TEY 13.2

As RTP can be misunderstood as violence, it is often stopped or discouraged GET STARTED Skilful observation: Tune in to the content of the play, perhaps to suggest alternative strategies for heroes and heroines, making the most of “teachable moments” to encourage empathy and lateral thinking to explore alternative scenarios and strategies for conflict resolution. Culture and community: Nursery culture and the local community will have an impact on practice. Therefore, each nursery will need to create a unique stance on various types of RTP to ensure it is suitable for their children’s experiences. A whole-team approach: Ensure the whole team recognise that RTP is completely normal for young children and should be celebrated like other forms of play (within the agreed limits). Joint observations are helpful, so the team know the difference between RTP and true aggression. Safety first: Involve the children in the discussions about how to keep everyone safe when engaging in RTP; they are likely to have better ideas than us! Join in: Encourage the team to join in, so they truly know what this type of play feels like for young children. Have fun! it might look different. The boys will tend to rely on the physicality and, at times, competitive nature of the play, whereas girls may be more reliant on spoken narratives to protect and rescue their friends. Over my 20-year career in early years, I have consistently heard the term “boisterous boys”. The boys who don’t sit still, roll on top of one another, and want to engage in aggressive and fighting play themes for most of their nursery day. I am often asked when supporting settings how to help them “manage the boys”, so much so that it determined my most recent research study. Last year, as part of a Psychology of Education (MSc), I explored whether there were gender differences in how educators view and facilitate RTP. At present in the UK it is estimated that 97%–98% of the early years workforce is female. I was curious to see if this type of play was viewed and facilitated differently by male and female educators, and therefore having an impact on the RTP pedagogy in settings. It was only a relatively small-scale exploratory study, but it was a really interesting process! Not only is a practitioner’s gender influential on this type of play, but cultural and community considerations are too. Views and feelings from both practitioners and parents are highly influential in how this type of play is facilitated across the UK. The research confirmed that boys’ play can be misunderstood by female early years practitioners, which isn’t surprising when we consider the impact our own gender bias has on our outlook on practice. While I have aimed to celebrate and facilitate boys' play during my career, it isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do as a female who doesn’t have an innate desire to engage in RTP myself. Female educators must adopt a reflective and reflexive approach to understanding boys and what makes them tick, as it may not be natural for us. Likewise, it is equally important that male educators work to understand girls’ play. Teachearlyyears.com 35