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Volume 13 of the Advances in Early Education and Day Care series marks twenty years that the series has attempted to provide a forum for current scholarship that might further our thinking about early childhood education and care. This, my ninth volume as series editor, is intended to serve the continuing intent of the series to provide multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on a field that by its nature requires diverse perspectives. Early childhood practices have drawn on ideas from child development, curriculum studies, social work, nursing, sociology, anthropology, and other fields that inform us about children, their care, and the settings in which we implement our programs. Advances has always attempted to respect the necessary diversity of perspectives that can inform the field, and to support work that may not fit in a tidy disciplinary nook.

This chapter critiques the concept of play as a part of educational practice in early childhood education. After dissecting a developmentally appropriate statement about play, we present some principles of hermeneutic analysis as an additional way to observe and think about classroom play. The issue of which narrative tale (child, children, community, curriculum, teacher, etc.) any play event might inform is presented. An illustrative case is presented, followed by suggestions for situating play inquiry’s text in context.

Putting this volume together of this type took a team effort from many individuals who have given of their time and talent. I would really like to express my thanks to all who reviewed chapters for this volume: Mary Lu Love Early Childhood Services at ICI; Nancy Crowell, Georgetown University; Xuejin (Kim) Lu, Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County, FL; Jianping Shen, Western Michigan University; Xin Ma, University of Kentucky; Maria Magdalena Aguilar-Crandall, Brownsville Independent School District; Stuart Reifel, University of Texas at Austin; Deborah Wisneski, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee; Amye Warren, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Sarah Jo Sandefur, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; and Shira Peterson, Children's Institute. My colleagues here at the University of Texas Brownsville, Renee Rubin, Vejoya Viren, Jaime Garcia, and Ana Laura Rodriguez-Garcia were also of great assistance in reviewing articles.