Growing Teachers: Partnerships in Staff Development
by Elizabeth Jones

Chapter 7
Teachers as Observers of Play: Involving Teachers inTeachers in Action Research
by Barbara Creaser

Notes From the Storyteller*

*Here the storytellers are Barb Creaser and several teachers with whom she collaborated on an investigation of play programming, sharing their observations of children at play.

Not long after the four-year-olds made a trip to Yarrawonga Zoo, their teacher, Robyn, wrote these notes as she observed their play:

Tim:We trying to get the croc out.
Tom:Is he biting us?
Terry: Don't catch him, he's got big jaws.
Tim: We're trying to see how strong him are!
Tom:Can I help?
(Pause-moving between cages)
Clark:What's in there, mate?
Charlie: Birds.
Toni: I'm in his (the croc's) cage.
Tim:Get out, get out, he's going to bite!
Tom: No!
Tim:Just 'tend.
Aaron:What are you doing?
Tom:We've got a torch [flashlight] for the crocodile.
Bert:(passing by) It looks like you're busy, guys.
Aaron:I've got a torch for me and a torch for the caterpillar. That's a parrot, not a possum.
Tom:You can pretend, can't you?
Aaron:You can pretend it to be a possum.
Bert: Hey look, the train's ready to go! Hey look, your train's ready to go!
Tim:Let's get our pillows.
Tom:Get two, get two.
Tim:Where do you want to go?
Tom:Do you want to go to the zoo?

Robyn's sharing of this observation was one of the many pieces of data we collected for discussion in our Play seminar. Our discussions enabled us to build generalizations. We found, for example, that there appears to be a recognizable, predictable sequence of events that lead to rich pretend play, among them,

• organizing to go on a trip to have a real experience;
• gathering the props that will help children adopt the roles associated with the play:
• setting up the scene with and without the children:
• joining in the play by taking on a relevant role; and
• asking some key questions of the players as you and they play.

"Children play the real experiences they have with their families in the community, too," Jo said. "Daniel asked me to be his patient last week, when he was Dr. Watson."

Jo:Hello, Daniel.
Daniel: I'm Dr. Watson. Can I listen to your heart?
Jo: Yes. Can you hear anything?
Daniel: No. not yet. You have chicken pox in your body. You can come with me to hospital. I'll give you some medicine. Here are your pills and water. Do you want a smoke?
Jo: No thanks.
Daniel: I think I better ring the nurse. ... Hello, it's Dr. Watson. Yes, she's got chicken pox in her body. No. she doesn't smoke.

"Interesting," commented Judy. -I realize that I hardly ever see pretend smoking and drinking in the children's play. I wonder why not? They certainly see adults doing those things." After further discussion Lyn asked, "Can I show you my videos of the twos' home scenes now?" And so we watched:

(Carly approaches Ella and Alice.)
Ella: Goaway, Carly. We be sisters, Carly warly.
(Carly hovers nearby. Ella and Alice arrange the table and chairs and putplates, cups, and blocks on the table.)
Carly: Mum, can I play?
Ella: Owwah, you sit on my shirt. Cook, cook. I'm mummy aren't I? I like that.
Ella, to Alice: Could you have a drink for mummy?
Carly: A drink for baby.
Alice: You have to put the block in there (cup), and that's the ice.
Carly, to Alice: She said you're the mummy.
Ella: No, I'm the mummy.
Alice: No, I'm the mummy.
Ella: Iam. You're very naughty. Look, look sister, baby's pulling your chair out.
Alice: She's crying, mummy.
(Pause)
Alice: The baby needs a bottle.
Ella: Igot a bottle! I got a bottle!
(Alice goes to the cupboard to get a bottle but stops when she realizes that Ella is happy to feed the baby with an imaginary bottle.)
Alice (holding an imagined bottle to Ella): Here's a bottle.
Ella: I GOTA BOTTLE!

