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The relations between play and learning in digital environments: the significance of motives and demands

Although a great deal has been written about children's play, less attention has been directed to the relations between play and learning in digital environment (e.g. Falloon, 2013; Kennewell and Morgan, 2006). What we do know is that much of the research into play and learning in the early years has been conceptualized from a maturational point of view (e.g. Roopnarine, 2011) and this view of development appears to also underpin the design process in digital contexts (e.g Giest, 2012; Parette, Quesenberry and Blum, 2010), even though other perspectives are being introduced (e.g. Iversen and Brodesen, 2008). What has dominated the longstanding theories of play has been a theory of development that focuses on predetermined stages or milestones. Central to this conceptualization of development has been the age of the child. That is, age determines what kind of play might be expected or what might develop. In this reading, age determines when and how children play (e.g. object play, solitary play, parallel play, fantasy play, see Pellegrini, 2011 for an overview). Much of this thinking tends to consider play and development as universal, intrinsic to the child, biologically deterministic, and unfolding in predictable ways. But what has been absent from these theories of development is how play and learning are related within digital environments. It is argued in this presentation that theories of play and development that are conceptualised in relation to milestones are not helpful for understanding how new settings such as digitally interactive environments afford new ways of playing and learning. What we know is that the virtual play of young children appears to invite a new kind of play (e.g. AlbinClark, Howard and Anderson, 2011; Marsh, 2010; Singer and Singer, 2005), creating new demands upon children, and developing new motives that need to be better understood. What is not known is how digital contexts actually create these demands on children's play and learning in everyday preschool settings and what this affords for children's development. To capture the demands and motives for play and learning in these simultaneously virtual and concrete settings, I draw upon culturalhistorical theory as first introduced by Vygotsky.