Playworlds and play in children’s life

We are witnessing historical changes in modern childhood and child development, which founders of cultural-historical psychology tentatively suggested. Children’s play content, play environments and play partners are radically transformed. Digitalization of children’s culture is displacing personal contacts between adults and children. The playworld concept (Lindqvist, 1995) emphasizes aesthetics of play experience and interprets children’s aesthetic reaction as an explanation of the developmental effect of play. Vygotsky offered a more traditional explanation naming contradiction between visual and sense field as the driving force of children’s pretend play and its developmental results. Playworld concept underlining aesthetic experience enlarge Vygotsky’s sketch for play analysis. Following implicit aspects can be discerned: 1. Adults and children jointly create playworlds 2. Vygotsky’s problem of “affect and intellect” can be approached in a new way. 3. Play as “leading activity” has to be redefined 4. ZPD in play as a trajectory from joint creating of ideal imaginary situations through joint play actions to joint actions of children’s collective subjects of play (development of children’s initiative). In order to demonstrate how playworld methodology reflects and differs from corresponding change methodologies of adult working life, we compare it with change laboratory approach of DWR (Engestrom, 1987/2015; Virkunen et al., 2013). The main difference is between the two aspects of the concept object in development (“Gegenstand” and “Objekt” in German), between consciousness and activity in cultural-historical approach.