Postdevelopmental Approaches to Play (Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350439517 ISBN 13: 9781350439511

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026

Synopsis

This book deconstructs traditional developmentalist logic around play and explores play in the broadest sense. It deconstructs traditional developmentalist logic around play where the focus is on what play enables children’s bodies and brains to do and become. This book includes contributions from academics and practitioners based in Australia, Canada, Finland, South Africa, the USA and the UK and explores play in the broadest sense, making space for the myriad forms that play takes for both children and adults connected to children in childhood contexts. By broadening the definition and being open to the ways that play emerges through research and pedagogy this book disrupts and extends existing ideas (and practices) in early childhood. The contributors offer alternative ways of thinking about play in childhood, including those emerging from indigenous, posthumanist, feminist new materialist, social semiotic, socio-cultural, aesthetic and multimodal approaches to childhood.

About this title

About the Authors

Jayne Osgood is Professor of Education at Middlesex University, UK and Visiting Professor at Oslo Met University, Norway.

Victoria de Rijke is Professor of Education at Middlesex University, UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350439517
• ISBN 13: 9781350439511
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 156
• Editor: Osgood Jayne