Playing the system: Advocacy for play equity in early childhood education

ABSTRACT This article explores advocacy practices that support teachers’ integration of play and playful learning in their classrooms. Activism is a well-documented transformative aspect of the teaching profession (e.g.), which is recently experiencing heightened political pressures. At the same time, COVID-19 exacerbated existing inequities in early childhood education. For example, in underserved communities, the “learning loss” discourse increased accountability for narrowly defined academic outcomes as well as the expectations of student obedience and compliance. This article forefronts access to play and children’s agency as an equity issue and offers early childhood educators strategies for advocacy and activism to infuse play and playful learning in their educational contexts.