Abstract
This qualitative, 8-month study analyzed first-grade children’s playful responses to literature in the classroom context. The broad purpose of this research was to investigate the ways that children construct meaning as they respond to literature through play as a form of reader response. The findings presented in this paper highlight the ways the children interpreted and reflected upon body image and ideals of beauty and the ways in which they enacted/performed gender and gender roles as they responded to literature through play. These findings suggest that, as critical readers of texts, children demonstrate great depth in their explorations and analyses of gender and beauty through their responsive play, that the potential for play as a form of reader response is immense, and that the intersection of responsive play and young children’s critical literacies requires further investigation, in and out of the classroom setting.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adomat, D. S. (2009). Actively engaging with stories through drama: Portraits of two young readers. The Reading Teacher, 62, 628–636.
Adomat, D. S. (2012). Becoming characters: Deepening young children’s literary understanding through drama. Journal of Children’s Literature, 38(1), 44.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Beach, R. (1993). A teacher’s introduction to reader-response theories. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Blaise, M. (2005). Playing it straight: Uncovering gender discourses in the early childhood classroom. New York: Routledge.
Bohan, J. S. (1997). Regarding gender: Essentialism, constructionism, and feminist psychology. In M. M. Gergen & S. N. Davis (Eds.), Toward a new psychology of gender: A reader (pp. 31–47). New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminisms and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York: Routledge.
Butler, C., & Weatherall, A. (2006). ‘No, we’re not playing families’: Membership categorization in children’s play. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(4), 441–470.
Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Corsaro, W. A. (2003). We’re friends, right? Inside kids’ culture. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press.
Cramer, P., & Steinwert, T. (1998). Thin is good, fat is bad: How early does it begin? Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 19(3), 429–451.
Crisp, T. (2009). From romance to magical realism: The limits and possibilities of gay adolescent literature. Children’s Literature in Education, 40(4), 333–348.
Crisp, T., & Hiller, B. (2011). ‘Is this a boy or a girl?’: Rethinking sex-role representations in Caldecott Medal-winning picturebooks, 1938–2011. Children’s Literature in Education, 42(3), 196–211.
Davies, B. (1980). An analysis of primary school children's accounts of classroom interaction. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1(3), 257–278.
Davies, B. (2003). Frogs and snails and feminist tales: Preschool children and gender. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Davies, B., & Banks, C. (1992). The gender trap: A feminist poststructuralist analysis of primary school children's talk about gender. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24(1), 1–25.
Dávila, D. (2015). #WhoNeedsDiverseBooks?: Preservice teachers and religious neutrality with children’s literature. Research in the Teaching of English, 50(1), 60–72.
Denzin, N., & Lincoln, Y. (1994). Introduction: Entering the field of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1–17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dittmar, H., Halliwell, E., & Ive, S. (2006). Does Barbie make girls want to be thin? The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5- to 8-year old girls. Developmental Psychology, 42(2), 283–292.
Dutro, E. (2003). “Us boys like to read football and boy stuff”: Reading masculinities, performing boyhood. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(4), 465–500.
Dyson, A. H. (1989). Multiple worlds of child writers: Friends learning to write. New York: Teachers College Press.
Dyson, A. H. (1993). Social worlds of children learning to write in urban primary school. New York: Teachers College Press.
Dyson, A. H. (2001). Where are the childhoods in childhood literacy? An exploration in outer (school) space. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 1(1), 9–39.
Dyson, A. H. (2003). The brothers and sisters learn to write: Popular literacies in childhood and school cultures. New York: Teachers College Press.
Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (2005). On the case: Approaches to language and literacy research. New York: Teachers College Press.
Edmiston (Enciso), P. (1990). The nature of engagement in reading: Profiles of three fifth graders’ engagement strategies and stances (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Ohio State University database.
Edmiston, B. (1993). Going up the beanstalk: Discovering giant possibilities for responding to literature through drama. In R. Hungerford & K. Holland (Eds.), Journeying: Children responding to literature (pp. 250–266). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Evans, J. (2012). ‘This is me’: Developing literacy and a sense of self through play, talk and stories. Education 3–13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 4(3), 315–331.
Feely, A. (2013). Picturing an alternate ending: Teaching feminism and social change with “The Paper Bag Princess”. The History Teacher, 46(4), 589–600.
Flint, T. K. (2018). Responsive play: Creating transformative classroom spaces through play as reader response. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798418763991.
Flint, T. K., & Adams, M. S. (2018). “It’s like playing, but learning”: Supporting early literacy development through responsive play with wordless picturebooks. Language Arts, 96(1), 21–36.
