The Triangle-Lady and Billy Goats Gruff: Constituting Contents for Learning in Play

In this chapter, we study how contents for learning emerge in play. From a didaktik perspective, it is of interest not only to highlight what contents are constituted and how but also how these contents may be appropriated by children in play.

In our observations of teachers participating in children's play, teachers implement content for learning that are of both academic character and concerns social skills. What stands out is that the teacher takes on the role of introducing the content to the children, but as it turns out, this content can remain isolated from the children's play, or the content is considered necessary for the children to embrace in order to play (on).

Isolated Content of Learning
An isolated content for learning can be found when the teacher asks a specific question or gives the child a task to solve, where it is apparent that a particular answer is expected. The function of asking this kind of question thus is to make sure children have sufficient knowledge of some predefined content.
When it comes to language learning (i.e., writing and reading) and mathematics learning, teachers readily see opportunities to count or spell. However, the content for learning, which is quite distinct to both an observer and participating children, may remain isolated and does not refer to, or is not integrated with, the play. Phrased differently, the content is not sufficiently recontextualized to the play.

CIA:
Once upon a time there were three goats and they all were named (inaudible) (with a dramatic voice) 2 Lisa: Gruff 3 Two children: I'm the middlest. I'm the bigglest [in Swedish: Jag är den mellande (mellan). Jag är den storande (stora)] 4 Kalle: I'm the smallest 5 Lisa: No, I'm the smallest 6 Child: Here, beneath, here beneath is the troll 7 CIA: Yes, but are there three trolls also (with a dramatic voice)? 8 Child: I'm troll In this initial sequence, the teacher and the children negotiate about which roles to play in a well-known story. There are opportunities opened up for topicalizing mathematical concepts for size and order, which are central parts of the story and notions the children are familiar with, albeit here not using the conventional words (turn 3). The teacher does not respond to this didaktikal opportunity; instead, she directs the children's attention to an occurrence outside the story they are initiating: Three can be, three can be, and three can also be trolls.

Excerpt 8.1b: K for K-N-I-F-E
The sequence represented in this excerpt shows how an occurrence that leads the participants' attention outside their ongoing play becomes content for learning. The sounding of "K" has no relevance to their play, but the children follow the teacher in this excursion. However, one child (Nils) makes an effort to bring back the focus to the play they had initiated in the first place (turn 21). He does so, through, in a sense, recontextualizing "three" (letters) to three trolls, relevant to the story.
Mostly, in this kind of occurrences, where the teacher introduces a learning content while participating in a play situation, the children have already developed the skills necessary for solving the task and it can be questioned whether any opportunity to learn anything qualitatively new is offered the children. Furthermore, this approach is in a sense counter to, rather than responsive to, children's play.

