Disability & Society

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Emancipating play: dis/abled children,

development and deconstruction

Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick‐Cole

To cite this article: Dan Goodley & Katherine Runswick‐Cole (2010) Emancipating play: dis/
abled children, development and deconstruction, Disability & Society, 25:4, 499-512, DOI:
10.1080/09687591003755914

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Disability & Society
Vol. 25, No. 4, June 2010, 499–512

Emancipating play: dis/abled children, development and

deconstruction
Dan Goodley and Katherine Runswick-Cole*

RIHSC, Psychology and Social Change, Manchester Metropolitan University, Gaskell

Campus, Manchester M13 0JA, UK
(Received 20 February 2009; final version received 21 August 2009)
Taylor and Francis
CDSO_A_476113.sgm

Disability
10.1080/09687591003755914
0968-7599
Original
Taylor
402010
25
Dr
K.Runswick-Cole@mmu.ac.uk
00000June
KatherineRunswick-Cole
&Article
Francis
&(print)/1360-0508
2010
Society (online)

This paper reflects critically on the meaning of play, especially as it relates to

disabled children and their experiences. We explore the close alliance of play to
cognitive and social development, particularly in the case of psychologies of
development, and reveal a dominant discourse of the disabled child as a non-
playing object that requires professional therapeutic intervention. We argue that
this pathologisation of play on the part of disabled children is closely tied to
normalisation of childhood, in which non-normal bodies are increasingly
expected to be governed and corrected not only by professionals but also by
parents/carers. In order to rescue more enabling visions of the disabled child and
their play we turn to three perspectives – the new sociology of childhood; social
oppression theories of disability; critical developmental psychology. These
resources, we suggest, allow us to reconfigure what we mean by play and
disability in a contemporary climate that celebrates competition and marketisation
over the intrinsic potentialities of all children. We argue that how we conceive
play will per se undermine or promote forms of inclusive research, policy and
practice.
Keywords: play; disabled children; development

Introduction
In this paper we have a number of broad questions. How is play understood by soci-
ety (particularly British society, from which viewpoint we write this paper)? What do
the social sciences make of play (specifically the discipline of psychology)? How is
the play of disabled children understood by society and (social) ‘science’? To what
extent could play be used and refused as an emancipating or limiting concept by
disabled children? We ask these questions with a project in mind, ‘Does every child
matter, post-Blair: interconnections of disabled childhoods’, a two year project
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (http//www.rihsc.mmu.ac.uk/
postblairproject/). Part of our remit was to make sense of the lived realities of being a
disabled child in Britain. We will explore with disabled children and their parents
experiences of family, school and community and will endeavour to identify success
stories of inclusion, as well as salutary lessons of exclusion. We are in the early stage
of this research at the time of writing. However, play is emerging as an important
consideration. In Western societies play is considered to be uniquely important for

*Corresponding author. Email: k.runswick-cole@mmu.ac.uk

ISSN 0968-7599 print/ISSN 1360-0508 online

© 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09687591003755914
http://www.informaworld.com
500 D. Goodley and K. Runswick-Cole

children, as it is considered to have both intrinsic value (in terms of entertainment and
enjoyment) and instrumental value (in terms of learning and development) (Moyles
2006; Davenport 1994). The importance of play to developmental psychology and
psychologies of development is reflected in the amount of attention play has received
from leading and traditional authorities (e.g. Piaget, Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner).
Play appears to allow us to access the cognitive and emotional worlds of all children.
For disabled children the link between play and learning has been magnified and read
in particular ways. Play provides a mechanism for assessment, diagnosis and thera-
peutic intervention for atypically developing children. Indeed, Bundy (1997) has
developed a test of ‘playfulness’, so that children’s play is judged ‘appropriate’ (or
not). Play allows educational professionals to separate able and disabled children and,
we argue, should therefore be viewed critically and with suspicion. Play is not all
about swings and roundabouts. Play is pivotal to practices that centre the normal and
push disabled children to the periphery. In marketised educational contexts, particu-
larly in Global North/Metropole contexts, play becomes yet another activity augment-
ing the excellent (Graham and Slee 2008) and abandoning the poor (or average)
(Gabel and Danforth 2008). The performance of play marks a competitive body or a
dull one.
In this paper we provide a critical reading and commentary of play that suggests
the intrinsic value of play has been eclipsed by a focus on its instrumental value for
disabled children and their families. We argue that this is detrimental for the well-
being of children and their families. Disabled children’s play has been colonised by
adults seeking to support their learning and development at the expense of its intrinsic
value. Play is in danger of becoming yet another discursive practice of assessment,
categorisation and treatment, where creativity is lost to a focus on understanding the
different and disruptive (Goodley forthcoming). When play is taken up in this way,
then this contributes to the hijacking of notions of ‘inclusion’ by those more interested
in competition than the wider social and political purposes of education (Azzopardi
2000, 2005). We suggest that three theoretical perspectives – the sociology of child-
hood, social oppression theories of disability and critical developmental psychology –
might enable us to liberate play for dis/abled children from the psychological
complexes and disciplinary powers that threaten to own it. We conclude that revision-
ing play is crucial at a time when childhood is becoming increasingly both differenti-
ated and normalised. At times throughout the paper we draw in play stories from the
parents of disabled children, shared with us during the current research project.

