Jean Piaget on the Psychological Boundary of "Play"

During the vast majority of the time in which they are left uninterrupted, children are at play. "Play" is a way of life for children, and it has become a consensus that "play" is conducive to children's learning and development. But when we witness a random episode of children's playful interaction, what can we actually see, and what can we understand? Or, put differently, why is this understanding necessary, and for what purpose do we seek to understand children's play? My purpose in writing, however, is not to complicate this commonplace phenomenon of everyday life. On the contrary, I hope to understand children's behavior and children's learning from a more "ordinary" perspective and with a more confident attitude. At a broader level, this is also to understand our own behavior as human beings, without "mythologizing" it as a subject that only professionals such as psychologists are able to handle.

So how would Piaget guide people in understanding children's play behavior?

First, he holds that when we attend to children's play behavior itself, what we are essentially concerned with is the position that play occupies within the child's thought. That is, children have many different forms of thought, so what kind of thought does play touch upon? A common idea is that when we see children playing, we assume that they have entered some imaginary world, and therefore play is a state of imaginative thought, so that play is equated with imagination. But imagination is only one among many thought activities, just as play is only a part of many kinds of activities. For example, the various market orders and economic orders established in the adult world also contain the characteristics of play. Therefore, treating play as a state of imaginative thought, and regarding play as an independently existing activity rather than as a part of various activities, is a misconception that we need to avoid if we wish to understand play. That is to say, the next time we see children "playing" freely, or engaging in some rule-governed game, we should not arbitrarily assert that "the children are in play," because play is not an activity that is essentially different from other activities and can thereby be separated out on its own.

Yet people have always attempted to identify the essential difference between play and other activities, attempting to define play as a distinct activity, for instance by setting it in opposition to "work." This view holds that play does not pursue a predetermined "result"; play is undertaken in order to experience the process of play itself, rather than for any other external purpose, whereas work has an external, predetermined "goal." For example, many people go to work not because we want to experience the process of working itself, but in order to earn the income necessary for living. This view is easy to understand and readily accepted by the public. The discussion now enters its critical stage: how does Piaget challenge this view? First, it is easy for us to observe that, in reality, even in play we still care about results. For example, a child will be upset at losing a game, and competition and conflict also exist in play. Hence we are not entirely detached from "results"; we undertake an activity both to experience the process itself and to pursue some external result. Conversely, even in work, we are not merely seeking income; on the contrary, we often enjoy our work itself. Therefore, two orientations of behavior always exist in all kinds of activities. Piaget defines the orientation of behavior that does not pursue external goals and aims only at experiencing the process itself as Autolelism, that is, an inward orientation of behavior; and the orientation of behavior that pursues external goals as Heterotelism, that is, an outward orientation of behavior.

Note that the point of our discussion has shifted from "behavior per se" to "a certain orientation of behavior." With these two concepts in place, Piaget holds that the question we were discussing, namely how to distinguish "play" from "non-play" activities, no longer holds. We cannot make this distinction, because we can only attend to the degree of these two "orientations" within a given activity.

Therefore, the question we now need to address becomes: within an activity, in what psychological state is the child in play, that is, how must the degrees of these two orientations of behavior be distributed for the child to be in a state of play? In other words, we should understand play as a psychological state rather than as a form of activity or an external behavior. Accordingly, we do not make the obvious, activity-type distinction that "doing homework is not play whereas being in the park is play."

The entire purpose of the above discussion is to establish a meaningful question. When we use social science to understand phenomena of life, and are not satisfied with "taken-for-granted" "commonsense notions," the most important premise is that the question we pose be meaningful, that is, that its direction be correct; otherwise, no matter how much effort we make, it will be in vain.

Having a meaningful question, the purpose of our subsequent discussion is to answer it, that is, to find a specific point (pole) between these two orientations of behavior that allows us to judge whether a child is in a state of play or of "non-play."

How would Piaget answer this? He holds that understanding the nature of these two orientations of behavior within a given activity is essentially understanding the nature of a psychological state. But we cannot directly "see" an individual's psychological state; what we "see" are activities, and activities are not merely psychological activities, since the unfolding of an activity is based on the interaction between the subject and reality.

Therefore, he uses the two concepts of "assimilation" and "accommodation" to describe the two relationships in the subject's interaction with reality, that is, to "see" whether, in an activity, we are "assimilating reality" or "accommodating to reality."