Learning Content Necessary for Play
To participate in play, one needs some knowledge of the framework, roles and actions that are relevant. Usually, this is negotiated between the play participants. Sometimes the teacher adds a new item, feature or notion into the activity, which may alter the play-frame and either disrupts the play (similarly to in the previously presented category) or is incorporated into evolving play. These then have the potentials of working as contents for learning (since they may not be known before by all the participants) that are necessary for the development of mutual play.
The following excerpt seems at first glance to be the teacher attempting to introduce an isolated mathematical content into a child's play; quite typical for how mathematical contents are presented and dealt with as contents of learning in preschool (see e.g., Björklund, Magnusson, & Palmér, 2018). The teacher asks for permission to join the child's play, she takes on a role that makes her a participant in the play and she introduces the content, in this case mathematical shapes, but the shapes do not at first appear to have any connection to what the child is playing (a part of this activity was analyzed with a different focus in Excerpt 5.7): In this exchange, the teacher introduces a character that changes the direction of the activity. The participants (i.e., teacher and child) to some extent coordinate, what from a Vygotskian perspective could be referred to scientific concepts with everyday concepts (turns 18-19 and 28-31). It is the child who here (in turn 31) introduces a new mathematical/scientific term; and the teacher follows this up, which is not the most frequent unfolding of communicative events we see in the play activities we have analyzed. The sequence represented in this excerpt is interesting for didaktikal development in three ways. First, the content is handled in a way that directs the child's attention to the attributes of the mathematical shapes, helping her to differentiate not only that there are different shapes with different names; they are different due to their specific features (number of sides and vertex). In this activity, it is not only the teacher who initiates new terms; in turn 31 and again in turn 33, we can see that the child provides a mathematical term for a shape: "square", to which the teacher responds by asking the child to find such a shape among the different ones in the bowl. Second, an aspect with an interest in didaktik is that this example of mathematics teaching is isolated from the child's self-initiated play, to which the teacher asked permission to participate. The geometrical objects are handled by the teacher as content for learning and in the communication between teacher and child, specific features of the shapes that distinguish a square from a triangle are made into a figure. However, the features of geometrical shapes do not contribute to the child's original construction play. That is, the content introduced is not coordinated with the play into which it is introduced, and in effect transforms the play into non-play. Nevertheless, the dialogue about shapes and their features and names returns in the continuing interaction and is eventually included in the play. This constitutes a third and not to be neglected aspect of didaktik: to introduce new content and visualize aspects of the world that the child might not have been able to recognize on her own, and that subsequently will contribute also to the development of the child's play: This section of the activity illustrates how the child is able to show some of her knowing; as is known from other studies (e.g., Magnusson & Pramling, 2017;Pramling & Wallerstedt, 2009), children often say that 'it's like this' (cf. turn 73) and then they show through gesturing or bodily enactment. However, in the nature of educational institutions such as preschool (and school), teachers often challenge children to try to go beyond showing to also telling (or explaining) (ibid.). To go from, and to coordinate, what one shows with what one says, constitutes an important general ability, critical to schooling. Challenged by the teacher to explain what an oval is, the child uses a number of similes (turn 81). From the child's reasoning it is not entirely clear what features of, in this case, a soap and a jellyfish she understands are shared with the geometrical shape of oval. At first, it appears that she intends the shape to be shared between a soap and an oval, but when suggesting that it is like a jellyfish, only a little more slimy (turn 81), she attends to another feature, and one not shared by an oval as such. Still, her explanation is ambiguous, as evident in her reasoning in this way at the same time as using meta-markers such as "a little bit like" (turn 81). It is possible that she here plays rather than provides a straightforward explanation of how she understands what an oval is. The content is introduced by the teacher and some of the concepts are challenging for the child to comprehend and express her understanding of. The child needs both to differentiate between what aspects are relevant to the concept and what are incidental to it (the shape 'oval' versus the texture 'slimy') and how to express this meaning (in words and gestures).
The question of why there are shapes (turn 84) seems to puzzle the child, since she does not respond to it. This kind of question is what Piaget (1926Piaget ( /1951 in the beginning of his research asked children, for trying to see if they could reason in terms of more formal logic. The inherent ambiguity of such questions are analyzed in Pramling and Säljö (2015). They argue that there can be many answers to a question such as what different forms can be used for, but why they exist is far more complex to answer. It is not entirely clear what an adequate answer would be. In the excerpt, the child responds to the situation by returning her attention to her book and her construction play: A square has EQUALLY long sides, but this one… eh… one side is a bit longer than the other. So this is a bit thinner (shows on the short side of the shape) than this (shows the long side) 98. GUNN: Okay, so two sides are a little shorter and two sides are a little… yes, EXACTLY! RECTANGLE (nods). Excellent! Can Musse fit into this now (points at the constructed rectangle)? 99. Siri: Yees The teacher reformulates what the child shows into a conventional term, "a square" (turn 88). In this way, she coordinates the child's perspective and an institutional category (scientific concept). The child then refers to the book she mentioned earlier, and what information about the topic shapes that the book provides, namely, how shapes are made. She gives the example of the playhouse she has built (turns 87 and 89). The teacher then picks up on the idea of how to make shapes and con-struct a rectangle (turn 94) out of two squares, which is eventually reconnected with the original play theme about Musse (turn 98). The teacher and child are going in and out of the play (as if and as is), sometimes discussing specific content to develop their common understanding of (turn 97), which is then used within their mutual play frame (turn 98). This example shows how new content that is elaborated in conceptually developing ways later becomes a part in the child's subsequent play.
That is, what is introduced by the teacher in a rather a-contextual way (vis-à-vis the child's ongoing play) is later recontextualized in terms of the play.
Another content for learning in play emerges when there are some necessary skills or knowledge that the child needs to acquire in order to participate and act in accordance with the play rules. This is shown in Excerpt 8.4, where a group of children and a teacher plan how to play Ninjas and Ninjagos (popular hero figures at the time of the observation): The imaginary fight seems to be troublesome to grasp for some of the children. The teacher picks up on this challenge, seeing it as a content for learning that is important in preparation for being able to participate in this kind of play. She refers to an activity they did earlier, where a waterfall was visualized with hand movements and sound (turn 27). In a similar manner, she addresses the suggested imaginary sword fight that some children tried to explain, by using her body movements and voice to illustrate her being a fighting ninja (turn 29). The content for learning here emerging is how to use one's body to gestalt (i.e., represent) imaginary actions. The skill of pretend fighting without a physical prop (a pivot; Vygotsky, 1978) is an important content that enables the children to participate in the play, and a content of importance to the teacher, who introduced the need of rules for the ninja play, in that no bandy sticks should be used as fighting tools towards another person (picked up by Valter in turn 17). That is, without being allowed to use some kind of physical props as swords, the children face the challenge of how to gestalt sword fighting only with their bodies (embodiment and sound-making). To be able to do so becomes a prerequisite for being able to participate in the play. Making the children pay attention to what a child does, in terms of verbalizing his embodied action in terms of "tell" (turn 14) and the rule that physical sticks cannot be used for fighting, the teacher triggers collaborative consideration of how to give gestalt to a critical part of the play with other means (as if having swords).
Another example of content for learning that turns out to be preparatory for play is shown in a catch-and-run play. There are no predefined general rules to the game and the teacher and the children have to make up the rules and roles. They do this within the frames of an imaginary sea world and the suggestions given make up the rules for the play. The content for learning is complex in this example, but concerns exploring "what sharks can do", something that is part of the framework of what kind of movements that are allowed in the play: In this catch-and-run play, the teacher and children need to establish the rules for playing. They do this by showing and trying out different suggestions. Knowledge, such as introduced by Tom (turn 1), that sharks need water (as is), has decisive consequences for the emerging play rules: they have to move in a swimming mode and cannot enter and chase someone on land.