Excellent play
Janet Moyles’ edited book on play is entitled The excellence of play (Moyles 2006).
The title conveys the attention and importance that is attached to children’s play by
adults. Indeed, Parham and Primeau (1997, cited in Okimoto et al. 2000) saw play
as a child’s ‘primary occupation’. Such terminology is hardly surprising in view of
the globalised neo-liberalisation of childhood and education (Gabel and Danforth
2008) to which research, particularly by developmental psychologists, has markedly
contributed (Burman 2008). Some of the key players of child development – Piaget,
Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner – all had something to contribute to current Western
cultural understandings of children’s play. Piaget (1957) stressed play activity per
se as the child’s way of exploring the world. For Piaget play was the means by
which children brought together their experiences, knowledge and understanding.
 Disability & Society 501

Play also constituted a key methodological resource for the development of Piaget’s
theories. Piaget described the processes of assimilation and accommodation in
which children used what is already known (assimilation) and adjusted this to take
on board what is new (accommodation). Piaget suggested that the child’s develop-
ment leads to learning, and that play has a strong influence on development. Role
play at pre-school age and games with rules at school age were seen as key because
they fulfil a vital social function (Fisher 2008). Children are hard-wired to learn,
and play is a key activity through which to release these intrinsic capabilities. Play
makes perfect.
Vygotsky (1967), on the other hand, suggested that learning led to play. For
Vygotsky, social contexts and language, in particular, were crucial in understanding
children’s learning, and as a result other children and adults were seen as having a key
role in moving children from their current understanding to their potential understand-
ing – the adult or peer guides the child through his/her zone of proximal development
(ZPD) (Fisher 2008). As with Piaget, cognitive development and play are crucially
tied together. Vygotsky, though, provided a social, cultural and, some would argue,
political slant to cognitivism (see Newman and Holzman 1999), demanding questions
of instructors and teachers about how they played with children and facilitated their
learning. Learning to play makes play learned.
Bronfenbrenner (1979) also considered play to be extremely significant in a
child’s social development. Bronfenbrenner applied an ecological perspective to
play. He believed that a child has different roles and different play situations and that
learning to master these roles and relationships enables the child to acquire initiative
and independence, and to develop in general. Bronfenbrenner described children’s
play as operating over several ‘microsystems’ – home, playground, school, friends
homes, on the street, in the woods, etc. Play is considered to be important for child
development, but also valuable in maintaining social traditions and transferring
cultural values (Björck-Åkesson and Brodin 1992, cited in Brodin 2005). Play is part
of culture – we learn to play to exist with others, although some play is more
productive than others.
A contemporaneous measure of the importance given to play in terms of children’s
learning and development is indicated by attention given to the ways in which play is
categorised and contextualised. Fisher described a typology of play which breaks it
down into a number of sub-categories (Hughes 1996, cited in Fisher 2008, 120). She
categorised play as follows:

● exploratory play – when a child explores objects;

● symbolic play – when a child uses an object to symbolise something else, e.g. a
stick is a sword;
● dramatic play – where children take on actions and activities of others, e.g. play-
ing mother;
● socio-dramatic play – where children re-enact actual or potential situations, e.g.
playing mothers and fathers;
● pretend play – fantasy and alternative worlds, e.g. playing Star Wars;
● locomotor play – activities involving physical movement, e.g. playing boy,
playing girl;
● rough and tumble play – play involving contact between two children, but not
fighting, e.g. play as embodied, but a responsible body;
● games with rules, e.g. play as rule governing and learning.
502 D. Goodley and K. Runswick-Cole

She went on to describe different contexts for play, including: solitary, where the child
plays alone; spectator, where the child observes others’; parallel, where two or more
children play alongside one another; co-operative, where the child plays with another
child.
Play, then, has been regarded as a wide ranging activity through which a child
develops skills. It is not surprising that play is often defined as children’s ‘work’, as a
preparation for adulthood and as a tool for development (Brodin 2005). However, play
is also understood as something children do spontaneously and without interference
from adults (Brodin 2005), and ‘play and enjoyment are in their very essence about
the quality of children’s and young people’s lives’ (Lister 2006, 321–2). Play is valued
as a positive end in itself (John and Wheyway 2004), yet it is also categorised,
contextualised and seen as crucial to a child’s development on every level (Dunn
2001, cited in Dunn and Moore 2005). Such understandings of play clearly influence
the interpretation of play and opportunities for play for disabled children.

Play and difference

In Jenny Lindon’s book Understanding children’s play she posed the question ‘Do
disabled children play?’ (Lindon 2001, 79). She went on to answer her own question
and to say that ‘of course disabled children play’. However, the fact that Lindon raised
the question in a book aimed at early years practitioners is startling. It is perhaps a
reflection of a general sense of the disabled child as ‘other’. It implicitly appears to
rely on an under-girding assumption that disability as deficit equals deficient, lacking
or absent play. There is a body of literature, which seems to support this view. Brodin
(2005) described studies on play for ‘children with disabilities’, where a control group
of non-disabled children was used and the play behaviour compared. The studies
found that in most cases ‘children with profound disabilities’ did not function accord-
ing to recognised standards of play (Almqvist 1993, cited in Brodin 2005, 636). Porter
(2005) suggested that in order to understand what play means for children with severe
disabilities there is a need to understand what play means for children with different-
types of disabilities (emphasis added). She went on to describe how children with
hearing impairments did not play on a cognitive level comparable with their listening
peers and that the level of their play was dependent on their communicative abilities.
Meanwhile, children with visual impairments presented challenges, as they typically
played alone and relied on manipulative toys. Jahr et al. (2000) insisted that children
with autism (note the homogenisation of a highly contested label) lacked the ability to
take part in reciprocal play with their peers. Messier (2008) described the interest of
children ‘with intellectual disabilities’ in sensory and sensori-motor play as evidence
of their immaturity. The literature seems to suggest that while disabled children do
indeed play, their play is not only different from non-disabled children’s play but also
deficient.
We could view the play of disabled children as yet another example of the
fetishisation of disabled bodies (Goodley forthcoming). Fetish is constituted by
non-disabled observers in the site of the disablement, as if fragmentation/lack are
really there in ‘the disabled’ and not in the ‘able bodied’ (Whitford 2002). As soon
as ‘the disabled’ act their embodiment becomes conceptualised through a symbolic
order which cherishes ‘autonomy’ and dispels difference (Michalko 2002). It is
impossible to view disabled children as playing because they are already fetishised
as curious.
 Disability & Society 503

Play and intervention

The consequence of the perception of the disabled child as deficient, other, lacking in
terms of play, is wide ranging for the child. Once a child’s development is identified
as atypical, abnormal play becomes the primary tool for assessment and intervention.
Indeed, Bundy (1997) developed a ‘test of playfulness’ from which he suggested that
a child who is more ‘playful’ has more control, is more self-motivated and is capable
of greater interaction with others than a ‘less playful child’. Papatheodoru (2006)
described the value of play in assessing children who are ‘at risk’ of experiencing
‘difficulties’ in their learning, development and behaviour. Citing Vygotsky’s zone of
proximal development (ZPD), Papatheodoru explained that play-based assessment of
children ‘at risk’ can offer opportunities to identify:

● the children’s current level of learning and development;

● their potential for learning and development;
● the skills the child needs;
● the strategies the adults must adopt for children to reach their potential.