"Do the twos use the home comer the way you set it up?" asked Robyn. "No," said Chris. "It doesn't seem to matter to some of my twos what I set up for dramatic play. They just go back to Mums and Babies and Sisters, and even if there's a nice home comer, they don't want to use it. When I invited them to, they said, 'No. We want to make our own.' And they did." Robyn agreed. She had had exactly the same experience with her fours wanting to create their own home.

"Children don't 'see' the environment in the same way we do," I suggested. "They see it in terms of dramatic play possibilities. A bed in the book comer becomes a boat. Do we move the bed or move the book comer? Can we be sufficiently flexible to allow the children some control over the environment?"

The setting

I have worked as a facilitator with teachers of young children in two Australian states in two different roles. In South Australia I was an advisor for the Kindergarten Union: in Northern Territory I was a university faculty member involving teachers in a research project. In both settings my interest was in encouraging teachers to support children's learning through play.

In Australia the three-year Diploma of Teaching in early childhood education certifies teachers of four- to eight-year-olds. Teachers in half-day kindergartens (for four-year-olds) earn public school salaries and teach morning and afternoon sessions. Some kindergartens are located on public school sites: others have their own buildings elsewhere in the community. Staff in full-day child care programs are certified by a two-year Associate Diploma and work on a lower pay scale. Most programs receive public subsidy.

South Australia: Preschoolers and print

The South Australian Kindergarten Union's 12 advisors, all experienced teachers, were responsible for the quality of environments and programs in the state's publicly subsidized kindergartens for four-year-olds. Within the Union's minimum standards, we were essentially autonomous in our work. Although we were expected to visit eachcenter at least three times a year, we could choose to work more intensively with some programs than with others, and teachers could invite us to do so if they chose. It was sometimes important to work intensively with one center if there were problems occurring. It was equally advantageous to visit some of the flourishing centers where advisors could become learners with the staff team by implementing new ideas. This was the context within which the Preschoolers and Print project was born.

When my fellow advisor Kay Parsons returned from graduate school at Wheelock College excited about literacy development in early childhood, we decided to invite a small group of teachers to become co-investigators with us. This study partnership was seen by the Kindergarten Union as an exciting new initiative that in the long run might improve the quality of many programs for children. Our advisor role gave us access to potentially interested teachers.

We sent a letter to six centers with which we were familiar, selecting them on the basis of three criteria: (1) the director was functioning well as a staff team leader, (2) the program was one that we believed was good for young children, and (3) it seemed likely that the staff would take on the extra work that the project involved with enthusiasm and energy. The staff, the parent group, and the management committee were all fully informed about what the project involved. All six centers decided to participate.

Six teachers and two advisors met in someone's home for about three hours monthly, from February through July. We read and discussed books on literacy development, and teachers enthusiastically experimented with the creation of print-rich environments in their classrooms. The ideas we read about made sense to all of us. They fit into our prior understanding of children's development, although they were discrepant with the belief most of us had entered early childhood education with-that reading and writing were the domain of compulsory schooling, and that preschool children's interest in these topics could be ignored. The readings supported our newer hunches about children, and there was an immediacy in what we were reading about, what we were trying out, and children's responses.

In our monthly discussions the teachers exchanged successes and failures. They arrived laden with examples of children's writing and with photographs of what had been taking place. By the time the meeting ended, the floor was usually covered with layers of papers. We found that children spontaneously practiced reading and writing if we gave them the resources necessary for practice and if we built the need for writing into the environment: for example, if there was a post office comer, there would be stamps, envelopes, writing paper, labels, forms, and pens and pencils. If a hospital was set up, there would be charts, prescriptions, and medical notes. The evidence of children's writing contradicted our past assumptions that preschoolers are too young for writing. For all of us this was genuine discovery, and teachers got positive feelings and feedback about the opportunities they were creating for children. Some of the feedback came from parents, many of whom became at least as excited as the teachers over their child's reading and writing attempts.

This was an action research project, initiated by advisors out of their own curiosity and involving teachers as partners in investigation. When I moved to a university position in the Northern Territory, I took this experience with me. There I initiated another project focused on the topic I had, in the interim, explored in my graduate work at Pacific Oaks College-play.