Excerpt 8.5: Sharks in the Sea
Common to the examples of contents of learning we here discuss is that they concern what is needed in order to participate in a particular kind of play. The teacher has a prominent role in offering different contents for the children to explore. The teacher works in all these examples in ways where she makes the framework explicit to the children and explains (with embodiment coordinated with words) what they mean and how to execute the necessary skills and knowledge. This means that the content for learning is extended in meaning to some children and works as confirmation to other children. In this way, both novice and expert players may be included in the same play.

Learning Contents Emerging in Play
In contrast to the play situations where the teacher initiates contents to be explored, we find another approach where the content for learning emerges within play. This category is further analytically differentiated into: Learning the framework of the play, learning how to play, and developing concepts as part of the play.

Learning the Framework of the Play
We can see that learning opportunities are plenty in play, but what, so to speak, is learning necessary for in these activities? What content is constituted and for what purpose? In some forms of play, such as "house" or "school", where the play participants take on certain roles (parent, sibling, teacher, postman) the content of learning is not only how to play that character but also in a sense the whole of the play (how to act and interact with the other characters of the play): how to play house or how to be at the doctor's to get a shot.
The younger children are more commonly invited by the teachers into structured play, such as rhymes or songs that traditionally follow a certain pattern of actions or movements. The following excerpt is of a play framed by a song about an egg, which is hidden under a cloth, and when the song comes to the end, a chicken comes out from under the cloth after a verbal cue: "come out" (Swedish: "Kom fram"). The child Karin in the excerpt is 2 years old. The teacher accidently starts saying the wrong word "sleeping" (turn 29) and the child is immediately correcting her by saying the right word "what" (turn 30). This indicates that the child knows the song very well even though she is not singing along in this episode. The teacher here introduces a new aspect to the play frame in that she counts "one, two, three", showing one, two and three raised fingers for each counting word (turn 37). The child immediately follows up on the teacher's initiative (turn 38). (in sync with the teacher, raises and lowers her index finger in time with the counting) two, three (starts singing) the chicken… (another child runs across the cloth, making the singing stop) 45. SARAH: (points and counts again) one, two, three, the chicken in the egg… 46. Karin:

Excerpt 8.6c: Singing and Counting
(adjusts the cloth and looks at the teacher who counts, points in sync with her counting, from two) The content for learning emerging in this play is how to play the play in a specific manner. The teacher introduces the frame that constitutes the play. The child follows the initiated acts but then takes the initiative to repeat the play, following the same pattern (turns 42-46). She continues playing the same play on eight observed occasions, following the exact same framework and pattern of acts on her own.

