As children wrestle with culture through their games, recess itself has become a battleground for the control of children's time. Based on dozens of interviews and the observation of over a thousand children in a racially integrated, working-class public school, "Recess Battles" is a moving reflection of urban childhood at the turn of the millennium. The book debunks myths about recess violence and challenges the notion that schoolyard play is a waste of time. The author videotaped and recorded children of the Mill School in Philadelphia from 1991 to 2004 and asked them to offer comments as they watched themselves at play. These sessions in "Recess Battles" raise questions about adult power and the changing frames of class, race, ethnicity, and gender. The grown-ups' clear misunderstanding of the complexity of children's play is contrasted with the richness of the children's folk traditions.

"Recess Battles" is an ethnographic study of lighthearted games, a celebratory presentation of children's folklore and its conflicts, and a philosophical text concerning the ironies of everyday childhood. Rooted in video micro-ethnography and the traditions of theorists such as Bourdieu, Willis, and Bateson, "Recess Battles" is written for a lay audience with extensive academic footnotes. International scholar Dr. Brian Sutton-Smith contributes a foreword, and the children themselves illustrate the text with black and white paintings.

Informal Learning, Practitioner Inquiry and Occupational Education explores how practitioners in a variety of occupations perform their jobs and argues that working and learning are intricately connected. Drawing on theories around working and learning in informal, formal and lifelong settings, the book gives insights into how workers negotiate their occupational practices. The book investigates four related concepts - informal learning, practitioner inquiry, occupational education and epistemological perspectives. The combinations of theories and empirical case studies are used to provide a conceptual framework of inquiry where knowledge, abilities, experiences and skill sets play a significant aspect. It presents 11 case studies of professions ranging from conventional occupations of acting, detective work, international road transportation to emerging professions of boardroom consultancy, nutritional therapy and opinion leadership. This book will be of great interest for academics, scholars and postgraduate students who are engaged in the study of informal education, vocational education and occupation-related programmes. It will also offer significant insights for related education practitioners wanting to have greater understanding of their own journeys and practices.

The development of technical leadership capabilities is often overlooked as a training requirement in organisations but these are key to business success. In this book, management experts Brian Sutton and Robina Chatham describe six management techniques to help you develop your leadership capabilities and grow as a leader. With real life examples, tips and mini exercises, you'll also boost your soft skills as you progress your personal and professional development.

The development of technical leadership capabilities is often overlooked as a training requirement in organisations but these are key to business success. In this book, management experts Brian Sutton and Robina Chatham describe six management techniques to help you develop your leadership capabilities and deliver benefit to your customers, team and organisation. With real life examples, tips and mini exercises, you'll also boost your soft skills as you improve your professional value.

The development of technical leadership capabilities is often overlooked as a training requirement in organisations but these are key to business success. In this book management experts Brian Sutton and Robina Chatham describe and explain five management techniques to help you develop your leadership capabilities and build a winning team. With real life examples, tips and mini exercises, you'll also boost your soft skills as you steer your team to success.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

British mycologists have had a major impact on the study of fungi over the past hundred years. Commemorating the centennial of the British Mycological Society, this book gives an account of both professional and amateur contributions to the field of mycology. A variety of distinguished British and American contributors offer authoritative commentary on the present state of mycology, and on potential future developments in this field. The book is introduced by an overview of the historical British role in mycology and personal views on some examples of pioneering work in fungal study. Later chapters treat a number of subjects in depth, such as physiology, systematics, ecology, chemistry and mapping.

Play: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis is co-published with the Association for the Study of Play (TASP), an interdisciplinary, international organization of play-research scholars. This volume, the sixth in the Play and Culture TASP series, synthesizes biological, anthropological, educational, and psychological approaches to play. It is a valuable book with chapters from premier researchers such as Robert Fagen and Carolyn Pope Edwards of the United States, Arne Trageton of Norway, Paola de Sanctis Ricciardone of Italy, and Jean Paul Rossie of Morocco. Also included is an interstitial book-within-the-book by Brian Sutton-Smith.

A groundbreaking collection of essays on a hitherto underexplored subject that challenges the existing stereotypical views of the trivial and innocent nature of children's culture, this work reveals for the first time the artistic and complex interactions among children. Based on research of scholars from such diverse fields as American studies, anthropology, education, folklore, psychology, and sociology, this volume represents a radical new attempt to redefine and reinterpret the expressive behaviors of children. The book is divided into four major sections: history, methodology, genres, and setting, with a concluding chapter on theory. Each section is introduced by an overview by Brian Sutton-Smith. The accompanying bibliography lists historical references through the present, representing works by scholars for over 100 years.

