Dr Linda Shaw

This book explores how poststructural theory can make an important contribution to the growing body of work on playwork as an academic field of practice and research.

Drawing on theoretical concepts used by sociologists and philosophers, such as the sociological imagination (Mills); hauntings and the fictive (Derrida) and technologies of power and the self (Foucault), the text considers how these devices may be methodologically productive for playwork research. It reframes research into children and childhood as a process in which research and practice are connected but diverse skills. The book raises questions around power and voice, and highlights the complexity of research which involves human participants and their roles as researcher and/or researched. Chapters relate concepts from post-structural, feminist research and frames them within the context of playwork practice through the use of vignettes constructed from stories told by playwork practitioners and the children with whom they work.

A valuable addition to an emerging academic field, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students in the fields of playwork research, education and youth studies, early childhood students and the sociology of education.

Learning and development occur in many spaces both within and outside formal education settings. This chapter explores progress and possibilities of a knowledge exchange programme with a third sector organisation involved with community development, playwork and youth work in an urban area of the East Midlands. Theoretical concepts draw on a growing international interest in intergenerational play (Graves, 2002, Thomas Lane et al 2021) and 'cultural circles' (Gill, 2021) as a method of challenging power and communication barriers between practitioners and multi-ethinic families. The knowledge exchange programme has included publications about out of school playschemes which partner with schools in order to address holiday hunger and community engagement which has led to funding for the development of an inner-city park as a multi-generational space. The chapter will also trouble the following questions which arise from current policy discourses in England which may also hold meaning for practitioners in international contexts: 

• Why the need for universal Play Services rather than a targeted approach?
• 'Holiday Hunger' does the terminology discriminate?
• How do we raise the profile of children's Play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?
• What can be done to ‘connect' diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas? How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?
  

Research methodologies which draw on post-structural theories often have a stated aim of addressing an identified social injustice or human rights issue. This chapter will consider the ethical dilemmas which form an integral element in paradigms such as post-feminist and post-colonial research when applied to the field of education. Such research aspires to reflect the complexities of lived experience in order to expose inequalities. In so doing it must tackle ethical issues around knowledge and power; the relative positions of researcher and researched within the investigation and ethical identities such as those of adult or child, teacher or parent, pupil or young person and so forth. This is in addition to, and not a replacement for, rigorous research methods and design which take account of ethical procedures. The chapter draws on primary research and experience of early years education and care, playwork, and teaching human rights and social justice to Education Studies and Early Childhood Studies students in Higher

This chapter considers the potential of imagination, discursive storytelling and the fictive in social research with children and young people. It draws on an auto-ethnographic PhD thesis on work in early childhood and subsequent publications relating to playwork. The purpose is to construct methodologies which draw on philosophy and sociology to better articulate the lived experiences of children and practitioners in relation to 21st-century institutions, such as playwork, education and youth services. In doing so it is hoped that matters of social justice might be addressed at a local as well as a more structural level in our work within these specific social and cultural spaces.