tendencies to successfully scaffold their learning. By contrast, environments in which direct instruction dominates set up a different mise for preschoolers, one that implicitly encourages children not venture to far from the specific learning goal at hand (e.g., Bonawitz et al., 2011). The mise en place concept can thus help us to understand why and how pedagogical strategies or combinations of strategies work effectively under certain circumstances. When considering preschool education, we believe guided play presents a superior teaching method, for the reasons outlined above. But a more directly instructional approach has been shown to trump free play and exploration for some learning outcomes, such as science learning in older children (e.g., Chen & Klahr, 1999; Klahr & Nigam, 2004; Klahr, Zimmerman, & Jirout, 2011; Lorch, et al., 2010). Why? We argue that what is needed in any learning situation is the ability of the learner to focus on the dimensions of interest to the current learning goal and to extract the relevant information from the environment. While guided play sets up the right mise for allowing preschool children to do so, direct instruction can be more effective at establishing these constraints for those children who are accustomed to schooling or who have already established a suite of “learning to learn” tools (see also Fuson & Burghard, 2003; Marulis & Neuman 2010). So our answer to the question of why guided play works, perhaps surprisingly, is that there isn’t anything necessarily special about either play in general or guided play in particular that does the work of conveying the academic and cognitive benefits reviewed above. Rather, guided play can be thought of as a metaphor for any type of learning that encourages a learner to be an active and engaged partner in the learning process and that
tendencies to successfully scaffold their learning. By contrast, environments in which direct instruction dominates set up a different mise for preschoolers, one that implicitly encourages children not venture to far from the specific learning goal at hand (e.g., Bonawitz et al., 2011). The mise en place concept can thus help us to understand why and how pedagogical strategies or combinations of strategies work effectively under certain circumstances. When considering preschool education, we believe guided play presents a superior teaching method, for the reasons outlined above. But a more directly instructional approach has been shown to trump free play and exploration for some learning outcomes, such as science learning in older children (e.g., Chen & Klahr, 1999; Klahr & Nigam, 2004; Klahr, Zimmerman, & Jirout, 2011; Lorch, et al., 2010). Why? We argue that what is needed in any learning situation is the ability of the learner to focus on the dimensions of interest to the current learning goal and to extract the relevant information from the environment. While guided play sets up the right mise for allowing preschool children to do so, direct instruction can be more effective at establishing these constraints for those children who are accustomed to schooling or who have already established a suite of “learning to learn” tools (see also Fuson & Burghard, 2003; Marulis & Neuman 2010). So our answer to the question of why guided play works, perhaps surprisingly, is that there isn’t anything necessarily special about either play in general or guided play in particular that does the work of conveying the academic and cognitive benefits reviewed above. Rather, guided play can be thought of as a metaphor for any type of learning that encourages a learner to be an active and engaged partner in the learning process and that
Weisberg_2014_MBE_final_Guided_play.docx