Who Talks to William?

The focus of our research was on what supervising adults do. We were interested in behavioural processes. Two play centres and two free kindergartens running V2 day sessions, and two day-care centres agreed to participate in the study. All centres (reflecting the dominant approach in New Zealand) run child-centred free play programmes. The staff create the environment by putting out equipment (curriculum materials) and the children are free to choose how and what they will play with. Both day-care centres and Park Kindergarten have part of each day structured by the adults where the range of activities is narrowed to a few.