Thesis (MA--Art and Design) -- Auckland University of Technology.

Play is viewed as essential to learning and development in early years education and underpins curriculum guidance despite there being limited empirical evidence to support this viewpoint. Play is traditionally defined from an adult perspective which focuses on the observable act of play. However, the research in this thesis draws on children’s perspectives of play which also gives insight into playfulness, the approach or attitude taken to an activity and it is this which is thought to facilitate learning. It has been shown that children use cues to define an activity as play and three of the studies employed experimental methodology to utilise these cues and create different practice conditions for children to carry out a convergent problem solving task. Results from these studies showed that children assigned to playful practice conditions exhibited superior performance when solving a task and behaviours conducive to learning compared to children in formal practice conditions. Furthermore, the cue of adult presence was shown to be critical in facilitating improved performance and learning behaviours although this seemed dependent upon whether individual children used the cue of adult presence in making play and not play distinctions. The final study sought to identify how the cue of adult presence might develop through examining adult-child interactions in the classroom environment. In addition, practitioners were interviewed about their understandings of play and learning to see how this might affect their interactions with children. Findings from this study showed that practitioners who were confident in their understanding of play and learning were more likely to provide children with choice and control in their activities and engage with children as play partners. Overall, the findings from this research contribute to the literature in this field by providing empirical evidence for the benefits of playful practice and have implications for practice in early years settings.

Orientador: Dagmar Aparecida Cynthia França Hunger / Banca: Fernando Donizete Alves / Banca: Denise Aparecida Correa / Resumo: Ao considerar as brincadeiras de pular corda na perspectiva cultural, estaremos favorecendo para a sua preservação enquanto patrimônio histórico das culturas infantis e contribuindo para que a criança se sinta parte do processo dessas brincadeiras. Nesse sentido foi firmada uma problemática: "Como os professores têm trabalhado as brincadeiras de pular corda, pertencente aos Jogos e Brincadeiras Tradicionais, considerando-a como patrimônio histórico cultural da infância ao receber as crianças no Ensino Fundamental/Anos Iniciais?" Assim, objetivou-se analisar e disseminar as brincadeiras de pular corda na infância das crianças das Escolas de Ensino Fundamental/Anos Iniciais. Como objetivos específicos foram: analisar as percepções dos professores de Educação Física em relação às crianças ingressantes no EF/AI, ao introduzir as brincadeiras de pular corda e evidenciar o processo de ensino aprendizagem desses professores; constatar como foram essas brincadeiras na infância dos avós que possuem vínculo com os alunos do 1º ano e 2º ano de uma das escolas; elaborar um vídeo, contendo a história de vida dos avós participantes sobre suas brincadeiras de infância, depoimentos de profissionais envolvidos com o processo educacional e com orientações pedagógicas no ensino e aprendizagem das brincadeiras de pular corda, valorizando a cultura evidenciada pelos avós e contribuições dos professores. A abordagem metodológica adotada para esta pesquisa foi a qualitativa. Para tanto, realizou-se... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: When considering jump rope jokes in the cultural perspective, we will be favoring its preservation as a historical heritage of children's cultures and contributing to the child feeling part of the process of these games. In this sense, a problem was established: "How have teachers played the jumping rope games belonging to Traditional Games and Games, considering it as a historical cultural patrimony of childhood when receiving children in elementary school?", the objective was to analyze and disseminate the jumping rope play in the childhood of elementary school children. The specific objectives were: to analyze the perceptions of Physical Education teachers in relation to incoming children in EF / AI, by introducing the jumping jump rope and to highlight the learning process of these teachers; to verify how these games were in childhood of the grandparents who have bond with the students of the first year and the second year of one of the schools; to elaborate a video, containing the life history of the participating grandparents about their childhood games, testimonials of professionals involved with the educational process and with pedagogical guidelines of the process of teaching and learning the jumping rope jokes, valuing the culture evidenced by the grandparents and contributions of teachers. The methodological approach adopted for this research was qualitative. For that, the literature review was performed, using as data collection instruments the semi-structured in... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF RORY LEAHY, for the Master of Fine Arts degree in THEATER, presented on *MARCH 28, 2017, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: JOURNEY TOWARDS ADEQUACY: THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS OF TORAK THE INADEQUATE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Jacob Juntunen This thesis documents the development of my play Torak The Inadequate from its earliest conception to its full production performed by the SIUC Department of Theater in its Christian H. Moe Laboratory space in March of 2017. The play is a synthesis of pulp fantasy, social commentary, and comedy that tells the story of a young hunter-gatherer living in ancient times named Torak, who with his unlikely companions Ragnor and Belit, must journey across the prehistoric world to find a new home. Chapter One explores the play’s beginnings, influences from other stories and genre elements and rough outline. Chapter Two concerns the writing and revision processes themselves. Chapter Three deals with the pre-production of the SIUC rendition of the show. Chapter Four details the production, from auditions to performance. Chapter Five is an artistic autobiography in which I put Torak in the larget context of my work both before my MFA program and after. The production script of Torak as well as production photos will serve as appendices.

