Paradoxes of playwork practice in an English primary school.s.

Neoliberal reforms of public services across Europe and the world are rewriting the contract amongst the state, the citizen and the market in new ways. These global shifts create and reformulate networks and approaches, creating ‘new’ professions and agencies, reformulating and commodifying landscapes of practice and eroding bonds of trust and long-held traditions within a range of welfare and education services. The tensions here are what it takes for ‘playwork’ practice to survive such a shifting landscape but, more existentially, how might marginal practices such as ‘playwork’ persist in turbulent times? These concerns move beyond the English policy context by recognising that governments across the globe have ‘colonised’ professionalism by imposing ‘standards’ on schools and welfare services in order to secure power over the professionals working within them. However, while the ‘problems’ of teachers working in such contexts have been well documented, the ‘concerns’ of paraprofessionals in similar situations have only been given superficial analysis. This chapter is based on a small-scale exploratory research project on the opportunities and tensions of bringing playwork into contemporary English school settings.