Gee, J. P. (2012). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.
Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). Discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.
Glesne, C. (2011). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2, 163–194.
Hamilton, M. (2009). What's happening to our girls?. New York: Penguin.
Hilton, M. (1996). Manufacturing make-believe: Notes on the toy and media industry for children. In M. Hilton (Ed.), Potent fictions: Children’s literacy and the challenge of popular culture (pp. 31–58). London: Routledge.
Hubbard, R. S., & Power, B. M. (2003). The art of classroom inquiry, a handbook for teacher researchers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hubler, A. E. (2000). Beyond the image: Adolescent girls, reading, and social reality. National Women’s Studies Association Journal, 12(1), 84–99.
Kiefer, B. Z. (1995). The potential of picturebooks: From visual literacy to aesthetic understanding. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, C., Enciso, P., & Moje, E. B. (2007). Reframing sociocultural research on literacy: Identity, agency, and power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Martinez, M., Cheyney, M., & Teale, W. (1991). Classroom literature activities and kindergarteners’ dramatic story reenactments. In J. Christie (Ed.), Play and early literacy development (pp. 119–140). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Mattix, A., & Sobolak, M. J. (2014). Focus on elementary: The gender journey in picturebooks: A look back to move forward. Childhood Education, 90(3), 229–233.
Morrow, L., & Rand, M. (1991). Preparing the classroom environment to promote literacy during play. In J. Christie (Ed.), Play and early literacy development (pp. 41–165). Albany, NY: Statue University of New York Press.
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Electronic Review, 66(1), 60–93.
Nodelman, P. (1988). Words about pictures: The narrative art of children’s picturebooks. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Nourot, P. M. (1998). Sociodramatic play: Pretending together. In D. P. Fromberg & D. Bergen (Eds.), Play from birth to twelve and beyond: Contexts, perspectives, and meanings (pp. 165–174). New York: Garland Publishing.
Paetcher, C. (2003). Masculinities and femininities as community of practice. Women’s Studies International Forum, 26(1), 69–77.
Paley, V. G. (2004). A child’s work: The importance of fantasy play. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pantaleo, S. (2008). Exploring student response to contemporary picturebooks. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1938). Literature as exploration. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978). The reader the text the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale, IL: SIU Press.
Rowe, D. W. (1998). The literate potentials of book-related dramatic play. Reading Research Quarterly, 33(1), 10–35.
Rowe, D. W. (2007). Bringing books to life: The role of book-related dramatic play in young children’s literacy learning. In K. Roskos & J. Christie (Eds.), Play and literacy in early childhood: Research from multiple perspectives (2nd ed.) (pp. 37–63). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Taylor & Francis Group.
Schatzman, L., & Strauss, A. (1973). Field research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Sipe, L. R. (2008). Storytime: Young children’s literary understanding in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Steinberg, S. R., & Kinchoe, J. L. (1997). Kinderculture: The corporate construction of childhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Tiggemann, M. (2001). Children’s body image: It starts sooner than you think. Virtually Healthy, 19, 3.
Trepanier-Street, M. L., & Romatowski, J. S. (1999). The influence of children’s literature on gender role perceptions: A reexamination. Early Childhood Education Journal, 26, 155–159.
Vukelich, C. (1991). Learning about the functions of writing: The effects of three play interventions on children’s development and knowledge about writing. Paper presented at The 41st Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference. Palm Springs, CA.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wedwick, L., & Latham, N. (2013). Socializing young readers: A content analysis of body size images in Caldecott Medal winners. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 52(4), 332–352.
Wells, G. (1986). The meaning makers: Children learning language and using language to learn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wohlwend, K. E. (2011). Playing their way into literacies: Reading, writing, and belonging in the early childhood classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Wohlwend, K. E. (2012). ‘Are you guys girls?’: Boys, identity texts, and Disney princess play. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 1(1), 3–23.
Wohlwend, K. (2013). Play, literacies, and the converging cultures of childhood. In J. Larson & J. Marsh (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of early childhood literacy (pp. 80–110). London: SAGE.
Children’s Literature References
Munsch, R. N., Martchenko, M., & Dann, S. (1980). The paper bag princess. Toronto: Annick Press.
Sheth, K., & Ebbeler, J. (2013). Tiger in my soup. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers.
Acknowledgements
Dr. Flint would like to thank the children who graciously shared their insightful reflections and thoughts throughout this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Flint, T.K. Children’s Critical Reflections on Gender and Beauty Through Responsive Play in the Classroom Context. Early Childhood Educ J 48, 739–749 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-020-01039-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-020-01039-3