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In a postmodern context this paper proposes that analogical scholarship in which one conceptual schema is used to view another in order to generate new perspectives, be used to view play. Hermeneutic philosophy specifically is used in a process modelling hermeneutic inquiry. Included are a review of play, hermeneutic philosophy, and the outcomes of the juxtaposition of hermeneutic concepts against play. Resultant perspectives on key issues in play, such as the meaning of play, play in meaning making, the binaries of play, play and practice, and play in the reconceptualizing movement in early childhood education, follow.

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.

The paper aims to explore the intergenerational maps project that set out to map the Brimbank and Moonee Valley residents' awareness of their favourite aspects of their local community. In reflecting on the way this project enabled local knowledge exchanges between different age groups, the paper examines the way intergenerational interactions become pedagogical and make public and public pedagogy visible.

This research paper employs the theoretical and methodological framework of performance (Charman and Dixon, 2021) to read the author's experience with the intergenerational maps project. Insights gained from performance framework are shared to illuminate the complexity of public pedagogy and its entanglement with place, public and knowledge.

The critical reflection on the author's encounter with a pedagogical event points to the importance of using a new theorisation of public pedagogy (Charman and Dixon, 2021) as a useful generative method to guide the reading, learning and research within the fields of public pedagogy and intergenerational relations.

The practical implications of this paper centres on its deployment of a new theorisation of public pedagogy as a useful framework for studying intergenerational interactions. This places these intergenerational interactional dynamics in the field of public pedagogy and can be practically applied to further develop desirable public pedagogical practices within the arena of public pedagogy.

The paper offers a subjective interpretation of the author's experience with an intergenerational interaction project and presents an application of a theoretical framework to read events as pedagogical performances that brings insights into the pedagogical potential of these public performances.