Piaget's taxonomy of play: practice games, symbolic games, and games with rules¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The paper presents Piaget's classification of children's play into three main categories that evolve with development. As printed, "there are three main categories of play: practice games, symbolic games and games with rules." Practice games grow out of imitative sensory-motor activity and may develop into symbolic games or, with socialization, into games with rules, which are essentially social and persist among adults. Constructive games such as building or weaving are regarded not really as games but as a bridge between play and work, merging into adult practical skills. The taxonomy explains why symbolic play declines as socialized games take over.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Developmental progression from sensory-motor imitation through symbolic representation to socialized rule-governed play

Constraints¶

• The taxonomy is presented as Piaget's account of his own observations of young children, not as an experimentally tested classification in this document

Target Learners¶

• children from infancy through the elementary years

Target Learning Objectives¶

• understanding the developmental evolution of play and its relation to socialization and cognitive growth

Claims¶

Related Theories¶

• Piaget's account of ludic symbolism: make-believe play as symbolic assimilation bridging concrete experience and abstract thought
• Play and Cognitive Development
• Stages of Cognitive Development
• Piaget's stage theory of cognitive development: four fixed, hierarchical stages from sensori-motor to formal operations

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Third Invitational Interdisciplinary Seminar: Piagetian Theory and Its Implications for the Helping Professions. (1973). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED092496