@article{ReevaluatingPretendPlayatHome:Children’sIndividualVariation:3583,
      recid = {3583},
      author = {Brown, Amanda Rose},
      title = {Reevaluating Pretend Play at Home: Children’s Individual  Variation, Parent Participation, and Developmental  Outcomes},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2021-12},
      pages = {328},
      abstract = {Following over a century of research, pretend play has  come to be known as an important feature of childhood.  Children across cultures have been observed spontaneously  engaging in pretend play, promoting the notion that pretend  play serves a special developmental function. Early  research described how pretend play provides a unique  platform for children’s self-directed learning. Today,  particularly in the U.S., pretend play is understood to be  so important for young children that parents are encouraged  to promote it and participate in it at home. How then does  pretend play function in development when it is no longer  spontaneously motivated by children? In this dissertation,  I examine the prevailing assumptions regarding the role of  pretend play in children’s lives and the role of adults in  supporting pretend play. Using a mixed-methods approach, I  describe how 60 families drawn from an urban American  population vary in their practice of pretending at home in  the preschool years. I then evaluate the relation between  pretend play practices and learning outcomes at  kindergarten. I find that children vary significantly in  their investment in pretending at home, with distinct  patterns of pretend play investment over time. Several  children pretended rarely at all observations, and most  children remained constant or decreased their pretend play  time between three and four years of age. For the 25% of  children who invested the most time in pretending, parents  were also most likely to be participating. Parents and  children pursued distinct goals during pretend play, and  parents’ efforts to achieve learning objectives through  pretend did not always produce the expected results. This  study contributes new insights through the in-depth  examination of pretending at home in a large,  representative sample, and highlights the importance of  examining the variation across families in order to better  understand and better serve children’s learning and  development.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/3583},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.3583},
}