Informal Learning, Practitioner Inquiry and Occupational Education explores how practitioners in a variety of occupations perform their jobs and argues that working and learning are intricately connected. Drawing on theories around working and learning in informal, formal and lifelong settings, the book gives insights into how workers negotiate their occupational practices. The book investigates four related concepts - informal learning, practitioner inquiry, occupational education and epistemological perspectives. The combinations of theories and empirical case studies are used to provide a conceptual framework of inquiry where knowledge, abilities, experiences and skill sets play a significant aspect. It presents 11 case studies of professions ranging from conventional occupations of acting, detective work, international road transportation to emerging professions of boardroom consultancy, nutritional therapy and opinion leadership. This book will be of great interest for academics, scholars and postgraduate students who are engaged in the study of informal education, vocational education and occupation-related programmes. It will also offer significant insights for related education practitioners wanting to have greater understanding of their own journeys and practices.

Teaching and Learning Online, Volume 2, provides practical advice from academics, researchers, practitioners and designers who are currently engaged in defining, creating and delivering the increasingly important world of online learning. This powerful guide avoids trends in technology, instead focusing on the articulation and development of the learning theories that underpin the use of technology. Topics covered include: * Theory that informs practice - emerging models and understanding from academia; * Research - new understandings of learning, collaborative sense-making, and learning preferences; * The Practitioner view - real examples from around the world of ground-breaking developments in online learning that are transforming education, adult learning and corporate training; * Guidance for designers and producers - pedagogical advice and skills for a range of people who may have had little exposure to the body of knowledge surrounding learning design; * Looking to the future - what to expect in the next 5 to 10 years and how to prepare to take full advantage of the opportunities that an increasingly connected society will provide for learner-managed learning. The second volume of this bestselling guide addresses key gaps in the available literature including the inequality of access to technologically enabled learning and cutting-edge design issues and pedagogies that will take us into the next decade of eLearning and future Web 3.0+ approaches.

New Zealand children from 1840 to 1890 were subjected to an unusual combination of agrarian existence and an industrial social philosophy in the newly formed schools. When schools became more universal in the expanding industrial society, a new emphasis on the control of children developed, and from 1920 onward, adult supervision in the form of heavily organized sports and playgrounds encroached more and more on the untrammeled freedom of the rural environment. Returning to his home country of New Zealand, Brian Sutton-Smith documents the relationship between children's play and the actual process of history. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of informants from every province and school district of New Zealand, the author illuminates for the first time the various social, cultural, historical, and psychological context in which children's play occurs. He treats both formal and informal play, as well as the play of both boys and girls.

What prompts children to tell stories? What does the word "story" mean to a child at two or five years of age? "The Folkstories of Children," first published in 1981, features nearly five hundred stories that were volunteered by fifty children between the ages of two and ten and transcribed word for word. The stories are organized chronologically by the age of the teller, revealing the progression of verbal competence and the gradual emergence of staging and plot organization. Many stories told by two-year-olds, for example, have only beginnings with no middle or end; the "narrative" is held together by rhyme or alliteration. After the age of three or four, the same children tell stories that feature a central character and a narrative arc. The stories also exhibit each child's growing awareness and management of his or her environment and life concerns. Some children see their stories as dialogues between teller and audience, others as monologues expressing concerns about fate and the forces of good and evil.Brian Sutton-Smith discusses the possible origins of the stories themselves: folktales, parent and teacher reading, media, required writing of stories in school, dreams, and play. The notes to each chapter draw on this context as well as folktale analysis and child development theory to consider why and how the stories take their particular forms. "The Folkstories of Children" provides valuable evidence and insight into the ways children actively and inventively engage language as they grow.

Teaching and Learning Online, Volume 2, provides practical advice from academics, researchers, practitioners and designers who are currently engaged in defining, creating and delivering the increasingly important world of online learning. This powerful guide avoids trends in technology, instead focusing on the articulation and development of the learning theories that underpin the use of technology. Topics covered include: * Theory that informs practice - emerging models and understanding from academia; * Research - new understandings of learning, collaborative sense-making, and learning preferences; * The Practitioner view - real examples from around the world of ground-breaking developments in online learning that are transforming education, adult learning and corporate training; * Guidance for designers and producers - pedagogical advice and skills for a range of people who may have had little exposure to the body of knowledge surrounding learning design; * Looking to the future - what to expect in the next 5 to 10 years and how to prepare to take full advantage of the opportunities that an increasingly connected society will provide for learner-managed learning. The second volume of this bestselling guide addresses key gaps in the available literature including the inequality of access to technologically enabled learning and cutting-edge design issues and pedagogies that will take us into the next decade of eLearning and future Web 3.0+ approaches.

Every child knows what it means to play, but the rest of us can merely speculate. Is it a kind of adaptation, teaching us skills, inducting us into certain communities? Is it power, pursued in games of prowess? Fate, deployed in games of chance? Daydreaming, enacted in art? Or is it just frivolity? Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading proponent of play theory, considers each possibility as it has been proposed, elaborated, and debated in disciplines from biology, psychology, and education to metaphysics, mathematics, and sociology.

Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--the ancient discourses of Fate, Power, Communal Identity, and Frivolity and the modern discourses of Progress, the Imaginary, and the Self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory.