Northern Territory: Play programming in early childhood settings

Northern Territory University in Darwin, where I joined the faculty following my experience with Preschoolers and Print, offers two teacher education strands: an Associate diploma for child care workers, and diploma and degree courses for teachers of four- to eight-year-olds. As a member of the Faculty of Education, I taught in both programs and thus had access to both schools and child care centers. This was the setting in which I undertook a new action research project, Play Programming in Early Childhood Settings.

The project was designed (1) to document self-directed sociodramatic play in a variety of early childhood settings (ages two through eight), (2) to encourage teachers to be self-critical and to change their practice with regard to children's play, and (3) to discover unifying principles that underlie "play programming" across age settings in early childhood. Partners included the university's Faculty of Education, the Northern Territory Department of Education, four schools, and two child care centers.

The faculty has a research fund to which I applied for project support. This funding met the cost of relief staff for those participating teachers working in child care centers, as well as typing and production of the project report. Lyn Fasoli and I, both full-time faculty members, facilitated the group process and had access to university resources, including video cameras. The dean agreed to give credit for project participation to teachers who were enrolled in the Bachelor of Education program. One teacher was able to take advantage of this option, enrolling in an independent study unit under my supervision.

The Department of Education supported the project by approving the release of preschool and primary teachers for a two-hour meeting each month from February through December. Margaret Reidl, the principal education officer (early childhood), led us through the procedures necessary for approval and joined me in visiting the principals of the schools involved to explain the project and make arrangements for staff release. She also chose to become a fully participating member of the seminar.

As I had done in South Australia, I established criteria for inviting teachers to participate: (1) they were already beginning to use play as the basis for programming, (2) they were open to new ideas, willing to experiment and take risks, (3) they were able to reflect on their reading and practice, and (4) they wanted to increase their awareness of how to use play as a vehicle for children's learning. The teachers had come to my attention as I visited child care centers, preschools, and primary classrooms while supervising university students on practicum. All of them were doing outstanding work with children; the classroom atmosphere and energy immediately conveyed, Whatever is happening here is best for children! I checked my impressions with Lyn and Margaret before approaching the teachers; they agreed that these teachers were examples of good practice.

I invited six teachers to join the project group, explaining that I wanted a commitment from them over the year. All six accepted the challenge. They included a child care director with many years' experience; a child care worker with three years' experience who had just finished her Associate Diploma and wanted something to keep her challenged; two very experienced preschool teachers; a teacher of five- and six-year-olds; and a master teacher who had pioneered mixed-age grouping with a class of five- to nine-year-olds, and who also occasionally had visitors from the preschool and from the remedial class. All of their principals agreed to their participation, and their staff teams became, to varying degrees, receivers of or enthusiastic participants in the teachers' experiments with play programming in their classrooms.

In the following weeks several other teachers asked if they could participate too. In retrospect I believe I should have welcomed them, but at the time I believed that it was safer to proceed on a smaller scale, so I refused them.

Staff development strategies

As in South Australia, teacher participation was voluntary. We were inviting teachers to read, experiment in their classrooms, observe, attend monthly meetings, and contribute their insights as co-investigators. All of us were interested in increasing our understanding of play. In addition, Margaret, Lyn, and I were committed to supporting the professional growth of the adults involved. I was consciously implementing, and demonstrating for colleagues, an in-service model of action research in which collaborative inquiry serves as the vehicle for teacher growth.

At our first meeting we agreed that Lyn and I would visit each center early in the project to videotape play episodes. The surprisingly high quality of the play we saw reminded us how strong is the predisposition to play in childhood. We were able to use these videos in our seminars to analyze and compare children's play as well as to acquaint the teachers with each other's settings.

At our meetings we watched parts of the videos and a film on sociodramatic play, discussed our reading and swapped books and articles, and shared our observations of play episodes. We found that a good deal of debriefing time was needed after each intervening month and that the most important time was that given to participants to share what they had done and what they had observed children doing. The fact that the participants originally had little knowledge of each other's settings seemed to contribute to their interest in hearing about each other's experiences.

