Background
Play, which this paper interchangeably calls drama, is a critical element in the development of children, especially during their early childhood. Consequently, an understanding of the use of different play types allows parents and educators alike a chance to found proper strategies of teaching the children. Literature reports that preeminent teaching strategies for the children occur midway through a continuum between work and drama ( Biddle et al., 2013 ). The same literature asserts that professional early childhood educators with the awareness and the comprehension of the theories of developmental play have an upper hand when it comes to the use of drama as a context for instructing and assessing students. Importantly, this group of educators understands the usefulness of play in motor, physical, cognitive, emotional, and social developmental domains ( In Heider & In Jalongo, 2015 ). Consequently, it is critically important that the educators of young children develop robust academic backgrounds in the study of drama to enable them develop the best evaluation strategies for the problems associated with early childhood learning in addition to offering the appropriate support to this group of learners, especially those who have difficulties playing, including those with developmental disabilities.
In most cases, literature reports, cooperative play, which involves groups of children paying and interacting socially, is an important element of children’s lives ( In Heider & In Jalongo, 2015 ). According to the cited study, this type of play enables the children master specific skills as well as in learning the manner in which they can control their environments. A further review of the extant studies reveals that drama and the environment are critical elements, which support each other ( Grossman, 2017 ). As the same author argues, as much as the concept of drama appears simplistic, in reality, it is a complex undertaking.
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Problem Statement
In the modern age, the focus of research is on the usefulness of drama in helping children transit from the information age to the conceptual age in which they develop critical skills that would help them control their environments. While the extant studies, most of which have been cited in the background section could still be meaningful in understanding the role of drama in early childhood development, it is notable that they lack the modern touch because they rarely describe and emphasize the information and conceptual ages and their significance in child development. Therefore, more research needs to be done in the field to contribute to the knowledge of the role of drama in childhood development, especially by articulating the concepts of the information and conceptual ages. Furthermore, most of the studies reviewed this far—in the background—concentrate on the children who are already in school while giving only so much attention to the pre-school category, which further suggests the need for research to fill this gap.
Scope of the Essay
The present study concerns the role of drama in helping pre-school children transit from the information age to the conceptual age. Notably, the research does not deal with children out of the pre-school age or those who are already in school. In addition, the author concentrates on articulating the meanings and implications of the information and conceptual ages in early childhood development, which also strives to describe the role that educators and parents play in helping children in their transition.
Author’s Interest in the Topic
Child development is one of the areas of interest to the author, especially because they are an early childhood educator. The author’s interest in the topic lies in the fact that they are concerned with developing strategies, which will maximize the acquisition of skills and knowledge for teaching pre-schoolers. For example, the author wishes to contribute to the extant body of modern literature that describes the importance of drama in helping the children master skills that enable them to control their environments better—the acquisition of knowledge that makes them become high-order thinkers.
Methodology
The present study is a secondary qualitative analysis of the extant literature on the topic. The author conducts a brief systematic review of literature in the field of the role of play in early childhood development. The research synthesizes research papers of repute, most of which are peer-reviewed journals obtained from online databases, including Ebscohost, ProQuest, PsycINFO , and Medline, some that expert opinions sourced from humanitarian, governmental, and professional websites, and books published on the topic. The researcher randomly selects the studies for inclusion in the review after they have applied specific inclusion criteria. Specifically, the studies that are included in this review are filtered according to their age (over the last two decades) because the researcher seeks to establish continuity between older and newer concepts around the topic. Additionally, only those studies concerning the role of drama in early childhood development for pre-schoolers are included.
Structure of the Essay
The research paper is organized into four sections, which are outlines as follows:
Section— the introduction, which sets the background to the study, states the problem that the author seeks to solve, provides the scope of the research, outlines the author’s interest in the study, and describes the methodology that the research adopts.
Section 2 —the literature review part, which appraises the relevant studies on the topic, including describing the important concepts and theories related to the study.
