ABSTRACT
Play is a point at which many ideas in early childhood education converge. It can be a point of cohesion and friendship, of marginalization and exclusion, a place of pretence or of quiet solitude. How the range of different players in early childhood educational settings understand play is based in powerful sets of discourses and relationships. My interest is in investigating these discourses and relationships, particularly with regard to how relationships of power between adults and children or between children and children may be produced and managed.
