Research/articles/books on play in school-aged children

February 20, 2017 5:33 PM

I am looking for research/articles/books on play in school-aged children. Ideally, about cooperative, imaginative play. I have found lots about play development from infancy to preschool age, but what I'm looking for is ages 5-13. Who has studied this period?
posted by xo to Science & Nature (8 answers total)

I don't have links to share, but when I was doing classes for a BA in Child Development, the classes I took that addressed older childhood and play were in the Recreation department.
posted by Swisstine at 5:38 PM on February 20, 2017

Best answer: NAEYC goes up to age 8.

American Journal of Play is one of the leading journals regarding play-based learning in general.

If you have a local/regional children's museum, I'd shoot an e-mail to the director, they usually work a lot with play-based learning folks to design the exhibits and events and tend to know a lot about it. They might be able to point you to very current resources. Most of them go up through elementary school so should have resources up to age 10 or so.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:56 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I would recommend reading the works of the late Vivian Gussin Paley. She won a MacArthur Genius Award for her work as a teacher, much of which focused on cooperative, imaginative play.
posted by brookeb at 7:11 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Iris Opie's The People on the Playground talks about this as I recall.
posted by ottereroticist at 7:16 PM on February 20, 2017

Maria Montessori would be a great resource on this topic.
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:26 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Deborah Meier, a well known progressive educator, wrote the book Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground, which is about the Mission Hill School K-8. I worked at the school when the book was written, and both of my children attended the school. Their newsletter archive is online, and you might find more info there about play in a K-8 school.
posted by momochan at 7:48 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've found Children's Spaces by Mark Dudek a very helpful book and springboard when I find myself designing playgrounds and schoolyards - It is more oriented to spatial experience and architectural and landscape spaces if that's what you're seeking.
posted by unearthed at 1:54 AM on February 21, 2017

Best answer: I would start with a PubMed search. If you put: "Play and Playthings"[Mesh] into the search box, it will pull up all articles categorized under that heading. Then you can further narrow by age by selecting "Child: 6-12 years" on the side bar. If you add "imaginative" or something similar to the search, you'll get even narrower results. Google Scholar is more of a blunt instrument, but a quick "childhood imaginative play" brings up a lot of results.
posted by LKWorking at 7:25 AM on February 21, 2017 [1 favorite]