ABSTRACT
Scholars have spent hours, decades, and even centuries debating a definition of play. There are also those who bemoan the debate as if a term for which there is no consensus should not be taken seriously (Berlyne, 1960). But the definitional status of play is not different from that of other terms that receive serious attention from scientists and educators. Terms like aggression, love, teaching, and learning, to name but a few, also lack widely shared, rigorous definitions. Yet these terms signify large ideas that are understood in some fashion across cultures, across centuries, and by individuals of disparate status, ages, and experience. Play is one of those large ideas that touch a strand of human experience beginning in childhood and, perhaps in different forms, continuing throughout life. Formal definitional variations reflect scholarly discipline, ideology, and cultural preferences (Sutton-Smith, 1995).
