Pretend Play and Literacy Learning in One Early Childhood Classroom

This study explored how in the imagined spaces of pretend play, children and adults together engaged in literacy practices. Specifically, this study sought to find out: 1. When and how does children’s pretend play create opportunities for children to learn literacy practices? 2. When teachers play with children: · How can teachers mediate literacy learning? · How do children mediate their own literacy learning? In order to collect data with breadth as well as depth an ethnographic approach was employed where I attempted to gain a comprehensive view of the social interactions, behaviors and beliefs of this primary classroom over a period of ten months (Moss, 1992). Utilizing an ethnographic approach meant that the results were not predetermined by a hypothesis, but rather were uncovered through what actually happened in the classroom. Participant observation and prolonged engagement were used to ensure continual reflection and collaboration with teachers and children in the daily life of the classroom. I engaged in a recursive and cyclical process of research; selecting modes of inquiry and questions, collecting and recording data, analyzing and interpreting data continuously throughout the study. Over the course of the study I identified that pretend play creates zones of proximal development. During pretend play, children engage in literacy practices. When I played the children, we engaged in some of the same literacy practices but we were able to extend those practices as we shifted from the imagined space in an imagined authoring space. In an imagined authoring space, with my assistance the children were able to use literacy beyond the decontextualized skills of the everyday classroom.