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Some Elements Relating to Children's Play and Adult Simulaton/Gaming

Gilles Brougre Simulation Gaming 1999 30: 134 DOI: 10.1177/104687819903000204 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sag.sagepub.com/content/30/2/134

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SIMULATION Brougre / CHILDRENS & GAMING PLAY / June AND 1999 ADULT GAMING

Some Elements Relating to Childrens Play and Adult Simulation/Gaming

Gilles Brougre Universit ParisNord

Childrens play and adult gaming, each of which are present in the world of education and training, too often refer to different explanatory paradigms. Is this distinction a legitimate one? In what way? This special issue of S&G and this introduction endeavor to provide some answers to these questions, based both on theoretical reflections and on examples given by the authors. The author attempts to demonstrate that these two fields of reflection have everything to gain through mutual enrichment. KEYWORDS: adult education; child development; childrens play; game and learning; play and learning.

Play in its various forms is a human activity found among children as well as adults. Sociologists and anthropologists (Caillois, 1961; Henriot, 1989; Huizinga, 1955) have tended to treat play in a general manner, as a human activity in which they analyze the principal characteristics observed in the age of the player. More recently, Norbert Elias has revived this sociological viewpoint by highlighting the common factors between a child thrown into the air by his father and the adult practicing a sport or watching a sports event (Elias & Dunning, 1986). It is therefore possible to consider play and gaming as an activity that, beyond the various forms linked to age and social strata, translates into the same manner of behaving, the combination of emotion, excitement, fiction, and conviviality that Elias points out in his theory on leisure. However, the fact remains that sociologists are more prone to the study of adults than of children. If their play and gaming theory is a general one, it is most often illustrated through adult-oriented activities. Child sociology, which can take into account play activity by analyzing it within the same perspective, although underscoring the particularity of the childhood situation, is still recent (Corsaro, 1997). It does, however, suggest that childrens play perhaps responds to the same needs for entertainment, compensation, or escape from reality and for the construction of friendly relationships with peers.
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However, where children are concerned, the emphasis is most often put on the childs future as an adult. This leads to play becoming a privileged field of investment for developmental psychology, an approach that is interested in the particularity of the child as a developing being, for example, from the standpoint of his intelligence (Piaget, 1951). Under these conditions, the emphasis is put on that which differentiates the child from the adult. It is within this framework that childrens play has been studied (Brougre, 1995), on the basis of a psychological paradigm. The genesis and development of childrens play are analyzed in a specific manner, and an entire school of thought, relayed by instructors specialized in preschool education (Beatty, 1995; Varga, 1991), put forth the idea that while playing (and this concerns all forms of play, from the freest to the most organized, from pretend play to games), the child learns.

Play and Learning

It is within this framework that pedagogical reflection on childrens play has been elaborated on the basis of a theoretical vision of child development, pointing out the conjunction between play activity and learning. There is a theoretical justification of the educational value of play, even if criticism is apparent in terms of what would be more rhetoric than scientific justification (Brougre, 1995; Smith, 1995; Sutton-Smith, 1997). Childrens play is put into a perspective of theoretical justification that very often overlooks the diversity of the play activities set in place. There appears to be a gap between the general psychological theory and the setup of activities whose educational value is considered to be automatically acquired without having been analyzed in terms of the characteristics proper to each activity. We too often accept the idea that the child learns while playing, often overshadowing the learning modalities specific to each situation. The passage from the play experience in its singularity to learning content is sometimes very mysterious; recourse to theoretical references can have a magical aspect that keeps us from addressing the problem in its singularity. With respect to adult gaming/simulation, such is not the case, as psychological development is little concerned with the adult. Not that there are no theoretical views on adult learning (Bourgeois & Nizet, 1997) that may make reference to the same psychological stances as those concerning children, but they seem to have little direct influence on the development of adult gaming/ simulation that is based on a pragmatic, empirical approach. It is a question of assembling activities that do not all belong to gaming, that have common characteristics in terms of pedagogical logic, and that are valorized not

