The University of Auckland
New Zeala1and
FACULTY OF
EDUCATION
Encouraging boys’ learning in
early childhood
Dr. Brent Mawson
Faculty of Education
University of Auckland
Aims of presentation
• To identify gender differences in play and
relationships
• To suggest areas of play of importance to
boys learning
• To provide some strategies to encourage
boys learning through play
Issues
• Gendered workforce
• Gendered play
• boys’ performance in school
Gendered workforce
• Women <98.5% (16000+)
• Men >1.5% (150-180)
• Male ‘role model’
Research literature – Gender
Differences
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Active-forceful play
Play near adults
Stereotyped active play
Competition vs negotiation
Affect of capability of play partner
Communication of play partner
Degree of collaborative speech
Type of speech to partner
• Ways in which attempts to influence partners play
are done
• Influence of friendship vs activity
• Amount of cooperative, cohesive turn-taking
• Amount and complexity of fantasy play
• Themes in fantasy play
• Preferences for toys and props
• Constructive vs functional play
• Leadership styles
• Strategies to gain power in play group
• Relational vs physical aggression
• Choices in out-door play
• Involvement in rough and tumble play.
Two Cultures Theory
• For
• Maccoby, E. E. (1998). The two sexes: growing up apart,
coming together. Cambridge, Massachusetts.: The Belknap
Press.
• Critque
• Goodwin, M. H. (2006). The hidden life of girls: Games of
stance, status, and exclusion. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing.
• Underwood, M. K. (2004). Gender and peer relations: Are the
two gender cultures really all that different? In J. B.
Kupersmidt & K. A. Dodge (Eds.), Children's peer relations:
From development to intervention. Washington, DC.: American
Psychological Association.
The tyranny of pink
If you're the parent of a little girl, you'll
understand: their world has turned decidedly
pink, and there's no escaping it. The effect,
says Eleanor Bailey, is like living in a oneparty state run by Barbie - sinister, fascistic
and devoid of any choice
* Eleanor Bailey
* The Guardian, Saturday 29 March 2008
Important areas of boys’ play
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Rough and tumble play
Mixed gender play
Literacy activities
Technological activities
War/super hero play
Benefits of rough and tumble play
• R& T serves three potential functions – affiliation (form and maintain
friendships), dominance (establish social hierarchy and therefore
minimise conflict) and social skill facilitation (popularity).
• Encourages the pretence play of boys which tends to be more fantastic
and physically vigorous, often co-occurring with play fighting and
superhero themes.
• Boys use rough and tumble play to express care for one another and to
develop friendships.
• Aids self esteem. Prescription of aggressive play impacts on the selfesteem of boys, also affects the self-confidence of girls to engage in
active and boisterous play scenarios.
• Allows risky play. Rough-and-tumble play is a fine balance between
play fighting and real fighting. Keeping the play situation on the
borderline between play fighting (pure exhilaration) and real fighting
(pure fear) is one of the central points of this kind of play.
Strategies to incorporate and
manage rough and tumble
• Define protocols with children
• No involvement with children that don’t want to play
• No punching or hitting with an object. Stopping the moment
someone says they don’t want to play.
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Define area
Yellow/red cards
Put risk and challenge into obstacle courses
Introduce games with rules – touch rugby
Benefits of mixed-gender play
• Allows boys to experience and assume leadership
roles/styles not available in boy’s play
• Encourages a greater complexity and use of oral
language, a key element in learning to read
• Introduces a wider range of narratives and
contexts to play
• Can serve to reduce power of gender stereotypes
Strategies to encourage mixed
gender play
• Need for realistic props for boys
• More of same uniforms better than one of many
• Props that will allow mixed gender play with roles
acceptable and comfortable for all.
• Flexible materials rather than fixed or directive
resources (Cardboard boxes, blocks vs duplo)
• Integrating areas – blocks and home corner
• Stories/visits/ to provide provocation for children’s
own narratives, can include positive superhero
scenarios.
Benefits of literacy
experiences
• May help overcome boy’s lower levels of
achievement in the early years of schooling.
• Increase levels and complexity of oral
communication, a key indicator in learning
to read.
• Provides examples of negotiation and
collaboration
Strategies to develop literacy
• Stories/visits/ to provide provocation for children’s own
narratives, can include positive superhero scenarios.
• Encouraging story telling
• Choice of books in library corner and read at group times.
Boys more often prefer information texts
• Seeking opportunities to suggest ways of incorporating
literacy activities into dramatic play or construction play
e.g. treasure maps, road signs, supply lists for the rocket
ship
• Encouraging acting out of stories that have strong actions
within them – e.g.Three Billy Goats Gruff, Jack and the
Beanstalk.
• Using popular culture characters/plots as basis for
dramatic play.
