Learning Through Play, USA

Experiencing abuse or neglect can hinder the development of executive function skills, which children need in order to filter distractions, prioritise tasks, and control impulses.

Executive function and self-regulation skills are vital for planning, attention, remembering instructions and juggling multiple tasks successfully.

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University explains that children who learn executive function skills experience “lifelong benefits”.

“These skills are crucial for learning and development,” it states. “They also enable positive behaviour and allow us to make healthy choices for ourselves and our families.”

The Center, one of the world’s leading research institutes on childhood development, explains that honing executive function skills requires three types of brain function: working memory, mental flexibility and self-control.

“These functions are highly interrelated, and the successful application of executive function skills requires them to operate in co-ordination with each other,” it states.

Through its Frontiers of Innovation partnership with Washington State, the Center has been working with a childcare provider that specialises in supporting abused or neglected pre-schoolers to help them improve children’s executive function skills through play-based learning.

Last year, the Education Endowment Foundation published a review of the evidence and early years toolkit on self-regulation strategies and play-based approaches in the early years. It found both had a moderate impact for very low cost, and has included them in its early years toolkit for early years practitioners.

FACTFILE

• Developing executive function skills are crucial for lifelong learning, but experiencing abuse or neglect can hinder this
• US researchers have identified brain activities that affect executive function skills
• Childcare settings in Washington state use Learning Through Play to improve children’s skills
• 10-20 week programme involves structured nursery-based game play supplemented by home visits
• Training parents and carers to actively participate in a child’s play, with access to good-quality resources, is vital
• Analysis of pilot showed different types of games played could affect progress in executive functions

THE INTERVENTION

Childhaven is a public sector childcare setting in Washington state that serves young children who have been abused or neglected.

After assessing the executive function skills of their pre-schoolers, Childhaven staff found that these children fell below the national average for their age group. This challenge affects the work of many early care and education providers.

As a member of the Learning Through Play project team, Childhaven has collaborated with Frontiers of Innovation to develop a science-based strategy to help their children improve these skills.

Learning Through Play uses games and play coaching to improve executive function skills in children. It has tested this intervention at Childhaven where it also ran coaching sessions for adult caregivers on how to build play and support children’s skill development.

The intervention has since been adapted to enhance a home visiting programme to increase the impact of supporting the development of children’s executive function skills.

According to the Center on the Developing Child, the project has tested the hypothesis that structured, rule-based play can promote the development of executive function skills.

“Not only is rule-guided behaviour central to the concept of executive function, but structured, pre-defined game rules may also be comforting for children with unpredictable home lives,” it states.

SOCIETY AND CULTURE

The ingredients of play can fuel learning: it promotes a state of low anxiety and provides opportunities for novel experiences, active engagement and learning from peers and adults, the center explains.

Yet, disadvantaged children, such as those who live in neglectful or abusive home environments, are likely to have limited opportunities to play games which can stunt their learning of social skills and understanding of societal norms.

This is as much true in the UK as it is the US.

In 2015, children’s advocacy centers around the country served more than 311,000 child victims of abuse, providing victim advocacy and support to these children and their families.

An estimated 683,000 children (unique incidents) were victims of abuse and neglect in 2015.

Meanwhile, around 3.4 million children received an investigation or alternative response from child protective services, and 2.3 million children received prevention services.

PRACTICE

Childhaven has implemented a learning-through-play programme for four- and five-year-olds that focuses on building the foundations of reasoning and self-regulation skills.

It also involves a strategy for coaching the parent and child together in game-playing, which team members have incorporated into several existing parent education programmes. Children’s Home Society of Washington joined the Learning Through Play team and, together, they have adapted a game-playing component to enhance their home visiting curriculum with the goal of increasing the programme’s impact on supporting children’s executive functioning skills.

The classroom programme was run in two stages: an initial 10-week pilot followed by a 20-week expanded intervention.

The pilot was run with three Childhaven classrooms of children aged four and five. Children played games for 15 minutes a day, for four days a week. They spent two weeks on each game, and the game rules became more difficult over time. A second round of the intervention also incorporated mindfulness techniques for improving attention and response inhibition.

The extended pilot was run with five Childhaven classrooms and involved the same age group of children. They played games for four days per week, alternating between mindfulness time and game time in different amounts.

The play coaching sessions were run with parents of children aged from 18 months to five years. It involved three stages:

How to create a framework and expectation for a game/activity

What it means to play collaboratively, and why to emphasise the idea of “personal best” rather than competition

How to “scaffold” play to support key components of executive function skills.

The home visiting programme at Children’s Home Society consists of two half-hour home visits per week for two 10-month periods, for a total of 92 visits.

The programme serves families living below the poverty line as defined by the federal government with an eligible child between the ages of 16 and 30 months.

Drawing on lessons from the Childhaven initiative, the enhanced programme will include improved resources for parents, training home visitors in executive function scaffolding skills and in how to demonstrate and reinforce these skills with parents. It will also select and sequence programme books and toys in order to maximise their effectiveness.

IMPACT

After 10 weeks of game playing, the children participating in the pilot programme who demonstrated significant improvements in mental flexibility tended to have a higher initial level of sustained attention or were rated as less emotional prior to the intervention.

“This suggests that strengthening basic emotion regulation skills could help develop other executive function abilities,” the Center’s analysis states.

After 20 weeks of game-playing and mindfulness, the Learning Through Play team found that one classroom showed significant improvement in executive function skills, while the other four showed no improvement. Speaking with the early years teacher of the children who improved revealed characteristics about her classroom and implementation that required further exploration, including:

Games were delivered four days per week instead of two (i.e. didn’t alternate between games and mindfulness exercises, unlike the other teachers).

A single game was played all week, and then switched to a different game the following week. The other teachers introduced a different game/exercise every day.

A chime was used to signal changes in activity throughout the school day, which incorporated mindfulness into teaching practice.

One mindfulness exercise was focused on rather than switching among many.

“The second pilot made it very clear that the quality of implementation is key to the effectiveness of an intervention strategy,” the Center’s analysis concluded. “This finding highlights the importance of not only having effective, innovative programmes, but also supporting providers with training and tools for implementation.”

Anecdotal evidence was gathered from one participating father who spoke about how playing games with his four-year-old son has improved the child’s memory, reasoning, and speech, and how the experience is strengthening the sense of connection between them: “I thought one day he would just start communicating with me. I didn’t realise it was my job to get him there. Now he has learned to take turns, and he doesn’t have to win every time. He also wants to tell me about his day. I’m much more bonded with him.”

EXPERT VIEW

By June O’Sullivan, chief executive, London Early Years Foundation

This work suggests that rule-based play activities help children build their ability to self-regulate and develop executive functioning skills. It’s particularly timely in the light of the controversial changes proposed to the Early Learning Goals which appear to simplify the concepts of self-regulation and executive functioning into:

• Show an understanding of their own feelings and those of others and regulate their behaviour accordingly
• Have a positive sense of self and show resilience in the face of challenge
• Pay attention to their teacher and follow multi-step instructions.

The US research identifies children who have been abused or neglected as tending to struggle to filter distractions, plan and prioritise tasks and control impulses. We would agree with this and providing rule-based play activities at nursery and through a home learning approach makes sense and was probably delivered in many children’s centres across the UK.

Learning within the freedom of play gives children the bandwidth to manage their emotions and build their metacognition.

The research highlights the concern in the UK about the formality of the provision for many children and the negative impact it can have on those who need more time and less pressure to develop the skills of self-regulation. Play in many forms, not just rule-bound games, contribute to children developing higher order executive skills through the opportunities to problem-solve, make decisions, evaluate the situation and communicate.