The fine (and important) points of guided play

In a November 2015 article in Phi Delta Kappan. Fuson et al. propose a variety of strategies for involving young students in math education, merging our best current understanding of what children need to succeed in school with our knowledge of how children learn best — when they are joyfully engaged in meaningful activities.

We wholeheartedly agree with Fuson and colleagues’ approach and applaud these authors for embracing an educational strategy that avoids the false dichotomy of didactic instruction and free play. Because their proposals fit so naturally with our own work (e.g., Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Kittredge & Klahr, in press, Current Directions in Psychological Science; Toub, Rajan, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2016, Evolutionary Perspectives on Child Development and Education; Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2013, Mind, Brain, and Education), we were puzzled to have our position so mischaracterized in their paper.

Writing about our own Kappan piece on guided play (May 2015), Fuson et al. claim that we use “strong and limiting language about other types of activities in the preK classroom,” saying that we “characterize most adult interactions with children who are playing as exerting harmful control that interferes with children’s autonomy.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The original intent of our article was precisely to delineate ways in which adults could interact with children in order to respect their autonomy and most fruitfully encourage them to discover important learning goals. We wrote,