Play and Early Schooling Across Cultural Communities

Playful learning and its implications for social and cognitive development in children have received considerable attention from scholars in diverse disciplines. The focus in this chapter is on play and early schooling across diverse cultural communities. Topics covered include parents’ and teachers’ beliefs about play and early education, play as a part of parental engagement activities in the development of early social and cognitive skills, implementation of play-based learning in early childhood education, and connections between playful learning and developmental outcomes in children across cultural communities. Within benchmarks of establishing global early childhood education, it is recommended that playful learning should reflect developmentally appropriate objects/materials and experiences of children in their cultural communities, and that more attention should be allocated to health and social justice issues; environmental/climate change; play activities that incorporate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; play and learning other languages; and play therapy in attending to the mental health needs of young children in school settings.