Learning How to Play
In order to be able to play an occurrence of some kind (a contest or a visit to the doctor's) where several children participate, some social skills become necessary (and, thus, potentially contents for learning). Two learning contents emerge in the sequence represented by Excerpt 8.7: first, how a play based on a known story should be designed and performed (in terms of roles, order of occurrences, turns 35-38), and second, the skill to compromise and find a solution to how the story should precede that satisfies all the participants (turns 42-52). In the episode represented by this excerpt, there is not at this point temporarily sufficient intersubjectivity in order for the participants to go on with a joint activity (mutual play). The teacher enters and tries to support the children in handling this problem, which can be seen as one of many ways that teachers are important to children's play. The episode also shows how learning to play in preschool is inherently part of socialization practices: learning how to be with others. Learning the kinds of skills necessary for the latter are not separate from learning to play or learning in play. This excerpt is also illustrative of a known story framing play in a unflexible way for children; − according to the participating children (turn 40, responding to the teacher's question in turn 39) -it has to be played "exactly like the tale is" (cf. Excerpt 6.3, turn 113).

Developing Concepts as Part of the Play
There is another category of contents that emerge when analyzing children's play. These contents of learning are phenomena that are explored as the goal of the play, commonly some novel concept. This seems to be most common among younger children, to whom many basic concepts relating to the surrounding world are novel, but this can also be observed among older preschool children, for example when playing with letters and words. Excerpt 8.8a is taken from a longer episode of kitchen play, where three toddlers and one teacher share imaginary milk and ice cream. Said immediately takes the new question about the amount of milk in the jug into account and explains that the milk in the jug comes from a larger container on the other table (turn 88). The play then continues in a more complex fashion, where the container also plays its role as providing milk to the jug and consequently to the cups. A seemingly simple play among toddlers is in this way extended by the teacher's comment on the amount of milk a jug may contain and the "milk-pouring" play continues. Tim (in turn 114) takes initiative to expand the play content. He was not allowed to use the box or the container that Said is in possession of, but Tim's act of filling up the larger container box gives him an important role and extends the concept they elaborate on in the play. The two last categories of content for learning in play have in common that the initiatives to expand or explore experiences are emerging mutually between teacher and children within play.

Discussion
We have here seen a number of contents of playing and learning being constituted in mutual activities. One thing that we can note is that there is much dialogue between the teacher and children in the play situations we have analysed, something earlier research on ECEC has pointed out as largely missing (e.g., Sylva, Roy, & Painter, 1980;Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2008). However, this is likely contingent on the fact that in the project we ask teachers to try to participate in, and make contributions to, play.
Clearly, what teachers decide to respond to in, or introduce into, these activities has consequences for what becomes the content of the play (see also Pramling & Pramling Samuelsson, 2010) and therefore also for what children can learn in interaction with the teacher and each other in these activities. Sometimes children are eager to be involved (see Excerpt 8.4) when the teacher takes the lead, and sometimes the very element of play is at risk of disappearing, that is, the as-if nature of such an activity, when teachers participate (see Excerpts 8.3a and 8.3b).
A premise for our reasoning is that there is always some kind of content constituted in communicative activities. What we have seen here is that it can vary between a single content for learning that is unrelated to what the play is about; in these cases, in our examples, always introduced by the teacher; towards learning the frame of a play; or contents for learning that emerge during play. Different contents are constituted in communication, for instance values, skills or knowledge that may be more or less specifically related to the goals of preschool curriculum. There are play activities in our data that do bring to the fore an academic content, some of which are discussed in this chapter (see Chaps. 9, 10, and 11, for examples analysed in depth), but content for learning in the observed play settings are often directed towards social skills.
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