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according to an idealized perspective but to their contribution to learning, a contribution that is controlled and evaluated almost more than it is theoretically justified. Whatever the links existing between practices and theoretical conceptions, they remain two fields that are unaware of one another, particularly because they are founded on entirely different basic disciplines. On one side are psychologists and specialists in the education of young children fed by psychology. On the other are gaming/simulation practitioners presenting and analyzing their practices. On both sides, we find pedagogical practitioners. But some intervene from a preconceived notion of learning play based on psychological theories (such as todays use of Vygotskys theses), where- as others analyze the practice of gaming and simulation that is taking root in diverse disciplines. These others appear to have few theoretical preconceptions but rather a pedagogical culture linked to the use of active methods whose existence and results legitimize the desire to pursue this direction. If we take a look at the justifications most often given, they usually refer more to practical instruction than what we could call pedagogical pragmatics (Guide Edilude, 1995):
Some concern motivation and the necessity to propose other methods than those used in the school system, an argument put forth most particularly in cases of reintegration of young adults with scholastic difficulties. Others concern communication and interactivity between trainees, between trainees and trainers, whether gaming/simulation should be used to construct the group or to put the accent on communication as such. It can also be a way of valorizing team spirit. Gaming/simulation is presented as being able to translate the complexity of situations by highlighting the interdependence of factors and actions. Gaming/simulation is also evoked for its concrete dimension, the construction of an experience in which general and abstract knowledge may be put into play. We can also put the emphasis on the necessity for the player to solve problems, act, decide, and be creative.

Contrary to the preschool sector, here practice and its demands precede theory. It indeed appears that in both sectors, boundaries are rapidly traced around the relationship between play and learning according to the childhood/adulthood opposition and the relationship thought out in two different manners. On one side, a more or less well-founded psychological theory authorizes the use of play without necessarily inquiring as to the effectiveness of such implementation. On the other, the consideration of an immediate

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effectiveness of pedagogical practices leads to little questioning of the theoretical dimension of such use of gaming/simulation. Through a number of themes, we propose not to reduce this difference but to ask the questions that will open the way to travel from one field to the other.

We Were Children Before Becoming Adults

This first theme prompts us to evoke a continuity: Adults were once children and therefore played childrens games and experienced the evolution of play that children experience. We could submit the hypothesis that without this experience, the adult could not have been a child. But we can imagine children who have not experienced play and ask ourselves if, as adults, they could indeed play. Childhood is the period during which we learn to play and when we progress in the mastery of this activity. Learning to play is learning to master situations marked by the second degree, the necessary metacommunication (Bateson, 1955/1973). We must learn to pretendlearn that things are not as they seem but within the context of a controlled and negotiated action between players, the first form undoubtedly being disappearing games between adults and very young children (Bruner, 1983a). Childhood is indeed the time for constructing this specific relationship to the world implied by play, marked not only by second degree but also by decision, the initiative of the player who organizes the activity, the rule whatever its origin, the absence of consequences (gratuity or futility), and the uncertainty of the results (Brougre, 1995). These are criteria that enable us to delimit play without enclosing it in the restrictions of a definition that is difficult to use. Corbeil (1999 [this issue]) mentions the six characteristics by Weisler and McCall (1976) that very largely converge with those just enumerated, even if we tend to believe that pleasure is a secondary characteristic, a derivative, and that the idea of challenge is rather vague and difficult to employ. In fact, it is difficult for play as a voluntary activity to aim for anything but pleasure, but, far from characterizing play, this is true of any voluntary action. It is difficult, with the exception of certain competitive games with clearly determined stakes, to perceive the challenge in play. Indeed, it is not certain that there is one each time, as the player may be satisfied with an acquired mastery and favor conviviality or cooperation. We can discuss criteria, but we can hardly go from practice to theoretical reflection on practice if we do not have an instrument that enables us to delimit the scope of play among the various human activities. This leads us to specify the characteristics of play, whether it be childrens play or gaming, in the following manner (Brougre, 1997):

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It results in an opening of parentheses with respect to daily life, and it has a specific space and time. It has rules, whether they result from external regulation accepted by the players, a convention between players, or a point-by-point negotiation as the game develops. The two criteria mentioned above lead to the construction of an internal decision-making system that constitutes the game itself, the game in its singularity composed of a series of events. The situation only produces effects within the game and is, therefore, without consequence to daily life. This is a relative criteria taken from Bruner (1983b) that characterizes play by the fact that it minimizes consequences for the player, but the situation involves the specific aspect of being constructed so as not to have the same consequences as a real activity, which we find in simulation. The consequences in terms of learning are another question. It is uncertain in the sense that its result is not predetermined (among other reasons, because of a space in which several decisions intervene).

