Using Walter Benjamin to rethink children's non-participation in play activities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21718580 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shin Ae Han (0009-0005-7389-7546, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, corresponding author), J Tobin (0000-0002-4726-7218, University of Georgia) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 159-173 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1463-9491 • E-ISSN: 1463-9491 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14639491231206944 |
| OpenAlex | W4388462383 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 15 |
In this article, the authors reflect on examples they have recorded of children spending time on the thresholds of their classmates’ activities during activity-area times. They use these examples to reconceptualize some commonplace understandings of the places and practices of everyday life in contemporary preschools. They do so by drawing on three related concepts of Walter Benjamin: the arcades (akin to the contemporary shopping mall), the threshold, and the flâneur (who observes the sites and crowds of the city without joining in). They draw parallels between Benjamin's writings on the flâneurs who occupied the thresholds of the 19th-century Paris arcades and the young children who look on without entering the learning and play areas of the contemporary progressive preschool classroom. Following Benjamin, it is suggested that children may remain on the thresholds of activities not just because of shyness or bewilderment but also to experience the pleasures of anticipation and, in some cases, as acts of quiet resistance. Although Benjamin's writings have been rarely applied to the field of early childhood education, they can stimulate new understandings of children's lives in preschool and provoke implications for rethinking aspects of preschool teaching practice
Aesthetics · Art · Developmental psychology · Early childhood · Early childhood education · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Everyday life · Parallels · Pedagogy · Shyness · Sociology · Child Development and Digital Technology · Children's Rights and Participation · Educational Environments and Student Outcomes · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Psychology
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Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum
Once-upon-a-Time in the Commodity World
Firsthand Learning Through Intent Participation
The Japanese Preschool's Pedagogy of Peripheral Participation
Hope in the Past
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |