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The article argues for a multimodal social semiotic approach and demonstrates how multimodal transcription can represent ephemeral, moment-by-moment activity. Using map-like and animated transcripts from video of three- and four-year-olds playing a chasing game in an English nursery school, it shows how roles and rules of play are negotiated across modes, making communicative and agentive capacities visible.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/tracing-the-ephemeral-mapping-young-childrens-running-games/601145/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/tracing-the-ephemeral-mapping-young-childrens-running-games/601145.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"LangkahRina","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What perspective does the article propose for studying children’s play?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It proposes a multimodal social semiotic perspective that treats play as meaning-making supported by multiple coordinated modes.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How is multimodal transcription used in the study?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Multimodal transcription is applied to video data to produce map-like (including animated) transcripts that document placement in space over time.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What does the analysis reveal about children’s running games?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The transcripts show that play moments—initially fleeting and chaotic—contain communicative, creative, and agentive capacities, with roles and rules negotiated across multiple modes.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},601145,1792190398,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},962090893776,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","Cowan, K. (2020). Tracing the Ephemeral: Mapping Young Children’s Running Games. Designs for Learning, 12(1),81–93. DOI: [https://doi.org/10.16993/dfl.90](https://doi.org/10.16993/dfl.90)  \n\n| RESEARCH\u003Cbr>Tracing the Ephemeral: Mapping Young Children’s Running Games\u003Cbr>Kate Cowan |\n| --- |\n| Young children’s play is highly multimodal, with gesture, gaze, movement and speech often combined simultaneously in collaborative meaning-making. This article argues for a multimodal social semiotic perspective on play, recognising that this requires representation of data that brings multimodal elements into careful consideration. In this article, multimodal transcription is used to examine a video recording of three and four-year-old children playing a chasing game in an English nursery school. Map-like transcripts, including an animated transcript, are used to document an instance of their play, drawing particular attention to placement in space over time. Whilst such moments of play may at first appear fleeting and chaotic, multimodal transcription reveals the communicative, creative and agentive capacities of young children in a multitude of forms. The transcripts highlight and make evident the ways in which roles and rules of play are carefully negotiated moment-by-moment in multiple modes. In this way, map-like multimodal transcripts are presented as devices to highlight meaning-making where it may not normally be looked for, seen or recognised. |\n| Keywords: Multimodality; Video; Transcription; Play; Early Years Education |\n\nIntroduction  \nChildren engage with the world in many playful ways including drawing, model-making, dance, storytelling and role-play (Kress, 1997), as well as through silent negotiations and interactions (Flewitt, 2005) . Young children’splay is highly multimodal, with gesture, gaze, movement and speech often combined simultaneously in collaborative meaning-making. However, an educational climate of‘datafication’(Bradbury & Roberts-Holmes, 2018) focused on reaching prescribed developmental milestones means children’s more subtle signs of learning may all too readily be dismissed, particularly when play does not centrally feature language (Bradbury, 2013; Flewitt & Cowan, 2019). This article focuses on an instance of child-initiated physical play, identifying it as an activity that is particularly overlooked in early childhood education. I argue fora multimodal social semiotic perspective on play, giving attention to ways in which modes such as gesture, gaze, movement and language are often combined.  \nSuch a perspective requires methods of data collection and analysis that attend to play’s multimodal qualities. This article offers the playground as a site for developing multimodal methodologies, particularly multimodal transcription. The article analyses a video-based observation of child-initiated running play collected through an  \nUCL Institute of Education, GB [k.cowan@ucl.ac.uk](k.cowan@ucl.ac.uk)  \nethnographic case study carried out in a nursery school in England, asking: How might multimodal social semiotic theory offer new ways of seeing and understanding child-initiated play, and how might video and multimodal transcription support such a perspective? Map-like transcripts of children’s running play are used as a means of accounting for multiple embodied, ephemeral modes in fine-grained detail. A prototype animated transcript is also included and discussed in terms of its potentials for representing dynamic aspects of play. Insights from the transcripts highlight the richness and complexity of childinitiated play, making visible ways in which play is layered, transformative, creative and agentive meaning-making. In this way, I argue that multimodal transcription not only‘visualises’ play by making it visible and sharable, but also offers a new lens through which we might understand thesemiotic complexity of play.  \nPlay: A Multimodal Social Semiotic Perspective  \nMultimodality is now a widely used te","cbCaioRHtXDsVaFS","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaioRHtXDsVaFS","pdf",1070622,13,"English","# Introduction\n## Play: A Multimodal Social Semiotic Perspective","[{\"question\":\"What perspective does the article propose for studying children’s play?\",\"answer\":\"It proposes a multimodal social semiotic perspective that treats play as meaning-making supported by multiple coordinated modes.\"},{\"question\":\"How is multimodal transcription used in the study?\",\"answer\":\"Multimodal transcription is applied to video data to produce map-like (including animated) transcripts that document placement in space over time.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the analysis reveal about children’s running games?\",\"answer\":\"The transcripts show that play moments—initially fleeting and chaotic—contain communicative, creative, and agentive capacities, with roles and rules negotiated across multiple modes.\"}]","Tracing the Ephemeral - Mapping Young Children’s Running Games | PDF",1792092065,33]