Researchers: Dr. Ray Doiron (Faculty of Education, UPEI), Carolyn Simpson (DEECD), Alaina Roach O'Keefe (DEECD), Dr. June Countryman (Music Department, UPEI), Lynn Hogan (Campus Kids, UPEI), Gabriela Arias de Sanchez (UPEI Centre for Education Research)

Project Rationale: Learning in the early years emerges in a holistic and naturalistic way and is rooted in the active/creative play of children. Play is not what children do when their work is done: play is how children interact with, learn from, and engage fully with the world. Play connects experiences, builds language, and allows children to "create" the world. It protects them when they are threatened or in danger; it stretches their imaginations; it helps them understand how the world works; it allows them to communicate with those around them; and it plays a key role in helping adults understand/explore learning in the early years. From a research perspective, play becomes the way into the child's world, our principle research tool, the database from whcih we understand learning in the early years and build successful early learning family/institutional environments.

No topic is gathering more attention and discussion in the early childhood sector in PEI than the transition of kindergarten from its current privately owned, publically funded system into the general public school system. This change will mean that all children will have access to kindergarten and for a full day. While people gererally celebrate this change as a positive step for children and their learning, others fear that the rich, play-based learning environment current in existence in kindergartens will be lost once they are moved into public schools. Will the pressure mount to turn kindergarten into a preparation for grade 1? How can we maintain the play-based philosophy for our kindergartens and perhaps even influence Grade 1 and 2 educators to adopt many of its principles?

One reason we could see a drift away from a play-based curriculum is the notion that many people talk about the importance of play, but they know very little  about how it looks and feels; how is it developed?; how does it support learning? The principle motivation for this study is to document play-based learning in our existing kindergartens and share that knowledge with current/new early years teachers, other educators, and our policy/decision makers.

Approach: The research team will spend four weeks in each of two early childhood centres (one urban and one rural) and they will capture the full experience of children ages 4 and 5. The team will use photos, video captures, learning artifacts, audio-taped conversations, and interviews with ECEs and early learning consultants. A highlight of this methodology will be the engagement with children who will actively participate in the data collection process and in showing/telling their everyday experiences in play-based environments. This ethnographic study will yield a rich mountain of data which will be analyzed/synthesized and presented using effective knowledge translation tools, particulary a set of "video snapshots" called The Power of Play.

Signifance/Future Use: The urgency for the study arises because the transition is happening now and within a few monts, the old kindergarten system will be replaced with the school-based model. The research team wishes to capture the experience now, so that they can teach others how it works and also establish a baseline to compare programs after some time in the new system.