ABSTRACT
The overall aim of the project was to undertake a sustained and detailed study of children’s role-play activity in order to understand more fully the relationship between teachers’ provision (the offered curriculum) on the one hand, and children’s responses to that provision (the received curriculum) on the other. How, for example, do teachers organise this type of play in terms of thematic and material structures, grouping practices, modes of access, and adult intervention? In what ways does such provision impact on the nature of children’s role-play activity in terms of its generic characteristics such as make-believe, social interaction between peers, communication and transformation of meaning?