Section 3 —the findings of the research, which presents an exposition and analysis of the main findings of the study.
Section 4 —the conclusion, which summarizes the research paper and sets the implications for research and practice.
Literature Review
Definitive Terms
Play
It is not easy to define play. Most philosophers and scholars alike have strived to define the term, and each one of them has included some slight variations to its meaning. For example, Erik Erikson and Jerome Bruner (cited in Biddle et al., 2013 ) are among the most notable researchers who have attempted to provide a scholarly definition of play. As Biddle et al. (2013) reports, Erikson (1963) offered the following definition:
When man plays, he must intermingle with things and people in a similarly uninvolved and light fashion. He must do something, which he has chosen to do without being compelled by urgent interests or impelled by strong passion. He must feel entertained and free of any fear or hope of serious consequences. He is on vacation from social and economic reality—or as is most commonly emphasized: he does not work (cited in Biddle et al., 2013, p. 225-226).
From the cited definition, therefore, it is notable that play is a perfect opportunity for one to engage in an activity for which they are not compelled to do, and that such actions must take place in close interactions with the environment. Persons do so without the fear of harm because they always seek to enjoy themselves way from work. Therefore, Erikson conceptualized play as an activity in which one engages freely to relax and enjoy away from work. Biddle and colleagues also compare Erikson’s argument with Bruner (1972) by citing the following definition
Play appears to serve several centrally important functions. First, it is a means of minimizing the consequences of one’s actions and of learning, therefore . . . [it is] . . . a less risky situation . . . Second, play provides an excellent opportunity to try combinations of behavior that would, under functional pressure, never be tried (cited in Biddle et al., 2013, p. 226).
The latter definition argues that play is one of the chances that children get to take risks in interacting with their environments. Furthermore, one notes that Brunner conceptualized the close relationship between play and creativity, which is the idea that children experiment as they play. Therefore, creativity is an additional element, and perhaps one of the most important additions in the definition according to the scope of this paper.
The definition of play may be as varied as it is, yet they identify that the wide range of activities that the term covers entail a significant variety of actions, including pretending (dramatic play), digging in the dirt, sliding, swinging, running, dressing up, creating nonsense words with specific rhyme schemes, dancing, and others ( Grossman, 2017 ). Since the term encompasses a wide range of activities, no single definition can suffice as the dictionary description of play in its many domains. Some scholars hold the opinion that it is needless to define or study play because it can be recognized when one sees it ( National Research Council, 2016 ). As the cited literature opines, play is usually understood as the opposite of work, which children engage in on vacations, weekends, or when they are away from normal activities. Therefore, comprehending play from a scholarly standpoint is critical to early childhood interventionists.
For the purpose of this paper, and upon this review of literature on the definition of play, the author advances the following definition:
Play is an activity in which one engages for relaxation, for leisure, and during which they interact with their environments in ways that allow them to explore, discover, and experiment with such settings.
Information Age
Before describing the meaning of the information age, it is imperative to lay a brief background because it is significant in constructing the meaning. The continual evolution of man, literature reports, has spanned man centuries, and several major revolutions have marked its transition ( Huitt, 2013 ). Resultantly, man has totally changed from the agricultural age in which people strived to survive against the environment to the industrial age, the information age in which the concern was on the collection, storage, and processing of information. Therefore, the information age can best be described as the era in which people concentrated on data and facts and applying such information to progress.
Conceptual Age
Using the context of human evolution described in the previous section, one can easily construct the meaning of the conceptual age. According to Huitt (2013), the conceptual age is the most current stages of human evolution in which people make constant progress and change through the redefinition of the existing elements of their life, the identification of subtle patterns, and the drawing of coherent connections that exist within unfamiliar contexts. Simply defined, the conceptual age refers to the era of creative and innovative ideas that are required to help people in interacting with their environments ( Huitt, 2013 ). Therefore, it is notable that children, as do adults, must transit from the information age to the current conceptual age, and they need help to do so.