The period of childhood is one of progressive learning of situations that implement these criteria. The child, particularly in collective situations, progresses in his or her mastery of a game, and therefore, by playing, learns to play better and better. We could have pointed out the progression of the relationship to rules. For us, any play implies a form of rules (Vygotsky, 1967), but there are several types of rules, from rules that are built as the game progresses, to rules negotiated before the game, to those that are preexistent to it as an inarguable corpus. The child (Corbeil, 1999) will increasingly better understand the logic behind rules and the role of the player in the convention he or she expresses. If we are able to participate in games and simulation, it is because as children we learned to master rules. We can even ask ourselves if play does not prepare for a number of learning situations characterized by a more or less explicit dimension of simulation, which supposes mastery of the second degree and rules specific to certain situations. This is probably why the Romans had the same word ludus for play and for school and why the teacher was called magister ludi. Childhood, therefore, appears as the period during which a situation linked to an attitude is set into place, the capacity of internalizing that specific relationship to the world that play supposes: distance, pretending, involvement in an activity whose stakes are internal, the management of uncertainty; and we know that for a child, it is not easy to learn to lose and to understand and obey the rules. This learning will subsequently pervade the adults leisure time but will also enable the use of simulation/gaming for learning situations without having to learn to play. The activity will develop on the basis of all of the acquired knowledge that only appears evident because we do not wonder about its emergence.

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Finalism and Idealization of Play

The fundamental paradox of play remains that the child does not come to master this situation to learn but for the pleasure of the entertainment produced by play. This relationship to pleasure, with its intrinsic motivation, is the most interesting characteristic of play; that is to say that behavior so complex and rich in possibilities is carried out only because the subject finds pleasure in it without it being directly linked to the restrictions of daily life. This is undoubtedly why authors such as Groos (1898), as they could not accept such gratuity in the heart of human life, sought, through a finalistic or functionalistic vision of man often inspired by Darwinian theories, to find a justification in play, a reason for being, more particularly with respect to learning. The most extreme formulation of this school of thought is that of Grooss theory of pre-exercise, which led him to affirm that we do not play because we are young, but we have a youth because we must play to practice. Such a concept results in making adult play very difficult to explain. Why do adults continue to play, and why dont children and adults play for the same reason? This is the logic behind entertainment put forth by some, but that being said, children construct increasingly complex behavior. It is tempting to project a finalistic vision, which considers that play is progress (Sutton-Smith, 1997), that this increased complexity of play is not due to chance but appears as an instrument of development. It is evident that it is linked to child development and that if play becomes enriched, it is because the competencies acquired by the child permit it to do so. The attraction of play, and the accumulation of the mastery of its structure and the possibilities acquired by the child because of his development and cultural learning, explain the fact that play becomes more complex but to an unequal degree among individuals, genders (boys develop their play world more than girls), social environment, and cultures. However, I feel it would be idealizing play to believe that, following Vygotsky (1967) and Csikszentmihalyi (1979), play systematically confronts the child with a learning situation that could only be located within the area of close development; that is, it would involve a task located slightly above the acquired skills. This has led to the current arguments on the use of games in preschool establishments or beyond. Today, several authors (Martin & Caro, 1985; Smith, 1995) tend for both animal play and childrens play to limit the long-term evolutionary impact of play, to give it a value in terms of immediate well-being, of emotional experience, which in these terms can continue, through its effects on the present, to ensure a more harmonious development of the child. That said, it remains that it is indeed a structure of the individuals relationship to the world that is

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being implemented through a specific activity, whose relationship to artistic or creative activities has been pointed out by some. Childhood would, therefore, be the time when a certain relationship to the world is constructed that we call play and that is employed in subsequent pedagogical practices relative to gaming. There is thus continuity with the setting in place of this type of construction during childhood and its use from kindergarten through adult education. If early childhood already witnesses the use of these situations for educational purposes, it is also the time for building this structure, this time for entertainment purposes. Older children and adults will continue to use this structure to entertain themselves. This sends us back to the dual logic of play, entertainment/education from early childhood (Myers, 1999 [this issue]). Entertainment will put the accent on the emotional dimension of the activity, experience, that could be translated through its repetition. Anything that contributes to the increase of emotion (the quality of the design of video games, for example) reinforces the attraction of the game but not necessarily its educational interest. We perceive here a tension between the various tendencies of play activity. Its educational use lies in a more rational approach, implying novelty rather than repetition. But this is less true of young children for whom we believe that play, even in its entertaining aspect, can be a medium for learning. Is this the reality, or is it an idealization of play? As we have seen, there is some debate on this today. Can we learn through experience directly or through work that appears, among other things, during its debriefing? If Wheatley (1999 [this issue]) employs childrens games and is supported by a pleasant experience, he proposes a debriefing for each game to enable the construction of learning. But this childhood of play also constructs a social image of play linked to childhood (Corbeil, 1999), a representation that can be negative or simply childish due to the great importance of play in a childs activity. What lies at the very origin of the possibility of using games paradoxically becomes an obstacle to its use. So, it is important to keep in mind that play is the result of a social construction in relation to what childhood is today.