Paptheodoru described the benefits of an ‘individual play plan’ (IPP) as the mecha-
nism by which the child would be supported to overcome their ‘difficulties’. The IPP
should include: goals/outcomes for the long and short term; the support/resources
needed for learning environments; modification of curriculum play activities; a selec-
tion of play activities; the support required from specialists; ideas for how the child
might be supported at home; details of how progress will be monitored; a review date.
Yet, Paptheodoru’s focus on play as a means of achieving developmental goals is
risky for the disabled child. It threatens the spontaneity and intrinsic value of play as
adults colonise the world of play, directing the ‘goals’ and judging the ‘quality’ of the
play. It also sets a level of achievement, a barometer of ability, a destination of skills
levels. Furthermore, in terms of critical understandings of education, these deficient
and pathologising definitions of play threaten to recreate monologues about children’s
bodies and minds rather than pedagogies of hope and potential with children. Play
becomes another practice through which disability and abnormality are incrementally
understood and synthesised. Play is codified, monitored, managed and constituted in
discourses of disablement. Meanwhile, the play of those children who occupy the
ghostly centre of normalcy remains relatively untouched (Graham and Slee 2008).
However, as we shall we see later, even the play of ‘normals’, as well as ‘abnormals’,
is increasingly at risk of intervention and assessment.
Assessment is not the only example of adults colonising play. Many disabled chil-
dren are subjected to ‘play therapy’, where the trained therapist ‘helps’ the disabled
child ‘to cope’ (Porter et al. 2008). Play therapy is said to be especially helpful for
children who have difficulty expressing their feelings and that through play therapy
children gain ‘mastery’ over stress and trauma (Porter et al. 2008). This raises the
question of whether play therapy is play at all, as it seems to lack spontaneity and is
adult directed. Whether or not therapy is (un)helpful is not the focus of our paper.
Instead, our concern relates to what is being done to the ‘playing child’ and the
‘disabled child’. Our literature review of these discursive objects reveals a plethora of
studies that have elided the disabled child with therapeutic intervention. What does
this say about the constitution of the disabled child? Deconstruction of the psychology
of gender and Davis’s (1995) critique of normalcy, the ‘playing child’ and the
‘disabled child’ appear to be viewed in a number of recurring discourses including:
504 D. Goodley and K. Runswick-Cole

● the disabled child can only play in particular ways (if at all);
● a disabled child’s play is either generally lacking or specific to their impairment;
● the disabled child requires intervention to correct and normalise their play;
● notions of play are owned, understood and applied by adults to disabled
children;
● the playing disabled child is assessed as such when she/he meets particularly
discursive requirements;
● standards of play are based on an unspoken ‘normal’ childhood;
● we think we know a lot about the disabled non/playing child.

What is particularly interesting about these conceptions is that the antithetical

‘normal child’ and ‘free playing child’ as objects are invisible, although the implicit
destinies and ideals of therapy and education. The prefabricated, pre-existing and
naturalised normal child is assumed as a given (Graham and Slee 2008). The truth,
though, is that this literature builds up a whole index of knowledge about the
‘disabled (not) playing child’, while the ‘non-disabled (very) playful child’ remains a
ghostly spectre. The disabled child becomes constructed as an abject other in this
psychological literature: an other that cannot play for itself. There is then a certain
colonisation of the disabled child’s body at the moment it starts (or does not start) to
play (Goodley forthcoming).
The literature on play which focuses on children with the label autism has
focused on the need to allow children to engage in spontaneous play. However, a
number of researchers (Jordan 2003; Luckett et al. 2007) have questioned whether,
by ‘teaching’ children with autism to play, the children are really playing at all. They
argue that the types of ‘play’ taught do not represent ‘play’ for the individual with
the label autism. If they do play they are taught, then they are only ‘pretending’ to
play. However, this analysis could be seen to further marginalise disabled children’s
play. The argument is that children with autism can’t play in typical ways, they need
to be taught to do so, but even if the children learn to play ‘properly’ this isn’t really
‘proper’ play at all because the play isn’t spontaneous. However, children who
engage in ‘normative’ play escape this analysis as if playful interactions between
typically developing children and peers and adults do not involve elements of teach-
ing, imitation and mimicry. Why is it that only children with autism are considered to
be pretending to play?

