Trends in the Research of Children and Play

The concept of play has long been recognized as a fundamental aspect of child development because it promotes learning and cognitive development, and is useful for social skills and motivation. Thus, it has attracted the attention of researchers in many scientific fields such as maths, physical education, artificial intelligence and rehabilitation. Due to the importance of the relationship between children and play in various fields, it is essential to examine published works on this subject. This study aims to reveal the current status and trends of the research on children and play through the Web of Science database in 2023 by descriptive survey model. 165 articles in the field of “Children and Play” were examined in depth. Content analysis technique and “Children and Play Research Publication Classification Form” developed by the researchers in a semi-structured manner were used for evaluating the data. The studies were classified under the themes of “Digital Games, Physical Games, Card Games, Traditional Games, Board Games and Mind Games” with four different types: descriptive study, experimental (applied) study, evaluation study and others. The studies included thirteen different methods and ten different data collection methods were used. It can be concluded that the studies conducted on “Children and Play” in 2023 were generally about digital games, and the relationship between play and health, behaviour, socialization and learning was the main theme.