"Assimilating reality" means that, in the activity, the orientation of behavior of "self-purpose" is dominant: the child "transforms" or "uses" the external world according to the child's own purposes. For example, when a child uses a banana as a telephone, the child disregards its external properties, namely that it is a food, and forcibly engages in the interaction of "making a phone call" with reality in accordance with the child's own purpose. Evidently, the child's orientation of behavior is dominated by internal purpose. Piaget therefore uses the concept of "assimilating reality" to define this psychological state as the "state of play." When a child is in a state of play, the child does not care about the rules of reality but makes reality submit to the child's own will and imagination. Hence, the critical point for determining from the two orientations of behavior whether "play" occurs is: "whether the orientation of behavior of self-purpose is dominant," that is, whether "assimilation" is dominant.

"Accommodating to reality" means an orientation of behavior based on external purpose: the child changes his or her own behavior or cognition in order to adapt to the laws of the external world. For example, a child must learn to hold a spoon correctly (accommodating to the shape of the spoon) in order to deliver food into the mouth; or, in doing mathematics problems, the child must abide by the rules of logic. In activities of this kind, the reason the child is in a "non-play" state is that the orientation of behavior of external purpose is dominant. The two concepts of "assimilation" and "accommodation" make the "internal orientation of behavior" "observable," and are key to further understanding whether a child is in a state of play.

All of our discussion above is based on the premise that our activities rest on self-purpose or external purpose to varying degrees; this is not a matter of being based solely on self-purpose or solely on external purpose. Yet we observe in reality that very young children, for example children under one year old, have not yet formed purposes of their own. How, then, does Piaget regard their behavior? Piaget's explanation is that at this stage the child's psychological state has not yet differentiated these two different purposes. As children grow older, they differentiate the two psychological states of self-purpose and external purpose, and only when they are able to regulate these two psychological states can we judge, according to which psychological state is dominant, whether their behavior possesses "playfulness."

The above exposition may require some cognitive effort for people to join this discussion. Returning to reality, however, take for example why we promote the "play-based learning" pedagogy in the early education stage. From Piaget's theory, an explanation can be offered: we are concerned with whether children can reach a "play" psychological state in teaching activities. On the surface, we may explain this with words such as "joyful" and "playful," because it is obvious that people always like "interesting" activities. But such an explanation cannot truly account for the internal cognitive mechanism by which learning in the "state of play" is more effective for humans.

Of course, we also cannot let the "psychological state of play" occupy an absolutely dominant position; we must acknowledge the existence of "external goals." Therefore, the teacher's role is to remain constantly sensitive to the balance point between these two and to be capable of regulating it effectively.

Piaget's theory, however, lets us "see" that behind such "rhetoric," often existing in the form of "commercial marketing," as "active learning" and "igniting curiosity," there should lie a scientific understanding of human behavior itself rather than an obvious "commonsense" that leaves one feeling empty and weary.

These understandings also provide a theoretical perspective for us, as adults, to understand our own behavior, prompting us to ask: does human behavior always possess some purpose, whether internal or external? If human behavior always possesses the dual attributes of self-purpose and external purpose, does this mean that free will is always constrained by external conditions? And how should we regulate the tension between the two? This also explains why, when we are able to do work we like, we do not feel that we are working: at that moment our self-purpose surpasses external purpose and occupies the dominant psychological state. Conversely, when a job requires us to suppress our self-purpose to the utmost and we are dominated by external purpose, we feel oppressed, because work keeps us in a psychological state of submission to reality.

As teachers, understanding the psychological mechanisms behind human behavior not only helps us understand and practice scientific pedagogy, that is, to carry out activities consistent with the level and mechanisms of children's psychological development so that "learning" becomes effective. It also enables students, through a great many such high-quality learning activities themselves, to gradually recognize what kinds of learning activities are effective for them, in what psychological state their learning efficiency is highest, and how to regulate the dynamic relationship between "self-purpose" and "external purpose." This metacognitive capacity to reflect on one's own learning activities is also key to cultivating children's abilities of "self-directed learning" and "lifelong learning," because the essence of education is not merely the transmission of "knowledge" but to ensure that individuals continue to possess "the ability to learn" after leaving the education system, an ability that helps individuals adapt to a constantly changing real world.