Gender and Play Context Differences in Preschoolers’

Physical, Social, and Early Engineering Play Zachary S. Gold, James Elicker, Treshawn Anderson, & Ji Young Choi

INTRODUCTION

STUDY GOALS

METHOD (continued)

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

FIGURES AND IMAGES

METHOD • Participants

66 preschoolers (ages 3-to-5) from diverse ethnic backgrounds. 37 Head Start children, mostly below the U.S. Poverty Level. 29 university laboratory school children who were children of faculty, staff, or students.

• Procedure

Two researchers observed and documented each child’s physical (30), social (21) and early engineering (9) play behaviors as they occurred in the three play settings. Each behavior was marked as present or absent during 20 second observation intervals. Total observation times for each child ranged from 15-to-41 minutes (M = 24).

Project funded by the KaBOOM! national non-profit organization, James Elicker, Principal Investigator.

• Unexpectedly, there were no gender differences in most play behaviors, including engineering play. It is possible that boys and girls are equally interested in engineering processes during play in the preschool years. This finding may add to the literature on early gender socialization in education, particularly in light of findings that girls are less interested than boys in STEM-related subjects and careers later in childhood (Villalobos, 2009). • Engineering play occurred most in the Imagination PlaygroundTM setting. This suggests further study is needed about the specific learning processes that may be supported by play with large loose parts, including the engineering design skills, but also the problem solving, mathematics, and language skills that may be occurring during engineering play.

• High rates of engineering play also occurred in the dramatic play area, suggesting that the “loose parts” and other materials associated with pretend play provide children with opportunities to design and construct. Specifically, high rates of creativity and design were observed in this setting. • Engaging play materials and loose parts provide both genders with opportunities to demonstrate skills that are not normally elicited during classroom instruction in discrete skills or during other types of play, such as on the traditional playground. It is also possible that play with the blocks provided equal affordances for physical movement and building positive relationships. • Society for Research in Child Development Strategic Plan This was an exploratory interdisciplinary study, observing preschoolers in order to inform future research on early childhood development, education, and STEM.

• Unstructured free play with blocks and other “loose parts” is thought by early educators to provide young children with unique opportunities to build positive social relationships, and facilitate early learning, physical development, and cognitive development (Sutton, 2011; Wolfgang et al., 2001).

• Little to no research has explored young children’s engagement and play behaviors with large, easy-to-handle, loose parts and manipulable materials.

• Preschoolers’ physical, social, and “engineering play” behaviors were explored in the traditional outdoor playground, the dramatic play area, and a setting which included the Imagination PlaygroundTM blocks, designed to foster creative and imaginative constructive play (KaBOOM!, 2014).

• Explore preschoolers’ “engineering play,” a recently developed construct that focuses on early design- and construction-related thinking and behavior (Bairaktarova et al., 2011), using the Imagination PlaygroundTM blocks.

• Compare gender differences in preschoolers’ frequencies of physical, social, and engineering play behaviors across three play environments.

• Recommend areas of needed research on the potential educational benefits of engaging play materials, such as large, loose parts, and other available manipulable materials.

• Observation Settings

Traditional outdoor playground. Fixed structures, climbers, slides, swings, moveable play pieces, playhouse toys, buckets, tricycles, and wagons. Dramatic play indoor area. House-like furniture, action- figures, dolls, and writing and drawing materials. Imagination PlaygroundTM . Indoor or outdoor area. Large, manipulable, loose parts, and attachable pieces. • Measures

Social play. Denham and colleagues’ (2012) observation instrument for measuring preschoolers’ socio-emotional behaviors.

Physical play. Gallahue and Ozmun’s (2006) descriptions of children’s physical ability.

Engineering play. Bairaktarova and colleagues’ (2011) nine-category system of design- and construction- related behaviors.

• Mean rates of play per hour were calculated for each of the 60 play behaviors. Conceptual groups of play behaviors were created for physical and social play to reduce type I error. Rates per hour of related play behaviors were summed to produce a total mean rate of play per hour for each conceptual group. Each conceptual group was used as a dependent variable in a repeated measures analysis of variance (RM ANOVA) model, where school and play setting were independent variables.

• Each engineering play behavior was analyzed separately with a RM ANOVA model.

• Engineering play behaviors occurred most often in the Imagination PlaygroundTM but also frequently in the dramatic play area (Table 1.)

• There was a main effect of gender, in which boys engaged in more gross motor object manipulation play than did girls, F(1, 64) = 26.12, p < .001, ηp2 = .290; boys, M = 115.52, SD = 57.19; girls, M = 75.16, SD = 46.08.

• There were no gender differences in preschoolers’ engineering play (Figure 1.), positive social play, negative social play, independent activity, fine motor play, or gross motor locomotor/stability play.

Figure 1. Mean rates of engineering play behaviors as a

function of play setting