The Role of Play in Danish Child Care
Children’s play is an immensely central part of child care in Scandinavia. This chapter describes how children’s play with peers and friends is supported by the pedagogical environment of Danish child care. It is argued that play is an existential project
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The Role of Play in Danish Child Care Ditte Alexandra Winther-Lindqvist
Abstract Children’s play is an immensely central part of child care in Scandinavia. This chapter describes how children’s play with peers and friends is supported by the pedagogical environment of Danish child care. It is argued that play is an existential project for children and that opportunities to play freely teach children to become part of the social order, to become good friends, and to solve differences through negotiation. Throughout the chapter the environment facilitating children’s play is illustrated with reference to typical Danish child-care practices and research results on the quality of child care. To illustrate how play is a developmental activity for children, an example of a social fantasy play episode is analyzed in order to substantiate the claim: that children’s self-organized play activities propel social development, authenticity, and democratic values.
Introduction Child care in Denmark dates back to the beginning of the last century, where the first centers were established by the church and by the philanthropist pioneers. Child care was play based from the onset, inspired by a German educationist Friedrich Froebel, who named these places kindergartens (children’s gardens). According to Froebel’s views, play is seen as the child’s spontaneous expression of its inner being and as the highest achievement of child development (Smith 2010: 23). In the 1960s, child care became part of the political agenda with voiced ideals on gender equality, driven by sociopolitical developments where men and women both joined the workforce full time. Only sometime later was this societal condition followed by a distinct approach to socialization as a process, not only rooted in the family setting but equally shared between home and child-care environment (Dencik 1989; Andenæs 2011; Gulløv 2012). However, already in the 1970s, the influential book called the 0-3-Year-Old Citizen (which appeared in the latest eighth edition in 1984) argued D.A. Winther-Lindqvist (*) Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 C. Ringsmose, G. Kragh-Müller (eds.), Nordic Social Pedagogical Approach to Early Years, International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development 15, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42557-3_6
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from a feminist and socialist viewpoint that attending child care ought to be viewed as a children’s right (Diderichsen 1976). During the 1970s and closely connected to the growing welfare state model of Danish society, the organization of child-care facilities for the most part came under the administration of municipalities. The system was still only sparsely regulated and legislations passed under the Ministry of Social Affairs – reflecting that providing child care for preschoolers was regarded a social rather than an educational issue. Today, child care has high political priority and accounts for a co
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