1.Read the following two resources on the concept of Theory of Mind:
What are the different views of theory of mind presented in each of the articles? What are some main points of contention or disagreement?
2.Read the description of a play theme below. What connections can you make between this description and Bruner’s theory?
It should be noted that in the program described in this excerpt, there was a teacher who spoke English as well as language facilitators (L1 facilitators) who spoke one of each of the home languages of the children (Kurdish, Somali, and Sudanese).
As a play theme, the marketplace developed as a natural extension of children’s exploration of tea-drinking rituals in their homes. Questions such as, “Where does tea come from?,” “Where does it grow?,” and “What else can we grow?,” led to rich conversations about growing fruits and vegetables and the kinds of produce children knew from their countries of origin. The L1 facilitators brought a variety of fruits and vegetables typical in their respective countries. Cultural artifacts such as hand-woven shopping baskets, banana leaf baskets, wooden fruit bowls, paper currency (Kurdish, Sudanese, and Somalian), and a seller’s vest and hat were also brought into the classroom and made available for the children to explore. A colorful fabric to cover the market table finished the preparation for the opening of the market.
Roles were discussed among the children, teachers, and L1 facilitators. Children decided that they would be the buyers and the teachers would be the vendors. Currency, both from their countries of origin and from Canada, was divided equally among the children. After some discussion, the children decided that the teachers had to have some money as well so they could make change if they needed to. The shopping baskets, too, were divided among the children according to their preferences.
The play began with one of the language facilitators shouting out the different fruits she had for sale. As she held up the different fruits, she shouted, “Fresh oranges and lemons for sale! Fresh mangos for sale!” The children held on to their money and began lining up, choosing different baskets to carry their purchases in.
In their play, the children carried the baskets in a variety of different ways, specific to their culture. Some children swung the baskets over their shoulders; the Sudanese boy, who was the only child in this group born in a refugee camp, placed a basket on his head. One girl carried a heavy basket with both hands behind her back.
Since it was play and not a real market, the children did not pay for their purchases in an orderly way. Some of them pushed their way through to get their favorite fruits. They held out all of their money at once and pushed it into the seller’s face. One of the L1 facilitators demonstrated how to bargain with the money when making purchases. She encouraged them to count it first to make sure they were paying the right amount, speaking to the children from her ethnocultural community in their mother tongue. In applying the cultural way of shopping by bargaining the prices, one of the children said, “How about three not four dollars?”
The children proceeded with their purchases to a fruit and lemonade stand, where they counted their fruits and practiced using a scale to weigh the different fruits. The L1 facilitator, who was the seller, counted the money she earned from the marketplace and told the children how rich she was. Some of the other children wanted to play the role of the seller as well. They took turns putting on the seller’s vest in the market while some of their peers bought fruits. While acting as seller, the children shouted out the various fruits that were for sale, imitating what they had previously seen their teachers doing. Some of the children shouted out what was for sale in their mother tongues.
The children who were the buyers kept running back to get more money from the language facilitators so that they could continue buying more fruits. When the children were done shopping, they wanted to “cook,” so a language facilitator and a teacher helped them cut up their different fruits to make a fruit salad for a snack. Many of the children did not put all of the fruit they purchased in the class fruit salad. A few of the children took their baskets to the hut–kitchen centre and put the food into a pot to make soup. They played in the kitchen area and stirred around the food. The lemons were enjoyed by many of the children, especially the Sudanese and Somali children, who were accustomed to eating sliced lemons with a bit of salt.
The market stand was so popular that one of the children proposed that an open–closed sign should be placed on the table so that the students would know when they could play in it. The language facilitators thought it was a good idea, and made signs in English and in their native languages for the children to post. The children thoroughly enjoyed playing market with the language facilitators all week.
Source:
Kirova, A. (2010), ‘Children's Representations of Cultural Scripts in Play: Facilitating Transition From Home to Preschool in an Intercultural Early Learning Program for Refugee Children’, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 4: 74-91. DOI: 10.1080/15595691003635765