Importance of Play in Child Development
Drama plays a significant role in the development of children. While many other benefits are associated with child development, the focus of this essay is on their creativity because the context of the essay is on the ability of children to develop creative skills that make them to adapt effectively to the conceptual age. Studies report that children learn to use their imagination in the invention and production of new things ( Biddle et al., 2013 ). Childhood is critical in the development of creativity especially because children at this stage have numerous opportunities that they can explore to express and nurture their creative talents. As the latter literature posits, children always experiment with ideas and things during free play, which enables them to create newer combinations, which they have never experienced in their lives. According to ( In Heider & In Jalongo, 2015 ), “…t he creation of new ideas does not come from minds trained to follow doggedly what is already known; the creation comes from tinkering and playing around, from which new forms emerge,” (p. 212). The quote, therefore, insists the fact that drama plays a significant role in the development of creative skills among children.
The Main Exposition of Data
Findings of the Search Process
The current systematic review uses seven articles that were obtained from the databases reported previously in this study. The schematic diagram (figure 1) summarizes the search process of the articles, which are included in the review.
Figure 1 : the schematic diagram of the search process for articles included in the review
According to figure 1, the initial search process resulted in thirty-three studies, which were then narrowed down to twenty after the author filtered them by relevance to the topic of the research. The number of potential studies for inclusion dropped further after the application of a second filter, the dates of their publication, which resulted in only sixteen studies, which were further narrowed down to twelve and seven following the application the relevance to the current research interests and the random sampling method. Table 1 highlights the details of the seven articles included in this review.
| Author(s) | Title | Date of Publication | Database | Region | Journal | Type of Study | Objective(s) | Subjects | Findings |
| United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) | Learning through play: Strengthening learning through play in early childhood education programmes | October, 2018 | Humanitarian (unicef.org) | Not specified | Not applicable | Explanatory qualitative study | To describe the role of play in early childhood educational programs | Not specified | Play improves children’s creativity, especially when they interact with their environments freely |
| Sharp | Developing young children's creativity, what can we learn from research | 2004 | Humanitarian (National Foundation for Educational Research) | UK | Not applicable | Explanatory qualitative | To connect theory on creativity to practice and provide implications for practice for professionals working in early childhood settings | Not specified | Creative environments of learning influence imaginative play, especially pretend play, which translates to creativity in the children |
| Kiewra and Veselack | Playing with Nature: Supporting Preschoolers' Creativity in Natural Outdoor Classrooms | 2016 | Ebscohost | The United States | International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education | Qualitative case study | To appraise the effects of outdoor activities on children’s creativity and imagination | Pre-scholars aged between three and five years |
Outdoor activities enhance creativity among children Predictable spaces, open-ended materials, ample time, and caring adult observant influence the development of creativity |
| Møller | Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children's Play with Different Toys | 2015 | ProQuest | Denmark | American Journal of Play | Comparative qualitative analysis | To study the effect of transformative play on the development of imagination and creativity among children | Children in kindergarten in Denmark | Transgressing children’s play activities always results in imagination |
| McClain and Vandermaas-Peeler | Outdoor Explorations with Preschoolers: An Observational Study of Young Children's Developing Relationship with the Natural World | 2016 | PsycINFO | The United States | International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education | Longitudinal | To study the relationship between and an understanding of pre-schoolers and their environments through play | Eleven pre-scholars who played under the watch of their teacher in a social park |
Children in outdoor activities demonstrated better understanding of their environment, generated important scientific theories and discoveries, and participated in programs that protect the environment Teachers provided the needed guidance to the children |
| Whitebread et al. | The role of play in children's development: a review of the evidence | 2017 | Humanitarian (The LEGO Foundation) | Not specified | Not applicable | Explanatory | To describe the role of play in the development of creativity and imagination among pre-school children | Not specified | Creative play enhances creativity and imagination |