From the beginning of the year, teachers were excited about the ideas for provisioning for pretend play that they got from their readings and from each other. Between meetings they tried out new play themes based on children's experiences. Most play themes were highly successful, as indicated by children's instant interest and by their extension of the play over longer-than-usual times. The play was not packed up at the end of a session but allowed to continue from day to day or week to week.

Throughout the year we emphasized observation. We asked teachers to set up opportunities for sociodramatic play and then step back, once a week for up to 10 minutes, to record a play episode in as much detail as possible. The value of the observations was twofold: (1) they required teachers to look closely and record accurately what children were doing, and (2) they helped teachers to name the play honestly, instead of assuming that they knew what children were doing and learning. Teachers commented that observing was one of the very positive outcomes of the project. It was demanding, they found, but it enabled them to see and hear so much more.

Teachers found various ways of making it clear that they were observing and therefore could not deal with children's requests. Some simply ignored the children. Some explained that they were busy observing and must not be interrupted. One wore a hat that indicated that the teacher was doing her important observing. Whatever their method, the teachers seemed able to keep interruptions to a minimum, and it was clear that children grow in their understanding of this role. "Did you get that?" asked one child, turning to the observer and pointing to her notepad.

In addition to sharing teachers' on-the-spot observations, we watched selected video episodes together and collaborated in the development of a format for recording them under four headings: the scene, the script, the action, and the social setting. All six teachers experimented with and refined this observation format, and during the year a large number of play episodes were recorded, providing the research team with a quantity of data to be further analyzed.

We asked teachers to read between sessions and provided books and articles to be borrowed. Because the value of play is questioned in many settings, teachers often capitulate in the face of criticism. We saw it as essential that teachers learn to justify the changes they were making; being able to quote authorities is a useful strategy for this purpose. In fact, our discussions proved especially exciting when teachers had seen children behaving in ways that their readings had described. Theory and practice coming together reinforced the teachers' belief that the changes they were making in their practice were positive for children.

Problems in the process

The project design assumed highly motivated teachers with time for reading and program planning and sufficient confidence to participate actively in discussion and mutual questioning. For the most part, this is what we had. Three of the teachers had 10 to 20 years' experience, and a fourth had more than 6; all were solid in their teaching skills and their commitment to play. The two child care staff were younger, each in her third year of teaching, but they were bright and questioning and responsive to support. We lost one group member, the child care director, when she was promoted to another administrative position; and her replacement. a young teacher, did not attend regularly. She was busy with her new responsibilities and had missed the initial experience of the group's coming together.

One of the primary teachers had been ambivalent about joining the group because of the time commitment involved; however, during the year she made significant change toward allowing children to build and manage their own play environment, remaining unflappable in the midst of the action in a class of 30 children (sometimes combined with another teacher's class of 30). In contrast, one of the experienced preschool teachers made few changes in her practice and was uninterested in continuing for a second year when this was proposed by other members of the group.

Some of the teachers were in control of their programs and able to make any changes they chose. Others had to modify their practice more slowly, hoping that their staff teams would see the positive aspects of sociodramatic play and support the changes they were making. The young teacher of two- to five-year-olds in child care worked with a staff of untrained women who believed strongly in cleanliness and didn't approve of play. They were a real challenge for the teacher, who wailed in one of our meetings, "Why me? Why me? I can't do this." She thrived with our encouragement, however, and at the end of the year she said to me, "Now I believe in it as much as you do." She was eager to continue the group for a second year.

For the most part, teachers did the reading and observations we asked for and found these resources, together with mutual support, very important. Even the 20-year preschool veteran told us that she still gets anxious when questioned by parents; she asked us for written material that she could show to parents to defend her program. The more she gave the direction and control of play to the children, the more she felt the need to convince parents that she was not abrogating her teaching responsibilities.

