The right to play in Early Childhood Education: interfaces between national and international instruments

Abstract

Taking the Declaration of Geneva as a reference point, this article aims to analyze the historical and political Building on the right to play over the past century. Particularly, it seeks to problematize its reinterpretations and the disputes that shape it within contemporary Early Childhood Education contexts, with an emphasis on pedagogical practices. Methodologically, this is a bibliographical and documental study grounded in critical theoretical frameworks, which enables an understanding of childhood as a historical and social construction, while also highlighting the contradictions involved in the consolidation of children’s rights. Throughout the analytical process, both international and national documents addressing children’s rights are examined, with particular attention to policies that recognize play as a fundamental dimension of human development. The findings indicate that, although the right to play has been progressively recognized in legal and educational fields, its implementation remains constricted by utilitarian, content-centered, and productivity-based logics, which tends to reduce its value to a pedagogical tool. In this context, the study underscores the need to reaffirm play as a fundamental experience of childhood, connected to freedom, imagination and holistic human development. This calls for a rethinking of pedagogical practices in Early Childhood Education from an emancipatory and critical perspective.