Volume 17, Issue 1

Published 2025

Editors' Note

The first issue of volume 17 of the American Journal of Play begins with an interview with game scholar and ludologist Jesper Juul. He discusses his foundational research on the history, culture, and aesthetics of video games. Then Christopher A. Rasmussen examines the Civil Rights–era board games Ghetto, Blacks & Whites, and El Barrio, which he argues encouraged players to become more aware of racial inequality even as they repeated the questionable ideas about race and racial segregation of the period. Next, Michelle Semple-McBean, Godryne Wintz, and Lidon Lashley investigate the decline of nature play over the past decade in Guyanese early childhood settings. This is followed by Celeste M. Dierenfeld, who uses extensive interviews to explore the ways in which elementary teachers play and the importance of this play inside and outside their classrooms. And the issue concludes with Verónica Viñas and Elizabeth Pike’s use of John W. Kingdon’s multiple streams framework to analyze the pioneering street play policy in Bristol in the United Kingdom.

Interviews

Reflections on Video Games and Game History: An Interview with Jesper Juul

Jesper Juul is a video game theorist and occasional developer. He works at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and has taught at MIT and New York University. He coorganized one of the first academic video game conferences, had a hand in starting the video game journal Game Studies, and helped organize the first Nordic Game Jam. He coedits the MIT Press Playful Thinking series. He has published five books with MIT Press, Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds; The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games; Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity; A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players; and Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64. His first computer was a Commodore 64, on which he wrote games and demos.

Articles

Race, Role Playing, and Simulation Games in the Civil Rights Era: Ghetto, Blacks & Whites, and El Barrio

Chris A. Rasmussen

The author discusses how social scientists and psychologists in the late 1960s and early 1970s devised the board games Ghetto, Blacks & Whites, and El Barrio to teach students in college and high school about racism, racial segregation, and poverty in American society. But, he also argues, these games assumed that poor Black and Latino Americans bore some individual responsibility for their poverty and could, with great effort, escape the ghetto or the barrio. Rasmussen concludes that these games simultaneously encouraged players to become more aware of racial inequality and replicated ideas about race and segregation prevalent among social scientists and game designers at the time, ideas that are considered questionable or even discounted today. Key words: board games; civil rights and games; game design; race; role-playing games; simulation games; sociology of games

The Status of Nature Play in Guyanese Early Childhood Settings

Michelle Semple-McBean, Godryne Wintz, and Lidon Lashley

The authors discuss the shift in play-based educational experiences during the past decade in Guyana. They hold that nature-based play has become a type of pedagogy in decline and even at risk of extinction. Their study presents the status of nature play beginning with Guyana’s national early childhood program in 1976 and employs a descriptive survey of teachers from the different geographical areas of Guyana about the nature play experiences of children. Using three categories of nature-based play—regular, messy, and risky—and introducing the culturally relevant peacock flower play, they outline the negative impact on play associated with over protectiveness, environmental worries, and ideological objection. They present recommendations for retaining, advancing, and creating nature play spaces and experiences in Guyanese early childhood settings. Key words: early childhood; Guyanese early childhood education; innovative play; nature play; outdoor learning; play-based pedagogy

Promoting Playful Communities: The Ways Elementary Teachers Play

Celeste M. Dierenfeld

The author, using extensive interviews, researches the play of working elementary school teachers to discover how they engage in such activities, both in and out of the classroom, to relax, enhance learning, and connect professionally. She discusses how these experiences offer rich insight for strengthening teacher well-being, training, and professional development. Key words: teacher professional development; teacher play and playfulness; teacher well-being

Children’s Right to Play in a Window of Opportunity: Understanding Local Policy Change— Multiple Streams in Bristol (UK) Policy Making

Verónica Viñas and Elizabeth Pike

The authors discuss their application of John W. Kingdon’s multiple streams framework (MSF) and the role it plays in the analysis of a pioneering local public policy in the United Kingdom (UK). The aim of this policy, instituted in 2009 and initiated by a group of Bristol’s mothers, was to reclaim children’s right to play, mainly for their own enjoyment and sense of freedom and independence but also for all the important functional, healthy, and developmental outcomes of free outdoor active play. Their play street model was disseminated to more than one hundred other local authorities within a decade and obtained the explicit support of the UK government. The authors intend their analysis and conclusions both to contribute to the MSF and policy change literature and offer lessons learned in Bristol as useful for children’s right to play advocates, social movements, policy makers, and strategic planners. Key words: multiple streams framework; policy entrepreneurs; policy making and play; right to play

Book Reviews

David Toomey, Kingdom of Play: What Ball- Bouncing Octopuses, Belly- Flopping Monkeys, and Mud- Sliding Elephants Reveal About Life Itself

Jon-Paul C. Dyson

Aaron Trammell, Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology

Harrison P. Pinckney IV

Michael M. Patte, Fraser Brown, and Anna Beresin, eds., Brian Sutton-Smith, Playful Scholar

Robyn Holmes

Melissa Kagen, Wandering Games

Chloe Anna Milligan

Contributors

Celeste Dierenfeld has taught in K-12 education for over ten years as a special education teacher and an instructional coach. Passionate about teacher well-being and cultivating a community in which teaching feels joyful and resistant to burnout, she has published qualitative research on secondary teacher play and its impact in Teaching and Teacher Education.

Chris A. Rasmussen is professor of History at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He has published on racial protest, school segregation, and the response of Black Americans to the counterculture in Journal of Urban History, History of Education Quarterly, and Journal of American Studies.

Michelle Semple-McBean is Dean of the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the University of Guyana. She headed the research unit at the University of Guyana Early Childhood Centre of Excellence, focusing on culturally relevant play-based projects. She coauthored The State of Socio-Dramatics in Guyanese Early Childhood Settings: With Stories from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and has published on early childhood playful engagements in Early Years, Early Child Development and Care, and International Association of Laboratory Schools. Godryne Wintz is Deputy Director at the University of Guyana Early Childhood Centre of Excellence. One of Guyana’s leading advocates of mud play, her recent research focuses on play-based learning. She contributed to The State of Socio-Dramatics in Guyanese Early Childhood Settings: With Stories from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and has published about early childhood play encounters and children’s conflict in Social Economic Studies, and International Journal of Early Years Education. Lidon Lashley is Director at the University of Guyana Early Childhood Centre of Excellence. As a specialist of Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND), he has published about neurodiversity and inclusive education in the International Journals of Inclusive Education, International Association of Laboratory Schools, European Journal of Education and Pedagogy and Caribbean Journal of Psychology. He is coauthor of The State of Socio-Dramatics in Guyanese Early Childhood Settings: With Stories from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago.

Verónica Viñas is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain. She holds a doctorate in political science and sociology and master’s in public administration. She has written widely on theoretical and methodological issues and conducted research on public policies concerning the development and management of risk, gender policies, and social movements in Europe, Spain, and Latin America. Elizabeth Pike is Professor and Head of the Institute of Sport at the University of Hertfordshire UK. Her work focuses on equality, diversity, and inclusion in and through sport. She is the current research lead for the International Working Group on Women and Sport, project director for the Women in Sport High performance pathway, cofounder of the Anita White Foundation/Fund, and past president of the International Sociology of Sport Association.