From home to the home corner -Constructing identities through play

Liz BrookerInstitute of EducationUniversity of London

From home to the home corner…

• Identities, and how children construct them

• Culture: a place to grow up in

• Play and identity – in family culture– in peer culture– in school & pre-school cultures

• Pretend play and identity: – Towards the home corner– Beyond the home corner

Understanding identity

• Acquiring a sense of self – from birth and through the early years

• Being unique and being the same

How children construct an identity

• Early identities: the child in the family and community

• Joining the peer group: identifying with other children

• Adding new categories to identity: the child in the school or pre-school setting

• Achieving a sense of belonging in each new environment…

Culture: an environment for development

“…a noun of process: the tending of something, basically crops or animals” (Raymond Williams, 1976)

“From earliest times, the notion of culture included a general theory for how to promote development: create an artificial environment in which young organisms could be provided optimal conditions for growth” (Michael Cole, 1998)

Culture and child-rearing

Universal arrangements?

• Sleeping

• Talking to children

• Care-giving

• Relationships

• Playing

Play and its role in identity

• Play in infancy: the contributions of nature (biology) and nurture (culture)

• Playing with toddlers: cross-cultural studies of mothers and one-year-olds

• “Segregation from adult activities is a key difference between communities in the arrangement of children’s activities”

• Does ‘being a child’ mean being ‘someone whose job is to play’?

Learning about play in peer groups

• Joining peer groups or ‘reference groups’ (same-age; siblings; all-ages)

• Peer groups develop their own spontaneous play activities

• Universal or local? Do all children everywhere play in similar ways?

• Some examples…

The home corner in the Gambia:

toddlers make dinner in an empty sardine tin

Nigeria: ‘cooking’ in the school yard

Playing ‘house’ in the Sudan

Young girls create their own small-world play:

The dolls were male and female and of all ages. The girls manipulated them in and around houses that they established with dividers made of shoes, pestles, bricks and pieces of tin cans. They used all manner of found objects for props, including an enamel cup, shards of glass and crockery, can lids, battery tops, small bottles, grass, razor-blade wrappers, a soap carton, a hollowed-out D battery, empty food tins, dirt, charcoal bits and cardboard.

Playing ‘house’ in Howa Village (Katz 2004)

Learning about play in school

Pretend play can:• Confirm existing identities • Construct a child identity• Construct a gendered or ethnic identity• Construct a unique identity: as a child

who is older or younger, naughty or good, quiet or noisy, leader or follower, competent or struggling

• Permit trial and error about identities…

Confirming identities (Does a home corner have to look like a

home?)

Constructing identities through play in school:

KarachiChildren use their play activities to maintain different aspects of their identities: boys and girls; friends and collaborators; leaders and followers….

Confirming identity: who am I and what do I do?

Subsistence farming: Governmentschool, Karachi

Contesting ownership and leadership; confirming

gender…

Doing what girls do?

Constructing identity through play in school: Chunchun,

KoreaResearch shows kindergarten children using pretend play and drawings to maintain gender boundaries, and reinforce gender stereotypes

You Jung and boys: in the home corner

You Jung (age 6) was playing at housekeeping; Sang Jin is the researcher. Two boys try to enter the home corner:

You Jung: No, you guys are not allowed to be here. Sang Jin: Why?…You Jung, we should share this place. You Jung: They must make a big mess of these things. Kwang Ryul: No, we just use this place as the general

headquarters. You Jung: You must break all these stuffs. Sang Jin: We should share this place. Boys, we are just

playing at house keeping. Do you want to join us? You Jung: No, boys don’t play at housekeeping. Sang Jin: Don’t boys play at housekeeping? A boy: We do. But we do when there is no girl in the house.

Sang Jin: Why do you play at housekeeping when there is no girl in here? You can play together. A boy: But, girls don’t let us be here. Sang Jin: Do you want to play at housekeeping in here though? A boy: Yes. Kwang Ryul: No, I don’t. Sang Jin: Why? Kwang Ryul: I prefer the other kinds of play. Sang Jin: What kinds of play do you prefer? Kwang Ryul: Boys generally prefer Robot things. Sang Jin: Why do you think boys prefer robots? Kwang Ryul: Because it’s for boys. Sang Jin: Are girls not supposed to play with robots? Kwang Ryul: um…I think they can…Red things. Red Power Rangers are for girls.

And finally…beyond the home corner: matters of life and death

Children use pretend play to construct shared knowledge about birth, marriage, death and other life events.Examples from Sweden and from England

‘The funeral’: Maja (age 3) and Karin (age 4),Sweden

Karin: Mummy, wake upMaja: But I was ill..Karin: I was ill too, because I was soon going to die…Maja: mmm..Karin: That’s why I am… I am in the grave… Aren’t I?Maja: You have to die first before you can be buried.Karin: I was out there… Then I was dead and I was quickly…[She walks across the room to some plastic building blocks]…This was my grave then.Maja: mmm…Karin: You pushed me to my grave. I was a princess.…..Karin: Hey Maja, you saw that I was dead?Maja: But first I have to prepare breakfastKarin: But you saw I was dead!

Orphans: Newcastle

Beth: Our mam had died..Katrina: Yeah, our mam had diedCollette: And our dad…Katrina: Yeah: no, our dad went away for a hundred yearsCollette: Yeah and we never saw him again did we?

[A few moments later they decide to be teenagers]

Collette: Your dad’s gone away and you want himKatrina: That’s not her dad it’s her granddadCollette: Yeah. Can I have this baby born out of my tum?Katrina: Yeah but you look after it…

Thank you!

With thanks for photographs to

Sue Rogers (Gambia)Sumaye Hamza (Nigeria)Laura Gould (Coram Parents Centre)Jane Wheatley (Millbank Primary

School)