Introduction

The relations between individual and collective activity become pronounced as children play. In these dynamic contexts, children make visible through their actions the rules and roles prevalent within a given society (Elkonin, 2005a, 2005b). The rules of everyday life and the child’s experiences of everyday practice shape how play is enacted (Vygotsky, 1966), and it is argued in this chapter that this activity in turn leads to a motive for play. This perspective contrasts with developmental or maturational theories of play, that suggest that play is internally driven (e.g. Brock, 2009; Garvey, 1977; Smilansky, 1968). In these theories of play, what is foregrounded is the child’s instinct or need for play.

Children’s natural need for play is prevalent in most textbooks written for early childhood teachers and pedagogues (see Brock et al., 2009, Wood & Attfield, 2005), underpins most early childhood curricula (see OECD, 2006) and is central in many policy analyses devoted to early childhood care, education and development (e.g. OECD, 2006). Many researchers have also presumed a biological and naturalistic view of play where motives for play come from within the child (e.g. Ebbeck & Waniganayake, 2010). Elkonin (2005b) argues against this position, suggesting that ‘the special sensitivity of play to the area of human activity and interactions among people shows that play not only takes its topics from the children’s living conditions but also that it is social in its internal content and thus cannot be a biological phenomenon’ (p. 46). He contends that because play arises out of the social conditions of life, that play is not driven by internal instincts or motives, but rather it is through the child’s engagement with their social environment and their relationships to others and the material world that motives for play develop.