I also had to convince my colleague, Lyn, that I was not abrogating my responsibilities. I had studied play in depth and was committed to its importance, whereas Lyn was curious, but at first skeptical, about the value of play. I wanted to share the leadership role with her, but it is my style to be a low-key facilitator of others' learning. In addition, I was philosophically committed to involving teachers fully in the construction of shared knowledge. While much is known and has been written about play, there is still much to be learned, and I am very much a learner. I expected to learn as much from teachers as they might learn from me; I was dependent on their daily experiences with children to provide data for my continuing thinking. I anticipated that our sharing would give the teachers feelings of greater confidence and power.

Lyn was different in both her knowledge and her personal style. She was keen to talk about her reading and thinking, and she tended to lead from the front when I wanted the teachers to feel that they were taking the lead. A science educator, Lyn is a fine logical thinker and observer, and she helps me think things through. Our different frames of mind made us a good learning team; they also created issues of shared leadership that had to be worked out in the course of the year.

Finding our voices

Teachers in their classrooms are both too busy to reflect on their practice and, typically, too isolated intellectually; they are doers rather than thinkers. The project seminar met only once a month, but its importance to the teachers was clear. Their need to tell what had been happening for them dominated the beginning of-and beyond-every meeting. By beginning our first seminar with an hour of introductions, we set the stage for this continued sharing. We not only raised many issues that were to recur during the year, we also made it clear that teachers' voices were what we most wanted to hear.

As in traditional college classes, we offered book and film discussions, and our videotaped observations served both to introduce the teachers to each other's settings and to provide commonly experienced play episodes for us to think about together; but the heart of our work together was teachers' own observations. We made it clear that participants' experiences and ideas were the most important content of the seminars. We insisted that taking time out to observe was a legitimate and necessary part of teaching. And in her final evaluation of the experience, one teacher wrote simply, "The best thing you made us do is spend ten minutes a week observing."

Teachers' words and experiences were shared publicly, as well. The teachers were instrumental in planning and presenting a series of two seminars at which they presented information and outcomes of the project. These took place at the university in February and March of the year following the project. The first seminar, on the importance and value of play, discussed research into sociodramatic play by Smilansky (1971) and Fein (1987), and we viewed and discussed a film on sociodramatic play (Lindbergh & Moffatt, 1972). The second seminar included clips from our videos and a panel of three teachers speaking about their play programs and how the project influenced their understanding and practice.

I quoted teachers extensively in my written project report, copies of which went to the university; the Territory Department of Education; colleagues in my "play" network; and the project participants, who were acknowledged by name. Toward the end of the project year, I approached the Northern Territory Children's Services Resource and Advisory Program with a proposal that it underwrite the production of six in-service kits based on our project experience. These kits translate our whole experience into a guide for staff development in child care centers. The kits can be used by a teaching team to take its members through the process of our project: observing, reading, analyzing, and evaluating.

For several reasons our plan to continue the project into a second year with a larger and more diverse group was not implemented, but three of our six original participants decided to continue meeting on their own, moving ahead to a new challenge in which they would compare the emergent curriculum that arises from children's interests to the prescribed curriculum guidelines for preschool and the early years of school.

As we keep discovering, teachers who have found a voice keep talking to each other.

What was taught, what was learned, and what are the implications?

Both projects described here-Preschoolers and Print, and Play Programming in Early Childhood Settings-grew out of educators' compelling questions about theory and practice in early childhood education. In each, a colleague and I sought teachers to engage with us in action research designed to discover whether a selected theory worked in the real world of programs for young children.

We asked teachers to observe children and to represent their experiences in words-oral and written-and in images-videos, photographs, and samples of children's creations. For children and adults alike, representations of experiences make those experiences available for continued reflection and dialogue.

In each project the data we collected together confirmed and extended our theoretical understanding, empowered teachers as knowers, and generated ideas and resources for teacher education. We discovered early in the play project, for example, how much and how well children would play if given some encouragement; and by the end of the year, we were most excited by the fact that a program based in sociodramatic play seemed to suit all of the children observed, from two to nine years of age. One child care teacher declared that every child would play in the sociodramatic mode if given an appropriate environment and adult support. The teacher of five- to nine-year-olds allowed two hours daily for sociodramatic play and found that she was able to facilitate a high level of learning during these times.

