THE EDUCATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF PRETEND PLAY

Although the belief that play is educationally important could already be found in the works of Plato and Aristotle, it was only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that Rousseau and Fröbel, with their pedagogical theories, laid the basis for the construction of educational practices that systematically incorporate playfulness into school education (Brougère, 1998). The discoveries resulting from research in the field of developmental psychology enriched the belief in the educational value of play. This belief corresponds to the liberal progressivist pedagogical concept of Active Education (the New School movement), which, since the early 1900s, has spread throughout the world. Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Usova, and Elkonin are among the most important investigators of the educational dimensions of play, and their research contributed to the elaboration of the idea of an active pedagogy of play (França, 1990). Today, the study of the interrelationships between play and education has awakened the interest of researchers such as Gilles Brougère, Artin Göncü, Suzanne Gaskins, Barbara Rogoff, Jaan Valsiner, James Wertsch, Keith Sawyer, Tia Tulviste, Bert van Oers, Tizuko Kishimoto, Gisela Wajskop, Ingrid Koudela, Maria Cecília R. de Góes, and Zilma Oliveira.

The investigation of the educational dimensions of play in a historical and cultural perspective seeks to associate pretend play with the historical, material, economic, and political development of the relationships between production and the division of labor in human societies.