Parents (mothers) and play

A further consequence of seeing play as primarily a tool for diagnosis and therapy of
disabled children is that play has become the means of governance, surveillance and
control of disabled children and their families normalcy – for Davis (1995) this can
be understood as being tied to progression, industrialisation and the ideological
consolidation of the power of the bourgeoisie. Non-normal bodies are therefore
required to adapt and the families in which these bodies live are expected to become
involved in the processes of accommodation and assimilation. Typically, it has been
the mother–infant dyad which has come under scrutiny in relation to disabled chil-
dren and play, to the exclusion of fathers, other family members and socio-cultural,
economic and wider structural factors. Okimoto et al. (2000) studied physically
disabled children and found that playful interactions between mother and child were
key for the child’s development. However, although Okimoto et al. found that
 Disability & Society 505

mothers of physically disabled children displayed more maternal directed behaviour,

engaged in more play involving physical contact, were warmer and initiated interac-
tions more frequently than mothers of typically developing children, the infants
displayed less eye contact than their peers and were less independent (Okimoto et al.
2000). Yet, Okimoto et al. did find that it was possible to ‘intervene’ to promote
more playfulness on the part of the mothers and to help mothers to support their
child’s development. Moreover, filial or family play therapy is based on the concept
of parents playing the role of therapists. The aim is to teach parents basic therapy
skills to improve their relationship with their children (Ray, Bratton, and Brandt
2000, cited in Porter et al. 2008). It is this focus on the parents as educators and ther-
apists, intervening to ensure that the child achieves the developmental goals
prescribed by others, which means that structured activities (designed by profession-
als) take the place of spontaneous play activities (Paige-Smith et al. 2008). Parents
and disabled children are robbed of the joys of self-motivated, carefree play as they
struggle to meet the externally set criteria of ‘productive’ play that will ensure the
child develops. Play becomes part of the work of normalization. Parents are expected
to enact the normative. The domestic context of the disabled family becomes a public
site of professional intervention (McLaughlin et al. 2008).
Mothers in the present study described their experiences of enacting the normative.
At times the struggle for normalcy seemed frustrating and irrelevant:

The thing that didn’t work was trying to make her do pretend play. No she is really not
interested in giving a drink to the dolly, she has no interest in dollies! NO, no, this is not,
NOT working! (Sarah)

Yet, for another family therapy was omnipresent:

For many years on our holidays we used to take the therapist with us, they could do ther-
apy and stuff like that while we were away and make it education, which we couldn’t
have done otherwise. (Claire)

Throughout the accounts parents showed a critical awareness of the relative compe-
tencies of professionals to ‘play professional’ with their children:

The play person just used to sit on the floor and pick things up and play for him rather
than with him and we thought, maybe it’s us that’s wrong, maybe, maybe it was us that
was wrong but we wanted him if you like to learn how to play independently from us. It
seemed as if they were coming for no reason, I don’t know, they were told to come to
somebody’s house and show this family how to play with this and we knew that, you
know, we knew how to show him how to push a car along, you know ‘come on R, let’s
play cars’ or play in the sand pit or whatever but it was more developing his skills for
playing that never seemed to come across. (Lynne)

David played a game with another little boy … they ran around together there was good
communication between them, but the professionals didn’t know what to do with it. So
when the children did something good the professionals didn’t know what to do with it.
(Claire)

These accounts demonstrate parental expectations about the teaching of play and the
lack of fit with the realities of professional judgement. Play as therapy and assessment
clearly becomes a key part of the ways in which parents view their children and the
interventions of others.
506 D. Goodley and K. Runswick-Cole

Emancipating play for disabled children and their families

How might it be possible to emancipate play from the domains of assessment and ther-
apy for disabled children and their families? Our aim was to reassert play in the lives
of disabled children and their families by drawing on three perspectives that seem
useful here: the sociology of childhood (James and Prout 2001); social oppression
theories of disability (see, for example, Davis 1995; Oliver 1990, 1996); critiques of
developmental psychology (Morrss 1992; Walkerdine 1993; Burman 2001). We
suggest that this literature allows us to ‘problematise’ play: to consider how it has
become such a problem for disabled children and to rethink play in more enabling
ways.

