À quoi jouent les élèves de maternelle ?

Des conceptions pédagogiques aux pratiques de classe

Abstract

The last french preschool’s program repeatedly advocate two very different types of play: “free games” and “structured games”. This plurality is inherited of two educational traditions that have not ceased to be in tension for almost fifty years in the first scholar institutions but also European: one highlighting the necessity to prepare academic success through play, the other focusing on the more transversal importance of play in young children’s development. Indeed, not every teachers make the same choices on that matter. While some (young) teachers seem to subscribe to game learning by learning objectives, some of them give more space to free play. These different implementations of game in preschool classes are irreconcilable representations of the effects of game on academic learning and more generally on child development.