• Books that reflect boy’s home life and culture
• Invite male parent’s in to read stories to the
children
• Drawing and writing materials readily available in
the block corner, sandpit, and carpentry table
• Saw licences
• Provide large movable items in the outdoor space
so that children can build own sets – rocket ships,
fire engines,
Benefits of technological experiences
• Caters for boys’ interests in designing and making
things
• Facilitates collaboration with adults and other children
• Provides opportunities to plan and evaluate an
outcome.
• Focuses attention on made-world
• Provides context for development of a range of tool
usage and representation skills
Strategies to encourage technology
• Ensure that you have a wide range of appropriate tools -e.g. a range of
sharp saws
• Provide a wide range of materials and fixing/joining methods
• Put paper and drawing materials in the block corner, next to the
carpentry table, by the sandpit and encourage children to draw their
ideas before and after making them
• Put blocks and other construction materials in the book corner and
encourage children to build structures they see in the books.
• Monitor your questions and concentrate on asking questions which
allow children to focus on and talk about their technological practice.
• Read non-fiction ‘technical’ books at mat time.
• Model different types of drawing, discuss and display
them.
• Encourage children to reflect on, modify and rework their
solutions to technological problems
• Encourage children to question not only their own designs,
but also the designed world they live in.
• Play and experiment with materials and tools and joining,
fixing, shaping , combining methods yourself. Your own
confidence and competence is really important to the
children’s learning.
• Become more actively involved in construction set play to
encourage development of concepts and complexity of
play.
ÒWar, weapon and superhero
play is a controversial, underresearched and undertheorized aspect of childrenÕs
play, which is rarely discussed
in an open-minded wayÓ
(Holland, 2003, p. xii)
ÒWhere the adults see ÒwarÓ,a problem, noise
or chaos, the chi ldren see ÒplayÓ,i.e. almost
the opposite. The y see through different
lenses. The adult gaze - the pedagogical lens reads one thin g. The childÕsgaze - the lens of
play - gives it another sense. They are not only
talking at cross purposes, they have crossed
sights and crossed courses of action.Ó(p. 23)
Mouritsen, F. (1998). Child Culture - Play Culture. Working Paper 2. . Odense: The
Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies Odense University.
Benefits of war/superhero play
• Allows boys to explore certain narratives of
masculinity
• Superhero play may give children needed sense of
power in a world dominated by adults, may enable
them to work through anxiety and fear of own
safety, and express anger and aggression in
socially acceptable ways.
• War play is especially well-suited for influencing
the political and moral ideas children develop –
power and conflict, right and wrong, good and
evil, safety and danger, friends and enemies.
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Can learn impulse control
Defines boundaries between real and pretend
Allows opportunities to see other points of view
Encourages autonomy by giving sense of control
and power
• May help them understand events in the world
around them/
• May be important in boys development of gender
identity, the search for male role models
Holland, P. (2003). We don't play with guns here: War, weapon and
superhero play in the early years. Maidenhead: Open University
Press.
• Recognition that zero tolerance was not working
• Team commitment to develop new policy, putting aside personal views
and agendas
• Trial period (6 months) relaxing policy. Only limit, no shooting at
people. However war, weapon and superhero play still remained within
framework of general behaviour policy (e/.g. no real aggression and
fighting, no intimidating or interfering with others play.)
• Information letter to parents explaining change
• Introduced new policy gradually as incidents arose, rather than
implementing en masse
• Change of teacher role,
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more costumes added and props made,
more intervention to extend play when children got stuck
help children develop and clarify roles for superheros,
talk about the pretend world of acting,
discuss real heroes,
explore related concepts such as artists,
help children recognize the humane characteristics of
superheroes,
• and give children control over their own lives by sharpening
their conflict resolution skills to come up with alternatives to
violence and aggression.
• In longer term, decrease of mount of war, weapon and
superhero play, more meaningful contexts developed, with
more complex, creative role play. Greater involvement by girls,
increase in number of mixed-gender play groups.
Levin, D. E., & Carlsson-Paige, N. (2006). The war play dilemma (2nd
ed.). New York: Teachers College Press
.
• Limit children’s exposure to violence, including
violent media and products linked to it, as much as
possible.
• Help children learn to engage in creative
meaningful dramatic play of all kinds
• When children engage in war play, learn as much
as you can about the nature of the play and the
issues they are working on,
• In children’s war play address the issues raised by
both the developmental and sociopolitical sides of
the war play dilemma
• Work to counteract the lessons about violence and
stereotyping that children may be learning in their
war play
• Make keeping the play safe your highest priority
• Limit the use of highly structured violent toys and
encourage the use of open-ended toys and play
materials
• Work to counteract the highly stereotyped and
limiting gender roles that characterise most war
play and help children develop a broad range for
themselves as boys and girls
• Create an on-going dialogue between educators
and parents about the children’s war, weapons and
superhero play