| Dere | Investigating the Creativity of Children in Early Childhood Education Institutions | 2019 | Medline | Turkey | Universal Journal of Educational Research | Longitudinal | To investigate factors the influence creativity among children in early childhood learning institutions | 184 children in preschool settings in Ankara | Free play enhances creativity |
Table 1 : a detailed summary of the systematic search of literature for inclusion in the analysis
Discussion
All the studies included in this review (n=7) are qualitative and they all give evidence of the importance of different outdoor activities in the development of creative skills among children at all levels of learning, including those in pre-school. Importantly, the literature reports that teachers and other persons involved in childcare emphasize on their inclusion in creative play activities. The consensus among researchers on the role of drama and other creative activities of play in building creativity, however, does not imply that teachers and parents alike in charge of early childhood development should only emphasize play. Some of the reviewed studies, including McClain and Vandermaas-Peeler (2016) and Kiewra and Veselack (2016), place responsibility on teachers to promote the development of supportive environments of play. Precisely, the cited authors argue that teachers have a duty to play in structuring the play activities, yet they should restrict the children in their engagement with the activities. As Kiewra and Veselack argue, teachers should vary the play activities if they must enhance creativity, and in most cases, they should strive to provide the relevant play material. Importantly allowing the children to interact freely with their environments is the most important way that the reviewed studies propose for improving creativity among the children. While none of the studies mention the transition from information to conceptual age, it must be noted that the relationship between creativity and the transition that the literature review underscored implies that drama and other forms of creative play influence the phenomenon.
Conclusion
This study has importantly described the relationship between drama and associated play activities in the transition of pre-schooling children from the information age to the conceptual age. As noted, the transition depends on the ability of children to develop creative skills that enhance the control of the children of the environments in which they thrive. Creative play, it has been described, nurtures the ability of the children to solve problems as they interact with their environments, which is why teachers and parents alike have three duties to play. First, they should emphasize outdoor activity, help the children in participating while avoiding restricting what they do, and varying the play activities, as literature has described.
References
Biddle, K. A. G., Garcia-Nevarez, A., Henderson, W. J. R., & Valero-Kerrick, A. (2013). Early childhood education: becoming a professional . New York, NY: Sage.
Dere, Z. (2019). Investigating the creativity of children in early childhood education institutions. Universal Journal of Educational Research , 7 (3), 652-658.
Grossman, L. S. (2017). Eager to learn: Educating our preschoolers. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics , 22 (6), 441-442.
Huitt, W. (2013, October). Success in the conceptual age: Another paradigm shift. In 32nd Annual Meeting of the Georgia Educational Research Association, Savannah, GA, October (Vol. 26).
In Heider, K. L., & In Jalongo, M. R. (2015). Young children and families in the information age: Applications of technology in early childhood . New York, NY: Springer.
Kiewra, C., & Veselack, E. (2016). Playing with nature: Supporting preschoolers' creativity in natural outdoor classrooms. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education , 4 (1), 70-95.
McClain, C., & Vandermaas-Peeler, M. (2016). Outdoor explorations with Preschoolers: An observational study of young children's developing relationship with the natural world. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education , 4 (1), 37-53.
Møller, S. J. (2015). Imagination, Playfulness, and creativity in children's play with different toys. American Journal of Play , 7 (3).
National Research Council. (2016). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school: Expanded edition . National Academies Press.
Sharp, C. (2004). Developing young children's creativity, what can we learn from research. Retrieved from https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/55502/55502.pdf
United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) (2018, October). Learning through play: Strengthening learning through play in early childhood education programmes. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/UNICEF-Lego-Foundation-Learning-through-Play.pdf
Whitebread, D., Neale, D., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Solis, S. L., Hopkins, E. & Zosh, J. (2017). The role of play in children's development: a review of the evidence . LEGO Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.legofoundation.com/media/1065/play-types-_-development-review_web.pdf
