Teacher participation in young children’s dramatic play

Socio-dramatic play is an everyday occurrence in early childhood education as children create narratives together in shared imagined worlds. The teacher’s role in this type of play is less clear and this paper draws on a study using Lindqvist’s “playworlds” approach to gain insight into how teachers participate in children’s play. In applying Kravtsov and Kravtsova’s concept of children’s “double subjectivity” in dramatic play, the paper argues that teachers can also maintain dual affect roles—those of teacher outside the play, and co-player within the play—to co-create with children in their dramatic play narratives. In this study, four teachers in Melbourne, Australia participated in weekly playworlds with the researcher in their kindergarten rooms, resulting in identification of a third affect role for teachers—that of “public performer.” This third affect was found to hinder teachers’ capacity to maintain simultaneous subject positions of themselves as teacher and a co-player, thereby minimizing the improvised narrative trajectory and potential of the dramatic play. We argue this third affect should be acknowledged to support teacher participation in children’s play.