Standards, Science, and the Role of Play in Early Literacy Education

Abstract

Abstract Play is being shunted aside in early childhood programs in favor of more direct forms of instruction that address the new “pre-K basics” of language, early literacy, and numeracy skills. Although play was once seen as a key promoter of child development, administrators, policy makers, and some teachers increasingly regard play as a waste of instructional time with no clear benefits for high-priority cognitive outcomes, such as prereading skills. This chapter shows how play can help in achieving excellent early literacy instruction for all children — instruction that encompasses research evidence, strong standards, and play in the early childhood classroom. The role of play in a standards-based context is examined and its potential to assist children to meet more rigorous early literacy expectations is discussed, along with relationships between the “science of play” and the “science of early literacy”, noting the overlap between these two complex areas of preschool development and learning, and making the case for research-based connections between play and core literacy skills.

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