his life and work possess ongoing movement between positivism and postpositivism, radicalism and academicism, and objectivism and reflexivity. Despite Gouldner's criticisms of professionalization, his training by Robert Merton at Columbia University in many ways made possible a successful career in mainstream sociology.
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