Informal historical learning. Ethnographic explorations on children’s doing history in play

Seminar: Informal historical learning. Ethnographic explorations on children’s doing history in play

Presenter: Professor Christian Mathis, Zurich University of Teacher Education

Date and Time: Wednesday 21st February at 6-7.30pm

Mode: Hybrid – online and face-to-face attendance at the IOE.

Room and Zoom Link: to be confirmed after registration. Please register here

Abstract:

This presentation understands playgrounds with historical accessories as historical-cultural phenomena. Playmobil figures with historical motifs and children’s play with them can also be understood as historical-cultural phenomena. In their play, children – among other stories – create historical narratives. They are doing history in the performative act of playing. In an ethnographic study, children’s free play was observed in children aged around six. In another ethnographic study, the private Playmobil play of almost 5-year-old twins was observed. In both studies, historical narratives performed during play were reconstructed. Both studies suggest that the children’s doing of history could be understood as a mimetic act that – in Ricoeur’s sense – can be grasped through prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration; whereby the prefiguration is influenced by the affordances of the things being played with and a “complicity” between child and thing (Meyer-Drawe), it can arise in the configuration, which can lead to an emplotment and productive imagination of history.