This work reveals more distinctions and disjunctions than affinities, with one striking exception: however different their descriptions and interpretations of play, each rhetoric reveals a quirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility. In light of this, Sutton-Smith suggests that play might provide a model of the variability that allows for "natural" selection. As a form of mental feedback, play might nullify the rigidity that sets in after successful adaption, thus reinforcing animal and human variability. Further, he shows how these discourses, despite their differences, might offer the components for a new social science of play.

British mycologists have had a major impact worldwide. Commemorating the centenary of the British Mycological Society, founded in 1896, this book gives an account of the British contribution to mycology, both at professional and amateur level. A variety of distinguished British and American authors give an authoritative commentary on the state of mycology, and on potential future developments in fields in which British mycologists made important breakthroughs. The book is introduced by an overview of the British contribution and personal views on pioneering work on aquatic hyphomycetes, tropical mycology and the amateur contribution. Later review articles treat a number of subjects in depth such as physiology, systematics, ecology, chemistry and mapping. This unique book will be of great interest to all professional and amateur mycologists in both research and teaching.

As children wrestle with culture through their games, recess itself has become a battleground for the control of children's time. Based on dozens of interviews and the observation of over a thousand children in a racially integrated, working-class public school, Recess Battles is a moving reflection of urban childhood at the turn of the millennium. The book debunks myths about recess violence and challenges the notion that schoolyard play is a waste of time. The author videotaped and recorded children of the Mill School in Philadelphia from 1991 to 2004 and asked them to offer comments as they watched themselves at play. These sessions in Recess Battles raise questions about adult power and the changing frames of class, race, ethnicity, and gender. The grown-ups' clear misunderstanding of the complexity of children's play is contrasted with the richness of the children's folk traditions.Recess Battles is an ethnographic study of lighthearted games, a celebratory presentation of children's folklore and its conflicts, and a philosophical text concerning the ironies of everyday childhood. Rooted in video micro-ethnography and the traditions of theorists such as Bourdieu, Willis, and Bateson, Recess Battles is written for a lay audience with extensive academic footnotes. International scholar Dr. Brian Sutton-Smith contributes a foreword, and the children themselves illustrate the text with black and white paintings.

In The Genesis of Animal Play, Gordon Burghardt examines the origins and evolution of play in humans and animals. He asks what play might mean in our understanding of evolution, the brain, behavioral organization, and psychology. Is play essential to development? Is it the driving force behind human and animal behavior? What is the proper place for the study of play in the cognitive, behavioral, and biological sciences?The engaging nature of play -- who does not enjoy watching a kitten attack a ball of yarn? -- has made it difficult to study. Some scholars have called play undefinable, nonexistent, or a mystery outside the realm of scientific analysis. Using the comparative perspectives of ethology and psychology, The Genesis of Animal Play goes further than other studies in reviewing the evidence of play throughout the animal kingdom, from human babies to animals not usually considered playful. Burghardt finds that although playfulness may have been essential to the origin of much that we consider distinctive in human (and mammalian) behavior, it only develops through a specific set of interactions among developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and physiological processes. Furthermore, play is not always beneficial or adaptive.Part I offers a detailed discussion of play in placental mammals (including children) and develops an integrative framework called surplus resource theory. The most fascinating and most controversial sections of the book, perhaps, are in the seven chapters in part II in which Burghardt presents evidence of playfulness in such unexpected groups of animals as kangaroos, birds, lizards, and "Fish That Leap, Juggle, and Tease." Burghardt concludes by considering the implications of the diversity of play for future research, and suggests that understanding the origin and development of play can shape our view of society and its accomplishments through history.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I had a little brother. His name was Tiny Tim. I put him in the bathtub To teach him how to swim. He drank all the water. He ate all the soap. He died last night With a bubble in his throat. Jump-rope rhymes, chanted to maintain the rhythm of the game, have other, equally entertaining uses: You can dispatch bothersome younger siblings instantly-and temporarily. You can learn the name of your boyfriend through the magic words Ice cream soda, Delaware Punch, Tell me the initials of my honey-bunch. You can perform the series of tasks set forth in Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around and find out who, really, is the most nimble. You can even, with impunity, conk your teacher on the bean with a rotten tangerine. This collection of over six hundred jump-rope rhymes, originally published in 1969, is an introduction into the world of children-their attitudes, their concerns, their humor. Like other children's folklore, the rhymes are both richly inventive and innocently derivative, ranging from on-the-spot improvisations to old standards like Bluebells, cockleshells, with a generous sprinkling of borrowings from other play activities-nursery rhymes, counting-out rhymes, and taunts.Even adult attitudes of the time are appropriated, but expressed with the artless candor of the child: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch Castro by the toe. If he hollers make him say I surrender, U.S.A. Though aware that children's play serves social and psychological functions, folklorists had long neglected analytical study of children's lore because primary data was not available in organized form. Roger Abraham's Dictionary has provided such a bibliographical tool for one category of children's lore and a model for future compendia in other areas. The alphabetically arranged rhymes are accompanied by notes on sources, provenience, variants, and connection with other play activities.