NAEYC curates play research on a topic page, not a rule book

The play

The National Association for the Education of Young Children maintains a dedicated Play topic page, separate from its broader Developmentally Appropriate Practice framework, curating articles from its peer-reviewed journal Young Children alongside books and blog posts. One featured piece, The Power of Play: A Discussion About Joyful Teaching and Deeper Learning, published in Young Children, Fall 2026, is an edited excerpt of a conversation between NAEYC chief executive Michelle Kang and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychology professor at Temple University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recorded for NAEYC's own podcast.

What the evidence says

What NAEYC's page establishes is that the organization curates and publishes practitioner-facing discussion of play research through its own journal, tagged by audience and age group, rather than issuing a single named position statement on play the way it did for developmentally appropriate practice in 2020. The featured conversation format means the piece itself functions as an editors' note introducing an interview, not a peer-reviewed research report with its own methodology; NAEYC's page notes Hirsh-Pasek has written separately about play, including a chapter in NAEYC's own book on developmentally appropriate practice, which is the more formal document this entry is careful not to conflate with the play topic page's curated journal content.

Age fit and safety

The Young Children journal describes its own scope as covering birth through age 8, and the specific article reviewed here is tagged for early primary, infant/toddler, kindergarten, and preschool audiences, spanning that same range rather than isolating a single age. Neither page reviewed here makes a claim about a specific toy's safety or developmental effect; the content is about pedagogical framing for early-childhood educators and families, and this entry does not extend it into product-specific guidance.

What to look for

This is an editorial distinction worth holding onto: NAEYC's play topic page is a curated resource hub, not a single ruling, and a claim that cites NAEYC on play should specify whether it means this resource page, a specific Young Children article, or the separate 2020 Developmentally Appropriate Practice position statement, since these are different documents with different review processes.

• Does a cited NAEYC claim about play come from this curated topic page, a specific journal article, or the separate 2020 DAP statement?
• Is the source article a research report or, as with this featured piece, an edited conversation excerpt?
• Does the article's stated age tags match the age group a caregiver is applying the claim to?

NAEYC's own play page shows an active, ongoing curation of practitioner conversation rather than a single fixed verdict on play. Naming which specific document a claim comes from keeps the distinction the brief itself calls for intact.