PhD position within the area play and design focusing on materials and spaces in children's transitions from kindergarten to school

Design School Kolding hereby invite proposals for a PhD research project that focuses on materials and spaces in children’s transitions from kindergarten to school.

The PhD project is a part of the research project Playing Transitions, funded by The Independent Research Foundation Denmark. Playing Transitions rethinks the role of play in children’s transition from daycare to school through design experiments with pedagogically framed play activities. The project reframes transition as a matter of actively co-developing and negotiating children’s play communities. For such play communities to emerge, children’s sense of participation and belonging in school must be nurtured with support from pedagogical professionals. Playing Transitions contributes with novel theoretical understanding of transitions, methods for how research may collaborate with professionals and transition designs to apply in pedagogical practice. This is obtained by combining knowledge from transition research and play theory with socio-cultural and new materialist perspectives, and by operationalizing this through design-based research and several play design experiments in collaboration with pedagogues, teachers, and children.

This PhD scholarship seeks to explore following aims:

• Highlights the material and spatial aspects of transitions from kindergarten to school.
• Focuses on play in the material and spatial aspects.
• Focusing on exploring scale and different materials.
• Focusing on how play can be supported, fueled, and enhanced by involving materials and spatialities with different affordances, and how these can support community building, settling, and belonging in school.
• Strong design competences will be applied to do the project.

The empirical context for the PhD project will be shared with the project Playing Transitions.

The PhD methodology will be based on some of the following:

• Design-based research (DBR)
• Research through design (RtD)
• Design experiments 
• Participatory design
• Child-centered approaches to design research

The PhD student will be part of the Design for Play lab. Design School Kolding and will be collaborating closely with University College South.

The PhD student will also collaborate with Western Norway University of Applied Sciences Bergen (Norway) and Monash University (Australia)

The proposed PhD project must follow the general rules for the doctoral program.

Application

For the application to be considered, the PhD research project description of 4-6 pages must address all points listed below and have all mentioned materials enclosed: 

1. Introduction to the PhD project
2. Overview of existing knowledge and positioning
3. A theoretical approach for understanding play, materials, and spaces.
4. Research question(s)
5. Research methodology and methods.
6. Main contributions and outcomes
7. Bibliography/references
8. CV
9. Maximum of 5 pages portfolio.
10. A CV indicating educational levels and achievements as well as work experience. In addition, it is also possible to send a 5 pages portfolio.
11. Diploma or alternatively a complete transcript of records for the MA degree. To be considered for the position, the applicant must have, as a minimum, a two-year MA degree, preferably from a design program, prior to the date of appointment.

The applicant must further have a fluent oral and written English communication skills.

The application and materials must be in English or Danish.
Our school has the policy that if we employ a person unfamiliar with the Danish language, then the person is obliged to develop skills to communicate in Danish society within three years.

Application process

Please apply through Design School Kolding’s recruitment system which you find on the advertisement at the school’s website.

After the application deadline, a shortlist of the most promising applications will be made, which will then be assessed. When the committee has finished its review procedure, each shortlisted applicant will receive an assessment of his or her application.

We welcome both national and international applications. Design School Kolding wishes to reflect its surrounding community and encourages anyone to apply for the position, irrespective of personal background.

The application deadline is August 15, 2024, and the assessment will happen shortly thereafter.

The position is to be filled by November 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter.

For further information, please contact secretary of research and development Christina Stind Rosendahl, phone +45 91 33 30 04 or mail: csr@dskd.dk or project leaders of the Playing Transitions and Head of Research LAB Design for Play, Professor Helle Marie Skovbjerg skovbjerg@dskd.dk or Docent Ane Bjerre Odgaard, UCSyd, abod@ucsyd.dk

Also, please read the Design School Kolding Research Strategy or pay a visit to the school website: www.designskolenkolding.dk