Such discoveries by teachers addressed my own motivation for initiating this project. Teaching university students to understand that sociodramatic play is a crucial vehicle through which children learn how to make their way in the world, I had found few early childhood settings where students, on their practicum, would see children learning through play. I knew if I could discover how to influence practice in schools and child care centers, I would be able to offer more appropriate practicum experience for my students. The projects I've described taught me how this might be done.

For further information

Creaser, B.H. (1987). An examination of the four-year-old "master dramatist." Unpublished master's project, Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, CA.

Creaser, B.H. (1990). Play programming in early childhood settings: Action Research Project (unpublished report). Darwin, NT: Northern Territory University.

Creaser, B.H. (1990, December). Pretend play: A natural path to learning. Watson, ACT: Australian Early Childhood Resource Booklets No. 5.

Creaser, B.H. (1990, September). Rediscovery pretend play. Watson, ACT: Australian Early Childhood Resource Booklets No. 4.

Creaser, B.H.. & Parsons, K. (1988). Preschoolers and print: An Australian teachers' project. In E. Jones (Ed.)., Reading, writing and talking with four, five and six year olds. Pasadena, CA: Pacific Oaks College.

Other suggested readings

Almy, M., Monighan, P., Scales, B., & Van Hoorn, J. (1984). Recent research on play: The perspective of the teacher. In L. Katz (Ed.). Current topics in early childhood education: Vol. 5. (pp. 1-25). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Bettelheim, B. (1987, March). The importance of play. The Atlantic, pp. 35-46.

Clay, M. (1975). What did I write? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clemens, S.G. (1983). The sun's not broken, a cloud's just in the way. Mt. Rainier, MD: Gryphon House.

Crowe, B. (1983). Play is a feeling. London: Allen and Unwin.

Dyson, A.H. (1990). Research in review. Symbol makers, symbol weavers: How children link play, pictures, and print. Young Children, 45(2). 50-57.

Goodman, Y. (1980). The roots of literacy. In M.P. Douglas (Ed.), The Claremont Reading Conference 44th Yearbook (pp. 1-32). Claremont, CA. Claremont Graduate School.

Hawkins, F.P. (1986). The logic of action. Boulder: Colorado Universities Press.

Holdaway, D. (1979). The foundations of literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Humphrey, S. (1989). Becoming a better kindergarten teacher: The case of myself. Young Children, 45(l), 16-22.

Isenberg,J., & Quisenberry, N.L. (1988). Play: A necessity for all children. Childhood Education, 64(3), 138- 145.

Jones, E., & Reynolds. G. (1992). The play's the thing: Teachers' roles in children's play. New York: Teachers College Press.

Moyles, J.R. (1989). Just playing. Milton-Keynes, UK: Open University Press.

Paley, V.G. (1984). Boys and girls: Superheroes in the doll corner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Paley, V.G. (1986). Mollie is three: Growing up in school. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Schickedanz, J. (1986). More than the ABCs: The early stages of reading and writing. Washington. DC: NAEYC.

Teale, W.H. (1983). Toward a theory of how children learn to read and write naturally. Language Arts, 59(9), 555-570.

Van Hoom, J., Nourot, P., Scales, B., & Alward, K. (1993). Play at the center of the curriculum. New York: Merrill/Macmillan.

Wasserman, S. (1990). Serious players in the primary classroorn. New York: Teachers College Press.

References

Fein, G. (1987). Pretend play. In D. Gorlitz & J.F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Curiosity, imagination and play. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lindbergh, L., & Moffatt, M. (1972). Dramatic play: An integrative approach (Film). New York: Campus Films.

Smilansky, S. (1971). Can adults facilitate play in children? Theoretical and practical considerations. In N. Curry & S. Arnaud (Eds.), Play: The child strives for self-realization. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

To contact the author, write:

Barbara Creaser, 1 Manchester Court, 31 Barlow Street, Scullin, A.C.T. 2614, Australia.
Note: The kits mentioned in this chapter are in preparation; contact the author for information about them.