Inclusive Play Framework: An Approach to Promote Awareness About Gender Neutral Play in Portuguese Context
摘要
The paper focuses on the development process of the Inclusive Play Framework. Being a medium of alternative perception, the framework aims to promote awareness in adults about gender-neutral play, which can initiate equal opportunity in children’s formative years. It attempts to connect the intangible idea of being aware of how a toy can be gendered to the tangible formation of utilizing this knowledge in the community and society. Specifically, it tries to generate knowledge for adults regarding several gendered trends related to objects of play, such as toys, which potentially limit children's early play experiences, resulting in gender differences in skill and abilities. The framework is critically formulated, holistically connecting different approaches of Design for Behavior Change and Inclusive Design. Within the methodology, the study emphasizes Portuguese culture and how different socio-cultural and socio-economic entities affect the initiation of the multidimensional problem of gender differentiation. Further, the framework investigates the necessity to associate multiple scales within these entities, connecting design ethnography and the practice of inclusion through changing behavior. The pragmatic implementations of these entities are synthesized into Children-Parents, Children-Educators, and Children-Designers. The proposed framework is operationalizable for these different user clusters with different levels of complexity. In a systematic way, connected through logical reasoning, the framework proposes three stages of activities—Identify, Diversify and Inclusify. As a result, it enables the recognition of different elements of gender differentiation, generating motivation towards diverse perspectives, and transmitting inclusive knowledge through reconfiguring beliefs and practices.