Play and the ‘new sociology of childhood’ (James and Prout 2001)
James and Prout (2001) argued for a reappraisal of childhood, challenging images of
children as ‘passive’ and reconceptualising children as active agents in their social
worlds. For James and Prout childhood and children’s social relationships and cultures
are to be valued in their own right. Crucially, they argued that childhood must be
understood as a social construction that can never be separated from other variables
such as class, gender or ethnicity, or indeed (dis)ability.
As the new sociology of childhood values childhood in its own right and not
merely as a preparation for adulthood, this supports the view that play is of intrinsic,
not only instrumental, value for children. John and Wheyway (2004) seemed to draw
on this perspective as they defined play as freely chosen, personally directed and
intrinsically motivated. Freely chosen play means that children choose when and what
play they undertake, play is not part of a curriculum or a programme and does not have
steps that need to be completed. When play is personally directed, it is children them-
selves who agree the roles or rules of the activity, as well as the outcomes, if any.
Finally, for play to be intrinsically motivated it must be done for its own sake and not
for an external reward or certificate. Play, then, is for fun, not for assessment, inter-
vention or therapy. The sociology of childhood allows us to value play as an end in
itself, rather than for its instrumental value, however, it has little to say about disabled
children’s play in particular, so it is the second perspective, social oppression theories
of disability, to which we now turn.

Social oppression theories of disability and inclusive play

Over the past 20 years disability has been politicized for disabled adults by the
disabled people’s movement. The focus has moved away from ‘deficit’ models of
bodies and minds to a focus on pathologising and exclusionary environments
(Campbell and Oliver 1996). Social oppression theories view disability as the product
of specific social, cultural and economic structures, and it aims to speak to the oppres-
sion of and prejudice against disabled people which are caused by institutional,
cultural and psycho-emotional forms of exclusion (Thomas 1999; Reeve 2002). The
separation of disability from impairment is key to understanding disability and
disablement, as impairment, of itself, is not seen as being part of the problem, rather
disability is socially created (Oliver 1996).
Stalker and Connors (2007) noted that, thus far, the social model of disability has
paid scant attention to disabled children and their experiences of impairment and
disablement. However, social oppression understandings of disability have made a
 Disability & Society 507

considerable contribution to both the drive for inclusive education and inclusive play
environments (Dunn and Moore 2005; John and Wheyway 2004). As a result of the
focus on structural barriers to participation, accessible and inclusive play and spaces
for play have been the focus of research and revision of practice (Dunn et al. 2004;
John and Wheyway 2004; Play Safety Forum 2002). Disabled children’s right to play
has been asserted. Cole-Hamilton (Children’s Play Council 2002) carried out research
with disabled children that led her to call for them to have the right to spend more time
playing outdoors. John and Wheyway (2004) focused on the social and institutional
barriers to disabled children’s play, including health and safety concerns, which they
termed ‘polite discrimination’, which prevent disabled children from getting dirty,
getting bumped or getting scraped and restrict play.
The ‘polite discrimination’ based on health and safety fears (real or imaginary) has
been further challenged by the impact of the ‘Disability discrimination act 1995’ as all
service providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the physical features of
their premises to overcome barriers to access, and this includes access to playgrounds.
It is now accepted (in policy guidance at least) that:

All children both need and want to take risks in order to explore limits, venture into new
experiences and develop their capacities, from a very young age and from their earliest
play experiences. … Children with disabilities have an equal if not greater need for
opportunities to take risks, since they may be denied the freedom of choice enjoyed by
their non-disabled peers. (Play Safety Forum 2002, cited in Dunn and Moore 2005,
334–5)

Despite the welcome focus on inclusive environments and accessible play spaces, it is
still the case that disabled children are much more likely to be offered controlled activ-
ities in segregated environments than non-disabled children (John and Wheyway
2004). From a social oppression theory perspective an approach that supports
accessible but segregated play is evidence of further discrimination against disabled
children (John and Wheyway 2004).
Despite the drive for barrier-free and inclusive play spaces, disabled children still
face discrimination within these environments. Ryan (2005) and McLaughlin et al.
(2008) found that it was the attitudes and responses of others that placed restrictions
on mothers and children with ‘learning disabilities’ as much as any structural barrier.
Mothers in our study expressed these feelings too. Sarah talked about the ‘pretentious-
ness’ of other mothers at playgroup, who talked endlessly about their children’s play
and achievements while her daughter lay immobile on the floor. Sarah and her daugh-
ter went to playgroup infrequently as a result. Both Lucy and Sarah found a sanctuary
at ‘special playgroups’ with other mothers of disabled children. Lucy explained that it
was a place where she didn’t feel ‘odd’:

