Playful pedagogy: This approach is intended to resolve the tensions between seeing play as something which is free and child-initiated versus viewing play as a means of enhancing academic skills. It suggests ways in which teachers might support children’s play while guiding their learning.
Trust-in-play approach: In this approach (Frost et al, 2012) a teacher provides an environment and materials for self-guided and open-ended play and the children’s play is seen to lead to learning without adult intervention. The teacher might then simply observe the children at play and trust that they are learning as they do so.
Facilitate-play approach: In this approach (Frost et al, 2012), the teacher’s emphasis is on creating an environment for and guiding or facilitating play as a means of achieving specific curriculum outcomes or objectives.
Learn-and-teach through-play approach: In this approach (Frost et al, 2012), the focus is on using play specifically to meet learning outcomes. A teacher’s role in programs adopting this approach is to encourage play as a context for promoting concepts and skills in literacy, mathematics, language, social development, and problem-solving. The teaching is more obvious or explicit than in the facilitate-play approach.
Creativity: Creativity is seen to be an important component of play and also of learning. When children are learning, they are creating, experimenting, and seeing or experiencing things in new or different ways. It is creativity that allows children to extend beyond what they already know. For example, a child engaged in sociodramatic play might explore new roles, create dialogues and narratives, and learn new properties of play objects through using them in different ways.
Mindfulness: Mindfulness has been defined as being aware of, perceiving, or turning one’s attention toward something (Craft, 2002, as cited in Samuelsson & Carlsson 2008). During sociodramatic play, children may be lost on their own imaginations, but if they are also attentive to their environment and the materials they are using, this mindfulness will allow them to construct new understandings.
Possibility thinking: When children are imaginative, take risks, and ask questions in their play they are engaged in possibility thinking.
