26.9: Inclusive Play

Inclusion and Playing

The literature points out that young children move from less complex types of play, such as solitary play, to more complex, partner-dependent types of play, such as parallel play, associative play, or cooperative play (Rubin et al., 1976; Jamison et al., 2012). Typically, developing children can progress from simple to more complex types of play without special teacher support. However, children with disabilities may experience restrictions in attending and in being engaged in activities requiring more complex levels of social play (Sigafoos et al., 1999). They may need adequate support from their environments to spend more time engaged in more complex social interactions with their peers. Literature shows that the social development of children with disabilities and their later social success can be significantly influenced by early interventions targeting social play between children with disabilities and their typically developing peers (Ivory and McCollum, 1999; Craig-Unkefer and Kaiser, 2002; Guralnick et al., 2006). As key elements of children's social environments, both peers and teachers can actively facilitate participation in all types of social play. In fact, beside children's characteristics, a diversity of environmental factors which can affect children's social play are highlighted in the literature, namely classroom characteristics (e.g., toys characteristics, the existence of learning/activity centers), and the types of teacher interactions (Ivory and McCollum, 1999; Guralnick et al., 2006).[1]

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[1] Coelho V and Pinto AI (2018) The Relationship between Children’s Developmental Functioning and Participation in Social Activities in Portuguese Inclusive Preschool Settings. Licenced (CC BY).