And, just as you go to a toddler group and you say ‘oh, Jonny’s doing this’, you could
go there and say ‘oh we’ve hit another milestone, he’s actually located his head’. … I
mean something that to you is very important but to a parent of a ‘normal’ child, what-
ever normal, whatever you want to call them, would be ‘oh’! (Lucy)

In Ryan’s study she described comments, ‘tuts’ and stares as mothers negotiated
public spaces which, at times, made environments inaccessible to their children,
regardless of the provision of accessible play spaces and equipment. Interestingly,
Ryan reported the use of non-mainstream activities rising as children grew older and
as mothers felt edged out of mainstream environments. McLaughlin et al. (2008), in a
508 D. Goodley and K. Runswick-Cole

recent study of the experiences of parents of disabled children, found that one of the
singular most disabling barriers for families was the rejection of the child in potential
play areas by other parents (often of non-disabled children). This led many parents to
develop subtle and non-subtle ways of negotiating and crafting entry into play-
grounds, playgroups, parks and leisure settings, so that their disabled children could
just be. The dominance of psychological notions of abnormality that have infected
society might explain the rejection by these parents: they worry disabled children will
adversely affect their non-disabled children’s play experiences. Clearly, then, the liter-
ature we cited above from developmental psychologists that have mis-created the
simple object of ‘non or weird playing disabled child’ will trickle down into more
mainstream play and education settings. Such understandings allow exclusionary
social actors justification for harbouring prejudicial views about disabled children and
their families. It is therefore an imperative that research on disabled children and their
play, psychological or not, urgently requires the intervention of disability studies
scholars in order to deconstruct the kinds of objects and subjects that are being
unproblematically applied to disabled children. One key area of analysis, which we
hinted at earlier, is to ask more general question about the binary opposite against
which the disabled child is judged: the normal playing child. It is this normative
concept that we consider next.
Explorations of social oppression theories of disability have gone some way to
emancipating play for disabled children and their families. The focus on disabled
children’s right to play and the need for accessible environments for play is to be
welcomed. However, the link between play and development has not come under
scrutiny thus far, and it is to this issue that we now turn.

Critical developmental psychologies: moving beyond play and development

Those who ally themselves with social oppression theories of disability invoke
barrier-free and inclusive environments and recognise that having an impairment does
not reduce the child’s capacity or desire for play, however, the belief in the develop-
mental and therapeutic values of play have often been undisturbed. The link between
play, therapy and development is presented almost universally as uncontroversial and
unproblematical, and yet, developmental psychology, which underpins child
development, has been under sustained attack from a number of sources (Morss 1992;
Walkerdine 1993; Burman 2001, 2008).
Walkerdine (1993) and Burman (2008) set out to expose the myth of the ‘norm’
which constructs a world in which atypically developing children can only be
acknowledged as ‘deficient’ or ‘problematic’. The child must be measured (through
play) to ensure ‘normal’ development, and when ‘abnormal’ or pathological develop-
ment is observed it must be classified and corrected (Walkerdine 1993). However,
Walkerdine and Burman were sceptical about the truth claims of developmental
psychology. Walkerdine (1993) described developmental psychology as one of the
‘grand meta-narratives of science’ – where the central character is the child but the
story is grand, totalising, about children’s development, and testable. Indeed, develop-
mental psychology itself constructs both ‘the child’ and ‘development’. For Burman
(2001) general accounts of psychological theories are deeply culturally embedded
records of particular times and places, representing the cultural white, Western,
middle class, masculine subjectivity of the mid twentieth century. In this sense ‘the
‘developing child’ is not a description of a ‘real’ entity, but a discursive construction,
 Disability & Society 509

albeit a very powerful one’ (Walkerdine 1993, 454). Burman (2001) urged us to move
away from the prototypical child as the developmental subject and talk instead of
diversity, in critical ways and mindful of their reliance on colonial and globalising
modes of production (Burman 2008). Deconstructing developmental psychologies and
psychologies of development requires us to think critically about the constitution of
bodies, activities, institutions and communities. One approach, discursive psychology
or discourse analysis (for classic texts see Potter and Wetherell 1994; Burman and
Parker 1993), allows us to think about:

