Insights into student skills, peer networks, and sociodramatic play in Head Start

Abstract

Across preschool classrooms in the United States, free play comprises the largest percentage of children’s daily activity time (Chien et al., 2010; Fuligini et al., 2012). During free play, preschoolers may frequently engage in sociodramatic play (SDP), or pretend play where groups of children take on assigned roles with implicit rules (Smilansky & Shefatya, 1990). Research has demonstrated the academic and social benefits of SDP engagement (e.g., Diamond et al., 2007); however, much of this work has addressed SDP in curricular and intervention contexts, in which teachers play a large role in facilitating the play. Fewer studies have explored SDP in free play contexts with minimal teacher scaffolding, and even fewer have studied this play in classrooms comprised of cognitively, culturally, and linguistically diverse students, such as those participating in Head Start programs. This study investigated individual and peer factors that relate to SDP occurring in the context of free play among children (n=50) in five diverse mixed-age Head Start classrooms. A mixed methods approach was used to examine relations between children’s individual characteristics and abilities, classroom peer networks, and SDP outcomes. Sources of data included: 1) naturalistic observations of children’s free play, 2) assessments and demographic surveys of individual children, and 3) sociometric and semi-structured interviews with child participants. Results from multiple regression and hierarchical cluster analyses were merged with case studies of children who engage in exemplary amounts of SDP to enhance the understanding of individual and peer factors related to sociodramatic play. Findings indicated that narrative skills, home language background, gender, membership in a cohesive peer subgroup, and teacher presence were related to high amounts of SDP engagement. Implications for future research and for preschool practitioners are discussed.