The Diversity of Play Activities

Several authors in this issue mention the evolution of play according to age. This enables us to escape a simple opposition. There are not on one side the adults and, on the other, children. Depending on the age and skills such as developmental psychologists analyze them, the child does not have the same possibilities of play. This is, undoubtedly, the least contestable and the richest

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contribution of developmental psychology, providing us with a table of the means available for play according to age. Here, Piaget (1951) is an essential reference through his analyses of the development of intelligence that enables the classification of games according to whether they are sensorialmotor, symbolic games or games with rules. We also owe him for a fundamental analysis of the progression of the childs relationship to rules (Piaget, 1965). Other authors as well have and continue to contribute to this knowledge of childrens capacities. The forms that games take are therefore closely linked to mobility skills. For this, games cannot be identical for all ages (Corbeil, 1999; Millians, 1999 [this issue]; Wheatley, 1999). Starting at a certain age during adolescence, childrens activities oriented toward games with rules begin to resemble those of adults, or rather new forms of play activity are put into place (sports, parlor games, video games) that will continue to be practiced by the adult the adolescent is becoming. We witness the domination of the game and the apparition of new forms of simulation that replace the pretend play of the young child. The characteristics remain the same but are expressed in different forms and content. Psychology alone cannot explain this evolution of play if it relies on the acquisition of new skills. It also refers to the social definition of practices according to age: the necessity of signaling growth by changing activities when we feel we are no longer a child or the role of leisure in ones life. Thus, student life, by its rhythms and forms of conviviality, creates possibilities for play that other social strata may not experience. It was a motor behind the recent appearance of new game practices (computer games, role games, Magic cards) that enriched its world in available forms of play. Gaming is a social construction that varies heavily according to culture, gender (girls and women play less), social strata, and the various representations. It is not the same thing to have male students play, for whom gaming is very present, and other populations who have other views and other practices. Mobilizing the game in training is to rely on an entertaining social activity represented and practiced according to age and social environment.

Pedagogical Use of Gaming

It is in this context that pedagogical use of gaming intervenes, and the continuity we mentioned shatters in relation to the representations, pedagogical traditions, and theoretical references. The use of games at the preschool level poses problems that are too easily solved by their idealization for small children. We feel that the practice concerning adults or older children provides an

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essential contribution to what could be a veritable pedagogical reflection on play and gaming. The advantage of literature on games in adult education is that it avoids addressing the principle of the prior educational value of gaming. The dominating pragmatism implies an interest for the procedures implemented, the parity of the objective/results ratio, not taken in an absolute manner but within the framework of a specific training that is rarely reduced to the game only. The game no longer appears as an intrinsically educational activity but as a moment whose educational interest is evaluated in relation to its role in the training, a role that may be very indirect (even constituting a team or facilitating communication between trainees) or more direct according to precise objectives. The most interesting contribution to reflection on gaming in adult education is the accent put on what follows the game stricto-senso, the after-game, that we usually call debriefing. Debriefing is a theme familiar to readers of this journal, so it is not necessary to develop it here, but it is particularly nonexistent when it comes to the young child. The importance given to this phase, even if it is sometimes short in terms of time, reveals that, at least within the context of formal education, the game cannot be designed to directly provide learning. A moment of reflexivity is required to make transfer and learning possible. We can mention Thiagarajans (1993) proposal that, with respect to gaming, points out the presence of three phases: experience reflection learning. Experience may be of various natures (simulation, role-playing, more emotional or cognitive). Reflection would involve the transfer to generalization, to analysis of action, to alternatives, feelings, invested knowledge, and so forth. Learning concerns, depending on the case, attitudes, skills, concepts, paradigms, and so forth. The critical point is indeed that reflection enables the passage from play to learning; therefore, the importance of the debriefing that appears as an essential contribution to research on play and gaming in education. The game thus designed is thought of as the construction of a specific experience in that it is constructed through fiction, which distinguishes it from real experience, and that it enables reflection, the key to learning. The fictitious dimension enables the enrichment of the experience with possible outcomes, trial and error, and distance from the obligation of results that confrontation with reality may make impossible.