● the making of disabled children through conceptions such as ‘risk’, ‘health’,

‘safety’, ‘educational achievement’ and ‘contribution’;
● the variability and inconsistency of psychological theories that constitute
disabled objects as passive but demand activity to achieve particular develop-
mental stages;
● the historical/genealogical origins of notions of ‘intelligence’, ‘cognition’ and
‘emotional intelligence’;
● those who benefit from particular discursive constructions of disabled children
(most obviously practitioners and researchers);
● the ways in which developmental psychologists have created ideas that now
masquerade as taken for granted of contemporary life, including: ‘play as educa-
tional’; ‘play as measurable’; ‘play as a marker of intelligence’; ‘play as safe’;
‘play as monitored’.

Morss (1992) suggested that a deconstruction of developmental psychology would

change the notions of who could speak about children, however, it would also change
notions of what could be said about children, in particular with reference to play. By
repositioning play outside the grand narrative of developmental psychology play
would cease to be a site of diagnosis, intervention and correction for disabled children.
Parents of disabled children would no longer experience play as the means by which
they ‘support’ their disabled child’s development. Sensory play would be seen as
different, perhaps, but not deficient in 14-year-old children (Messier 2008). Children
with the label autism would gain the opportunity to take part in reciprocal play with
their peers (Jahr and Eikeseth 2001). Disabled children might then be allowed to play
for the sake of it, to get dirty and to scrape their knees. They might also ‘be allowed’
to rock back and forth, flap hands and engage in other forms of ‘inappropriate’ behav-
iour, as these constitute forms of play rather than challenging behaviour (see Michalko
2002)
This scrapping of (or at the very least disturbing of) the norm proffered by critical
writers in developmental psychology brings us to the arguments of two writers, one a
psychoanalyst, the other a disabled activist. In attempting to undo the tying of the
disabled child’s playing body to the expectations of a normative ideal, we are
reminded of the work of Lacan (1977), whose psychoanalytical exposé of social imag-
inaries taught us of the impossibility of the normative. Everyone, disabled or non-
disabled, will fail to match the independent ideals of Western society. We should, at
the very least, make play a place in which bridging the norm is never a natural expec-
tation. In promoting an understanding of play and well-being we are reminded of
Rioux’s (1994) careful exposition of the philosophy and ethics of inclusion that should
underpin our work with disabled people. Participation in social life, she argued, must
attend more to the non-productive and non-material contributions of community
510 D. Goodley and K. Runswick-Cole

members. Play, then, should, wherever possible, stand in direction opposition to the
demands of a meritocratic society and the marketisation of life, leisure and love. As
Wong (2002, 93) put it: ‘more people value social justice than wealth in their concep-
tion of the good life’.

Conclusion
In this article we have argued for the emancipation of play from the domains of
assessment and intervention for disabled children. Disabled children’s play has been
characterised as disordered and deficient and, as such, has been valued only as a
means by which developmental goals can be achieved. Whereas play for typically
developing children has been seen as of intrinsic value, for disabled children play has
all too often been seen as instrumental. The recognition of childhood and play as
important in their own right is crucial for the emancipation of disabled children’s play.
However, a social oppression theory perspective, which shifts attention away from
particular impairments and individual ‘problems’ with play, is also useful. This
approach has galvanised both the inclusive education movement and the development
of inclusive play spaces. However, it is, perhaps, the deconstruction of developmental
psychology that offers the most powerful critique for understanding disabled chil-
dren’s play. Severing the link between play and development, play and normality,
play and normalisation, will we hope allow disabled children and their families
repossess play. We also urge early childhood researchers to deconstruct their own
conceptions around development, disability and play.

Acknowledgements
Thanks go to the Economic and Social Research Council for their funding of the project ‘Does
every child matter, post-Blair? The interconnections of disabled childhoods’ (RES-062-23-
1138). We would also like to thank the parents, professionals and children who took part.

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