Play = Learning : How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth - Softcover

Singer, Dorothy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199733821 ISBN 13: 9780199733828

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, 2009

Synopsis

Why is it that the best and brightest of our children are arriving at college too burned out to profit from the smorgasbord of intellectual delights that they are offered? Why is it that some preschools and kindergartens have a majority of children struggling to master cognitive tasks that are inappropriate for their age? Why is playtime often considered to be time unproductively spent?

In Play=Learning, top experts in child development and learning contend that the answers to these questions stem from a single source: in the rush to create a generation of Einsteins, our culture has forgotten about the importance of play for children's development. Presenting a powerful argument about the pervasive and long-term effects of play, Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek urge researchers and practitioners to reconsider the ways play facilitates development across domains. Over forty years of developmental research indicates that play has enormous benefits to offer children, not the least of which is physical activity in this era of obesity and hypertension. Play provides children with the opportunity to maximize their attention spans, learn to get along with peers, cultivate their creativity, work through their emotions, and gain the academic skills that are the foundation for later learning. Using a variety of methods and studying a wide range of populations, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the powerful effects of play in the intellectual, social, and emotional spheres.

Play=Learning will be an important resource for students and researchers in developmental psychology. Its research-based policy recommendations will be valuable to teachers, counselors, and school psychologists in their quest to reintroduce play and joyful learning into our school rooms and living rooms.

About this title

About the Author

Dorothy G. Singer received her doctorate in School Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is Senior Research Scientist, Department of Psychology, Yale University. She is also Co-Director, with Jerome L. Singer, of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center. An expert on early childhood development, television effects on youth, and parent training in imaginative play, she has written 20 books and over 150 articles. Her latest books with Jerome L. Singer are Handbook of Children and the Media, Make-Believe: Games and Activities for Imaginative Play, and Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age. She co-edited, with Edward F. Zigler and Sandra J.Bishop-Josef, Children's Play: Roots of Reading, which was selected for CHOICE's Outstanding Academic Title list. She co-authored, with Kathy Kirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Laura E. Berk, A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence (OUP 2009).

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199733821
• ISBN 13: 9780199733828
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288