Realising the ‘right to play’ in the special school playground

Doak, Lauran

Abstract

In this paper I mobilise a multimodal ethnographic data fragment depicting a moment of play in a UK ‘special school' playground to unpack the challenges of realising the ‘right to play' (Article 31, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) in a non-inclusive play space. I show that play (im)possibilities were delineated by the physical boundaries of the playground, the absence of non-disabled peers and a lack of symbol-based resources to support playful meaning-making. Nevertheless, the children execute a short play event through multimodal embodied communication encompassing pleasure, frustration, invitations, rejections, acceptances, and negotiations over resources. I argue that this brief play event instantiates broader debates around the ‘right to play': specifically, to what extent this right can be realised in a non-inclusive playground, whether autistic children require play ‘training’, and how diverse forms of play can be scaffolded by staff in the absence of non-disabled children.

Citation

Doak, L. (2020). Realising the ‘right to play’ in the special school playground. International Journal of Play, 9(4), 414-438. https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2020.1843805

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Nov 14, 2020
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 29, 2023
• Journal: International Journal of Play
• Print ISSN: 2159-4937
• Electronic ISSN: 2159-4953
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 414-438
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2020.1843805
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/25684443
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21594937.2020.1843805