Self-regulation and narrative interventions in children’s play

Our approach, which we call developmental (narrative) play pedagogy, is based on cultural-historical psychology and especially on Vygosky’s and El’konin’s writings on play and early development. In our opinion play is not a tool for ‘academic’ learning but an activity in which prerequisites for further learning develop. The main legacy of the cultural-historical approach to play (Zaporozhets, El’konin, Leont’ev, Korotkova, Smirnova and others) is that constant development of play from elementary to advanced forms should be the central focus of adults. Instead of training academic skills teachers should develop pedagogical strategies supporting children’s play development.