Children’s Social and Emotional Wellbeing in Schools, A Critical Perspective

Chapter 2 introduced the key debates concerned with wellbeing and the complexities in understanding this both conceptually and linguistically. Similar debates can be made for play and how understanding this construct is fraught with difficulty both conceptually and linguistically and that this presents problems for practitioners implementing play within education. Chapter 2 presents the case for subsequent chapters to have ‘the space to do something different’ and this chapter will take the opportunity to do just that. The value of play will be discussed and how this is consistently linked with children’s wellbeing, development and learning. However, it will be argued that employing traditional conceptions of play are not helpful in making these links and an alternative construct of play, based on playfulness, will be presented which is more empowering to children and helpful to practitioners. This construct of playfulness utilises children’s perspectives of play and enables the differentiation of play from playfulness. Recent research based on this construct of playfulness will be presented to show that this alternative construct allows for opportunities for playful expressions of wellbeing.