Sara Lena Lasch / Tanja Pütz

“I don’t think about anything, just about what I’m doing”

Interviews with pre-school-children about their perception of “polarization of attention” in working with the Godly Play-method
Center of our discussion regarding the parallel of „Godly Play“ by Jerome Berryman and the „Free Choice of Work“ by Maria Montessori forms the phenomenon of the „Polarizing of attention“. This concentration-phenomenon offers new perspectives for (religious) education-learning-processes on a traditional base that already went down in the history of educational science.

In our contribution we resolve the question to what extent the phenomenon of “Polarisation of attention” occurs in the work with “Godly Play”. Starting point of this research is the assumption of Nye, that preschool children are already able to think themselves into Godly Play-Stories. By doing that they explore important personal topics and emotions, which they want to share with god. We expand this assumption of Rebecca Nye by the following: children have the need for deep concentration and want to experience this “Polarisation of attention”. We take into regard, that “Godly Play” offers situations which support attention. This is the place, where children can make special religious experiences as you can see in the documentation of children´s interviews below.