In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, with the exception of England, each county has their own Government play policy or strategy. Each document identifies the importance of children’s play in all areas of their lives. These policies and strategies are based on a definition of play being freely-chosen by the child. This is an adult generated definition of play, based on rhetoric with little research from a child’s perspective as to whether being freely chosen is a defining characteristic. The social construction of childhood stresses the importance of children as co-constructors of their lives; however children’s voices and views are not always represented accurately in policy development and policy implementation. There is already conflict in policy development and subsequent implementation of policy by practitioners in other areas of children’s lives, for example in early years education. This conflict may emerge in implementing play policies and strategies based on adult generated definitions around choice rather than a child’s perception of whether and in what ways, choice is important. This thesis investigated children’s levels of perceived choice in their free play when playing at home, in the school playground and the out of school club. The aims of the research were: What do children choose to play at home, in the school playground and the out of school club? How much choice do children perceive in these self-defined play activities? Does children’s perception of choice differ across context? Does children’s perception of choice differ in relation to social context? This thesis adopted a critical realism approach within an ecosystemic theoretical framework using a mixed-method sequential two study process. Study 1 was quantitative and involved the development a self-administered questionnaire, the Play Detective Diary. The Play Detective Diary allowed children to record who they played with and who made decisions in the play. Study 2 was both quantitative and qualitative where an experimental procedure was developed, the Manipulation of Affordance Scenario Task (MAST). This pictorial based task manipulated the structural, functional and social affordances of children’s play and children’s responses about choice were recorded through interviews. The results from both studies found that children’s perception of choice varied across context (home, school playground and out of school club) and the variation in choice was strongly influenced by who children were playing with. When the structural, social and functional affordances were manipulated there was a reduction in choice as a result of; other people controlling the play (being told what to do and takes over play); the play activity being inhibited (play being distracted and lack of resources) and; the play space being limiting (play space too small and play space specific to the play activity). When playing with other children or with adults there was an increase in the perceived level of choice in relation to social affordances only. Children described this as being due to their play being enhanced (more variety and provides support) or the child feeling as though they were able to dominate the play (tell others what to do). The reasons children gave for changes in their perceived level of choice most often related to functional-social affordance reasons; this is a combination of the activity and the people involved in the activity.The investigation of choice in children’s play showed children perceived a variation in perceived choice in relation to context and who is involved in their play. Children do not need to have all the choice on what, how, who, when and where they play. Children have to exercise and negotiate choice in their play, and this aspect is important with respect to play policy and strategy development, and subsequent implementation through professional practice. The social construction of childhood revolves around participation, decision making and children being active agents in the process. By providing children a voice and allowing their perceptions to be explored, this can aid in policy development, and in turn support professional practice and reduce potential conflict between policy development and implementation. This is discussed in relation to children’s rights, play theory and play policy and practice across children’s services. A choice continuum is proposed to support children’s play across different professional contexts.

The thrust of this study was to adapt the microcounseling paradigm to the skills utilized in play therapy. The basic problem was to teach prepracticum master's level counseling students three skills necessary to successful play therapy: limit setting, reflection of behavior statements, and reflection of feeling statements.

This diploma thesis compares Grails and Play frameworks. The main goal of the thesis is to provide its readers a comprehensive view of benefits and disadvantages of the two frameworks using thorough comparison.In the first part of the thesis Grails and Play are introduced. In the next part the author defines criteria for comparison and analyses the sample application. The crucial part of this work is the comparison of the frameworks and their results. This work is intended to make the decision proces easier for developers who wants to choose one of these frameworks for their projects.

