Relocating the frame of reference for studying play: Reflections from fieldwork in Chinese rural preschools

Abstract

Western play theories and practices have had a dominant role in creating China's current discursive condition for preschool play. They are also essential to current knowledge production about play. However, this dominance tends to be transferred into rural preschools, which have recently mushroomed and demanded play activities. The authors reflect on their own experience in conducting an ethnographic study of China's rural preschools to propose that the notion of “Asia as method” can help to reconceptualize play theories and practices in China. The authors also envision their study as an effort to relocate the frame of reference of play to transform the existing knowledge structure about play while transforming themselves in studying play in Chinese rural preschools.

How should Chinese preschool educators design and implement young children's play activities? This question calls for play theories that can effectively guide educators’ efforts to involve preschoolers in meaningful play. Meaningful play is activities in which children enjoy themselves and develop a sense of belonging, and which adults can appreciate and encourage in a cultural community (Rogoff, 2003). In China, the current discursive condition for play is extensively dominated by western developmental and play theories (e.g. Ding, 2001; Hua, 1998; Liu, 2004; Zheng and Long, 2014). It is an emerging paradigm in China's preschool education that socializes and professionalizes teachers, including rural teachers .

In the past decade, the Chinese government has stepped up its investment in rural areas. A series of three-year action plans has given rise to thousands of new preschool facilities for rural children to receive early education close to home. Seventy percent of public preschools, with 63% of the national enrolment, are in rural areas (China Institute of Rural Education Development, 2019), which has spurred a wave of professional discourse on rural preschool play. The China National Knowledge Infrastructure database shows that, starting from 1981, more than half of the publications on rural preschool play have appeared between 2018 and 2021.

Play is a focus of our recent ethnographic study in China's rural preschools. In 2018, we began this study across different regions during the third phase of the three-year action plans, which aimed at a 90% enrolment nationwide (Ministry of Education, 2021). We entered the fieldwork in two deeply poverty-stricken counties in two provinces—Gansu and Guizhou (Xinhua News, 2020; Zhang, 2020). Our approach was based on video-cued multivocal ethnography (Tobin et al., 2009) to engage diverse rural perspectives on the rapid development of preschool education. We observed children's and teachers’ daily activities, including indoor and outdoor play, and interviewed teachers about how they experienced various play activities.

Many teachers in rural areas explained that they integrated play in their schedule based on the ideas they acquired through two informative and inspiring sources: urban preschool websites and team visits to model preschools in major cities. We shared the joy of the teachers’ learning experiences and embraced the wide reach of urban knowledge of the preschool curriculum. As researchers, we also wanted to do something in return for the preschools that welcomed and supported our study. We bought them colorful yizhi wanju (toys designed to benefit children's intellectual development).

Subconsciously, our donation of the yizhi wanju was part of an effort to transfer urban preschool idealism into rural preschool play activities. Although urban knowledge and support are necessary in making meaningful changes with rural preschools, we gradually became aware that rural knowledge, purposes, and practices should be equally integrated into this idealism. This awareness was particularly acute when we looked at rural children's play in their own contexts and communities.

An explicit rationale for our toy donation was that rural preschoolers did not have enough toys, so these colorful plastic toys would provide a small contribution to the resources they needed. We reasoned that rural preschoolers should be given the same opportunities to develop their intellect through play as urban children. However, scrutinizing our rationale, we recognized a common assumption that had been long socialized into our beliefs: urban preschool education is far more advanced than rural preschool education, and therefore the advances in present urban preschools would be the future of rural preschools.

The theories and research methods we have learned have equipped us with a strong base of western knowledge of child development and educational research. Specifically, our knowledge of children's play provides us with the concepts and language we use to examine children's play in any location. For example, we acquired the criteria for valuing free child-directed play more than teacher-directed play in preschool, and we took for granted the market-driven ideas built into toys that were purported to enhance young children's intellect. We embraced play as part of a universally natural activity that all societies should favor. With this common academic socialization among us, our perspective on play almost unfailingly leans on established urban preschool play practice, while giving an inadequate attention to the cultural and social meanings of rural preschool play practice.

As we reviewed our field notes and videos, we began questioning the beliefs that were consistent with our graduate training and the dominant discourse we found in China's knowledge structure of play . This questioning echoes Takayama's (2011, 2016) self-reflective evaluation of his own contributions to the knowledge of comparative education—that is, as researchers trained in the western tradition, we accept, contribute to, and embody a dominant mode of knowledge production about preschool play. This mode represents a globalized discourse of academic knowledge about play, which is also prevalent in China’s academic play scholarship.

A review of the main Chinese scholarship on play (e.g. Ding, 2001; Hua, 1998; Liu, 2004; Zheng and Long, 2014) suggests that, for three decades, the incessant efforts to advance and enrich knowledge of play in Chinese preschool education have relied on western philosophical, psychological, and educational theories. This reliance has long given special attention to the knowledge structure of the USA, including its federal and state policies. As a result, the wealth of Chinese literature on play has formed a particular pattern of knowledge among Chinese urban preschools. The three-decade-long efforts epitomize what Chen (2010) calls “the West as method”—namely, using “Western experiences” as the framework whereby preschool educators guide their practice of play-based education in China. This framework has indeed established play within the daily routine of China's urban preschools, but it comes with a range of limitations. A noticeable limitation is its insistence on following a rather linear pathway of advancing play in the preschool routine, modeling the advanced urban experiences to transform backward rural preschool play experiences. As noted, the dominance of western play theories and experiences in the Chinese literature has made a strong impact on Chinese urban preschools. It seems reasonable to assume that the urban preschool play experience is likely to help with an evaluation of the educational quality of play in rural preschools.

Like Takayama (2011, 2016), Chen (2010), and others in the fields of comparative education and globalization, we recognize both the growing trend to promote preschool play and the accompanying limitations in the modernization processes of the post-colonial era. Further, we suggest that researchers and educators in the field of play use an additional or alternative frame of reference. This alternative is similar to what Chen (2010) proposes: “Asia as method.” It is “a critical proposition to transform the existing knowledge structure and at the same time to transform ourselves” (Chen, 2010: 212). Chen argues that critical intellectual work must transform the dominance of the western discourse to transcend the aforementioned limitations.

In the case of young children's play, “Asia as method” can mean relocating the frame of reference of play from western experiences to diverse local cultural experiences. These cultural experiences share a history of being colonized by western countries and intersect with one another as an alternative knowledge structure for education, including play. This is a radical proposal, but it is a necessary one to balance human experiences and knowledge structures based on a comparable or shared history. Indeed, it will be a challenge for us to break away from identifying with western play experiences. However, this new theoretical orientation suits the small-scale study we are undertaking—using different regional experiences as mutual references to understand rural preschool stakeholders’ cultural knowledge of play, desire to play, and practice in play.

The need to face the challenge within us is great. As mentioned, due to our own early education socialization, we are naturally more a part of the western experiences than the cross-regional cultural experiences with young children's play. Returning to the opening question of how Chinese preschool educators should design and implement young children's play activities, we do not have a ready answer. However, we want to guide our study with the principles of “Asia as method” to privilege rural preschool education stakeholders’ experiences and interpret their beliefs, desires, and practices in relation to one another and to their own history and community practice across the rural regions of China.