‘Dead Forever’: An ethnographic study of young children's interests, funds of knowledge and working theories in free play

Abstract

This ethnographic case study explored how children build and use working theories in play (Hill, 2015), specifically theories about existential matters of life, death and dying, human nature, and the social, physical and natural world. The concepts of funds of knowledge and interests are integrated to theorise children's agency and competence in how they collectively build working theories. This conceputalisation reflects contemporary socio-cultural theories in which peer cultures, relationships and interactions are central to play and learning, with interaction conceived as multimodal, encompassing artefacts, embodiment and affect. Data is presented from research conducted with children age 4-6 (Hill, 2015), using videotaped episodes of their 'Dead Forever' play, and post-video discussions with children and parents. Findings indicate that children's interests and working theories are sources of knowledge in peer-led learning, as evidenced in the social, cognitive, cultural and affective content 2 of their play. We propose a complex understanding of play and learning within childled Zones for Proximal Development. The extent to which children's interests and working theories are understood by teachers to connect with curriculum goals is problematized in the context of contemporary ECE frameworks.

Unbalanced and unbalancing acts in the Early Years Foundation Stage: a critical discourse analysis of policy-led evidence on teaching and play from the office for standards in education in England (Ofsted)

“…Wood (2014) argues that these three modes represent a continuum of activities, with children moving flexibly between modes, and practitioners using observation and documentation to inform their practice. This conceptualization is consistent with research that foregrounds how children's interests are connected to their deep inquiries and funds of knowledge, and reflect curriculum-related content knowledge that can inform teachers' planning and provision (Chesworth, 2016;Hedges and Cooper, 2016;Hill and Wood, 2019).…”

Designing play for dark times

“…As a contrast, she drew on the work of Michelle Hill, who at the time was Wood’s doctoral student, to describe how, without adult intervention, some types of play are troubling for adults. Hill’s (2015) research shows how children regularly incorporated the theme of death and dying into their play. She collected data of children acting out a shark attack.…”

“…In the second redesign activity, the network members were asked to alter an existing children’s game to connect it to a hospital context, and thus explore some of the ideas of playing with ‘dark’ themes such as death and dying that research such as Hill’s (2015) shows children do naturally. In relation to this, one group used the board game Simpsons Monopoly as a starting point (Figure 5).…”

“…In so doing, when players moved around the board, instead of receiving cards representing land, they would receive information about the hospital spaces. In order to embed a narrative in keeping with the findings of Hill’s (2015) work that children like the opportunity to explore ‘dark’ narratives, the game was recreated to have a zombie theme, in which the aim was to move around the board avoiding treatment in the different spaces of the hospital, thereby remaining dead. The process of redesigning the board game brought about a discussion among this particular group of network members about how many of the digital applications (apps) and narratives for hospitalized children had a very strong narrative around pushing the information of the hospital’s perspectives, and also how children’s play is often manipulated by adults in this way.…”

Learning, development and the early childhood curriculum: A critical discourse analysis of the Early Years Foundation Stage in England

“…As a result, developmentalism has not adequately accounted for the influence and complexity of culturally influenced repertoires for learning. This is a significant distinction because there is substantial evidence that children not only engage with the knowledge around which curriculum content is framed, but use varied sources of knowledge to inform how they experience and build curriculum (Hill and Wood, 2019). The complexity of these contrasting perspectives demands a problem-driven approach to policy analysis, in order to understand what interpretations of learning and development are used in the EYFS, specifically the links between broad developmental descriptors and prescribed learning goals.…”