More than Just Child's Play: Ph.D. Graduate's Research Focuses on History of Race, Play and Early Childhood Education in Philadelphia

As an undergraduate student, Deborah Valentine had her first teaching experience in the tranquil suburbs outside Chicago. After graduating with straight A’s from Wheaton College in Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, she landed her first fulltime teaching gig in a high-need, low-income, underserved neighborhood in the city. But the move proved to be more than just a change in address. Suddenly, the same time-honored methods that she had employed as a student we’re fruitless in her new environment. “I found that I had virtually no ability to successfully work in that environment, even though that is where I wanted to be,” says Valentine, who currently resides in Philadelphia.

The experience would send her mind reeling. Valentine wondered how these methods that she had studied in college became considered the best practices. She pondered what practices were transferrable from one context to another, and which ones weren’t. She brimmed with questions about how race, class and culture impacted effective educational practices, especially in relation to African American students who made up a large portion of the student population in Chicago.

Seeking a greater understanding, Valentine returned to Wheaton to earn a master’s degree in education and ministry in 1998. She then searched for more than a decade for a doctoral program, while gaining experience in a wide range of educational contexts, including an academic after-school program, a homeless shelter and a community daycare program. Alas, she found the perfect fit, enrolling at Rutgers–Camden in 2007 as a member of the inaugural class of the new Ph.D. in childhood studies program. “I was so excited when I learned about the program,” she recalls. “It was a way to combine ideas about children and childhood, with the actual study of children and childhood. I just hadn’t seen any early childhood education programs that would allow me to do that.”

Valentine and her counterparts Lara Saguisag and Marla Wander will celebrate a landmark achievement on May 23, becoming the first three graduates of the Ph.D. in childhood studies program at Rutgers–Camden. As she continues her career as an educator and researcher, Valentine credits the interdisciplinary program for endowing her with a wide range of analytic tools and perspectives. She maintains that, although academia likes its silos, children are simply way too complex to understand by becoming versed in just one discipline.

“That really is the bottom line,” says Valentine, the David K. Sengstack Fellow for 2009-2010. “You really need a variety of perspectives to understand what is going on. It is incredibly beneficial to be in a place where you can learn methods from different perspectives, and then choose from this pool of methods when you are seeking the answers to questions you are asking.”

Valentine employed this wide-net approach in conducting a comprehensive, multipronged analysis for her dissertation, Playing at Learning and Learning at Play: A History of Race, Play and Early Childhood Education in Philadelphia, 1852-1912. The core of her research focuses in particular on two playgrounds in Philadelphia with historic roots, Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse, founded in 1899 in East Fairmount Park, and Starr Garden, which opened as Philadelphia’s first model recreation center in 1912.

Her research began in earnest when she discovered several documents in Smith’s playhouse mansion. One was a photograph taken around 1906 showing a group of children, several of whom were African American, on the park’s signature wooden slide. Knowing that Philadelphia's spaces were often racially segregated at that time, she wondered whether Smith had always been racially integrated. She also found a folder labeled "Interracial," which included a letter sent to the director – she estimates in the 1920s – asking if the Smith trustees would start a playground "for colored children" that was more centrally located in the city, due to the fact that African American children were excluded from most other playgrounds.  Consequently, it was the question of how patterns of racial exclusion and inclusion were enacted on Philadelphia's playgrounds that first drew her interest.

Valentine notes that, at the simplest level, her dissertation builds a historic foundation that illustrates how African American young children and early childhood educators were all active participants in how both of these play spaces and the conversations about play developed in Philadelphia. Among her findings, she discovered that often children’s experiences on these playgrounds were reflective of larger cultural issues that were occurring in Philadelphia during that period. For instance, Starr Garden was located in the heart of African American social and political life in the mid-19th Century. The area saw an influx of African American migrants from the South and European immigrants, which was mirrored in the culture of the playground. “All of these people are coming into this space, and all of that is reflected in what is happening there,” says.

According to Valentine, her research also demonstrates that, historically, play and playground advocacy has had both positive and negative effects in particular contexts and for particular children and communities. They were not always the intended effects, she notes, but because playgrounds are viewed as an unquestioned "public good," their value is rarely questioned. In one instance, she recalls a trip to Zambia, where she visited a residential home for girls who had been abused. She noticed that the European-style equipment given by a donor was not used by the girls. “I wondered whether they or their caregivers in Zambia viewed the playground as beneficial or whether, had they been consulted, they might have requested that the investment be directed differently,” says Valentine, who also served as a graduate advisor in the teacher education program at St. Joseph’s University.

Through her research, Valentine hopes to provide tools that will help policy makers, educators and planners in the United States and beyond to be more mindful of the varied impact that play-focused programs and playgrounds can have, helping to ensure that their efforts meet their intended goals. In addition, she hopes to expand her research, and to develop collaborative relationships with scholars and practitioners in Zambia, who are seeking to develop an educational system and urban spaces that are supportive of the needs of an increasingly urban, very poor and young population. She notes that, since Zambia gained independence, and has experienced rapid urbanization, its educational system is facing many of the social-welfare challenges that American play movement participants sought to address in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. 

During her time at Rutgers–Camden, Valentine was recognized for her outstanding research and dedication to her work. Among her achievements, she received the Simon J. Bronner Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Mid-Atlantic American Studies Association and a Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship, which enabled her to conduct research at the Social Welfare History Archives in Minnesota. She was also invited to serve on the Budget Advisory Committee under Interim Chancellor Margaret Marsh and to represent Rutgers-Camden on the university’s Presidential Search Committee.

Reflecting on the past six years, Valentine says that she is grateful for having had the opportunity to be a part of the first cohort in the childhood studies program. “My classmates and I not only shaped the program, but each other,” she says, adding, “We have been guided by faculty who treat students as partners in their efforts within academia and beyond. I had no idea what a perfect fit Rutgers–Camden would be for me as a scholar and a teacher.”