Digital education through guided pretend play

Background: The importance of play for children and its potential for learning are widely recognized. However, it is contested whether teachers should guide play, particularly pretend play, and how guided pretend play supports children’s agency and learning. In this study, pretend play is employed in (unplugged) digital education and the teacher’s guidance and children’s involvement are examined to answer the following questions: what roles do teachers take on during guided pretend play and how do they enable children’s learning about digitalization and digital transformation?
Aims: This qualitative study examines how teachers guide pretend play in ways that support learning, focusing on the topic of digitalization and digital transformation.
Sample: Fifteen teachers took part in the study and implemented the pretend play suggestions in their kindergartens with children aged from four to six years.
Method: The pretend play was filmed. The video data were structured and sequences of teachers joining in the pretend play and guiding from within were selected. These sequences were analysed in-depth using multimodal interaction analysis.
Results: The results indicate that teachers guide pretend play from within by taking on different roles (play leader or co-player). Teachers model within pretend play, for example, by assigning tasks or thinking aloud, and provide scaffolding, encouraging children’s learning about digitalization and digital transformation.
Conclusion: Through co-playing and leading, teachers support a prolonged and in-depth joint focus, as well as the agency of the children. Such guided play is termed “sustained shared playing” and has great potential for learning.