Le paludisme est une vieille endémie tropicale bien connue, dont les moyens de prévention, de lutte, voire d’éradication sont aujourd’hui bien vulgarisés. Au Cameroun pourtant, il continue de sévir, faisant chaque année plus de victimes et de morts que toutes les autres maladies. Au vu des efforts consentis pour la contenir, nous avons choisi d’interroger les échanges discursifs entre les acteurs de la communication sociale sur le paludisme pour expliquer la persistance d’une situation aussi paradoxale. Cette maladie est, en effet, au cœur de nombreux échanges, faisant intervenir des représentations scientifiques et des représentations sociales séculaires des populations. En fonction des acteurs, l’on distingue ainsi : des discours internationaux et des discours nationaux sur cette maladie. Les seconds sont constitués principalement de discours médicaux (produits par les experts tant de la médecine conventionnelle que ceux de la médecine traditionnelle), de discours économiques et politiques. L’examen de la construction de ces discours montre que les discours nationaux sont l’adaptation des grandes orientations adoptées au niveau mondial pour la lutte contre l’endémie. Ces discours répondent, par ailleurs, aux exigences économiques, de santé publique, de mobilisation des fonds et de mobilisation sociale liés à la lutte contre le paludisme.L’analyse de ces discours a permis de déceler plusieurs entraves à la prévention du paludisme : le jeu des protagonistes de la lutte et la promotion de méthodes de prévention impuissantes à juguler durablement le fléau paludique dans le pays. Dans cette lutte en effet, des acteurs, y compris ceux entretenant des représentations sociales néfastes sur le paludisme limitent l’accès des principales cibles de la maladie (femmes enceintes et enfants de moins de 5 ans) aux moustiquaires imprégnées d’insecticides. D’autres mettent en avant leurs profits personnels. Enfin, les discours montrent que les méthodes courantes de prévention de la maladie sont celles de protection contre les piqûres de moustiques et non celles de frein à leur prolifération. Elles se confinent au domaine de la santé au lieu de faire de la lutte un problème holistique de développement qui met une emphase sur les mesures d’assainissement pour contrôler la prolifération des moustiques. / Malaria is an old endemic disease which means of prevention, treatment, not to name eradication, is well known and vulgarized. However, this disease is each year the main cause of sickness and death in Cameroon, in spite of tremendous endeavors to fight it. The present research has chosen to scrutinize social communication actors’ speeches on the disease to try and shed light into this paradoxical situation. Malaria inspires a number of discourses exchanges involving scientific representations and aged social representations of populations on the disease. Based on actors’ functions, one can distinguish between international and national discourses on the disease. National discourses mainly include medical speeches (produced and used by modern and traditional medical experts), economical and political speeches. The study of the construction of those speeches shows that at the national level, the speeches on malaria are adapted from global orientations on malaria control adopted at international level. In the other hand, those speeches respond to the economical and public health requirements, as well as to resources and social mobilization needed for malaria control.Discourses analysis on malaria in Cameroun has shown that the prevention of this endemic disease is render ineffective by many reasons, namely: a kind of game played by some key actors of the fight against malaria and the promotion of prevention methods that stand little chance to sustainably get raid of the malaria scourge in the country. Some actors, including persons attached to misleading social representations on malaria, prevent the main malaria targets (pregnant women and under five children) from access to impregnated mosquito nets. By involving themselves in the fight against malaria, some other actors put forward their own interest. Lastly, some speeches clearly show that prevention methods, promoted in the country, aim at protecting populations from mosquito bides while neglecting mosquito proliferation. The tendency is to consider malaria control as an exclusive health problem instead of treating it as a holistic developmental problem, widely calling upon sanitation measures to continuously cut down in mosquito population.

This study explored how documentation contributed to children's symbolic play. The naturally occurring symbolic play of two children, five-years-old, was videotaped in their classroom for four weeks. Edited segments of their symbolic play were then given to the children to revisit and reflect on with the researcher through questions on themes, roles and object substitutions. Each child participated in three interview sessions. The children's thoughts on themes, roles, object substitutions, pretense and play negotiation were described. The children's symbolic play in the classroom and during the interviews was described in relation to the claims of documentation. The role of documentation in children's symbolic play was discussed. Recommendations for future use of documentation and children's symbolic play were made. / Master of Science

No description available.