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Play, Leisure, and Education

To finish, let us go back to the link between play in education and play in a leisure situation. It is sometimes possible to use the same materials, in the same way. What distinguishes the two? It is precisely its insertion into an educational process that makes that which is an end unto itself part of a complex whole. Even if the game is identical, it differs in that it will produce reflection with an educational aim. It is not only the social insertion of a game into a context that gives it another meaning; it is the fact that it can be inserted into certain rites while keeping the characteristics of a game. Gaming is, therefore, paradoxical as it conserves its characteristics, but the activity into which it is inserted differs radically. This does not mean that we do not learn while playing for leisure, but it is an informal education that is not linked to precise objectives. What characterizes gaming in adult education (or, more generally, the period after schooling) is its inclusion in a formal and intentional training process where, if the game is a less formal phase, it is, nevertheless, part of a conscious educational project. On the contrary, many preschool practices are, in fact, linked to the idea that at this stage, learning may remain informal. Play is thus only an example of this logic of informal education that leads to there being no distinction between leisure or entertainment and education. For older children, if we can recognize in leisure (including games) informal learning situations, the recourse to play in education refers to a process of formalization that leads to adapting the game to the targeted objectives and to proposing to learners an intentional learning process that appears, among other areas, in the debriefing, as well as very often at the start of the presentation and the progression of the game. The confrontation between theories and strategies concerning the use of play in child and adult education, between childrens play and adult simulation/gaming, should lead us to an enrichment of reflection and of practice in both camps. Why so many differences when such a large number of arguments plead for continuity? We shall discover in both cases the use of play in a specific context. But although adult education constructs a strategy for integrating simulation/gaming into a formal educational process, preschool education is often satisfied with relying on the supposed educational virtues of play. Reflection on childrens play has produced a number of results that could enrich the analysis of simulation/gaming situations. In fact, the adult/child opposition is undoubtedly a false opposition that conceals deeprooted continuities. It is based on the two-centuries-old construction of the

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idea of a childhood specificity that is incommensurable with the adult. We can question this vision of childhood, which is what todays critical sociologists are doing (James & Prout, 1990). But behind this lies another more fundamental opposition that concerns the nature of types of learning and that we could formulate as formal learning versus informal learning. This leads us to consider play from two, sometimes combined, points of view:
Play as a leisure activity, as entertainment, may be the place of informal learning, that is to say, unintentional and haphazard, with children as well as with adults. But this dimension of play has only led to an educational concept for young children due to the characteristics of very general early learning (concerning communication, for example). We are then forgetting that adults also learn informally (Pain, 1990) in many situations including leisure gaming. Play as a constructed or reconstructed situation within the framework of formal learning, whether scholastic or not. It could be an activity that more or less corresponds to play criteria such as that mentioned above but that we choose and develop according to educational objectives. This is what is generally referred to by the use of simulation/gaming in adult or adolescent education. The instruction of small children sometimes uses it somewhat ambiguously by maintaining confusion with the other usual modality of play.

This division is a distinction solely aimed at a better analysis of the relationship between play and education. In reality, the use of play may find situations that are not clearly situated on one side or on the other. Behind the question of play, which implies a reflection on the specificity of this activity and its diverse forms depending on ages and environments, we find two questions that are too often neglected: that of the potential of informal education and that of the transformation of a social activity, such as play, into a moment within an educational sequence. It is for this reason that the question of play leads to an association of pedagogical questions and theoretical questionswithout forgetting the fact that these questions can only exist if childhood has taught us to play!

References
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Gilles Brougre is a professor of educational sciences in Paris. His interests and teaching topics include play and toys, preschool education, sociology of childhood, and adult education (particularly material resources like games and informal learning). He is responsible for two postgraduate programs, one on play and toys and the other on the research in the field of adult education. He is the director of a research center (GREC, group on research about educational and cultural resources) that conducts research into play, games, and toys for children and adults. He has written a book published in French and Portuguese, titled Play and Education. ADDRESS: Gilles Brougre, Dpartement des sciences de lducation, Universit Paris Nord, av. J.B. Clment, 93430 Villetaneuse, France; e-mail brougere@lshs. univ-paris13.fr.

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