Neva Boyd, a play theorist for

drama pedagogy
A historical case study

Marie Umerkajeff

Institutionen för etnologi, religionshistoria och genusvetenskap (ERG) /

Institution for etnology-, religion- and gendre science.
Utbildningsvetenskap/ Educational Science.
Dramapedagogik Avancerad nivå UE8000 (30hp) /
Drama in Education Advanced level UE8000 (30 credits).
Höst-/Vårterminen//Autumn/Spring term 2012, 2013-2014
Handledare/Supervisor: Kent Hägglund
Examinator: Eva Österlind
English title: Neva Boyd, a play theorist for drama pedagogy.
A historical case study
Neva Boyd, a play theorist for drama pedagogy

A historical case study

Abstract

This is a historical documentary research study across Neva Leona Boyd (1876-1963).
The theoretical perspective is based on the historical perspective of knowledge from
ancient Greece to the approach of modern symbolic interactionism. The study shows
that Boyd, who was Viola Spolins teacher, was a proponent of the modern view of
group play theory. 1909 she founded Chicago School for Playground Workers, later
transformed to the Recreation Training School. Until 1927, the school entered in Hull-
House initiated by Jane Addams. The school was incorporated with Northwestern
University. Boyd also worked at other schools and the Illinois Department of Public
Welfare, where she designed a recreational program for the mentally ill. Contemporary
with Boyd was George H. Mead and John Dewey. Boyd's previous work turns out to
have some connection to Sweden when Boyd collected and systematized games from
different geographical regions of the world. Boyd’s group play theory are identified and
described. Boyd’s group play theory highlights the importance of leadership and the
intimacy leaders manage to create in group work.

Keywords: Chicago school, drama pedagogy, dramapedagogik, dramalek, group play

theory, Hull House, Neva Boyd, reform education, recreation, Viola Spolin.
 Foreword .................................................................................................. 5  

Introduction ..................................................................................... 6  
Background ............................................................................................... 6  

Objective .................................................................................................. 7  

Reserach Questions................................................................................. 7  

Theoretical Perspectives .................................................................. 8  

The science from a historical perspective ....................................................... 8  

Heritage from ancient times ..................................................................... 8  

Natural Science ...................................................................................... 9  

Empirism or rationalism ........................................................................... 9  

Sociological symbolic interactionism ........................................................ 11  

Method ........................................................................................... 13  
Case studies ........................................................................................ 13  

Five steps of the process ....................................................................... 14  

A Creative search on various databases ................................................... 14  

Examples of classification, social workers or sociologists? ........................... 15  

Selection and implementation .................................................................... 15  

Inclusion critera ................................................................................... 16  

Exclusion criteria .................................................................................. 16  

The main source - Neva Boyds archive MSBoyd68 ..................................... 16  

Databases on internet ........................................................................... 17  

The only book in Sweden ....................................................................... 18  

Reliability och validity ............................................................................ 18  

Result ............................................................................................ 19  
The new movement .................................................................................. 19  

Hull-House ........................................................................................... 19  

Reform educators in Sweden ..................................................................... 21  

Neva L. Boyd (1876-1963) ........................................................................ 23  

First move to Chicago ............................................................................ 24  

Boyd's professional career began in 1900 ................................................. 24  

Systematization of folk games ................................................................ 27  

Alternative treatment throug playing ....................................................... 28  

Boyd declined the merge with the University of Chicago ............................. 30  

Boyd’s cooperation with Charlotee Chorpenning ........................................ 30  

3
 Boyd in France ..................................................................................... 31  

Chicago's social growth out of different cultures ........................................ 31  

Boyd’s student, Viola Spolin ................................................................... 32  

Boyd’s RTS, merges with the Northwestern University ............................... 32  

The play and its requirements formulated by others than Boyd ................... 33  

From a local recreational programs to a national ....................................... 35  

A seven-year experiment in social group work are discussed ...................... 35  

Play as a method in school ..................................................................... 36  

Boyd - an active retiree ......................................................................... 37  

Neva Boyd’s source of inspiration ............................................................... 38  

Systematization of the play .................................................................... 38  

Paul Simon’s analyse on Boyd ................................................................ 38  

Boyd's play theory adds a new dimension ................................................ 40  

Influences that reach Sweden .................................................................... 41  

The group-play theory of Boyd ................................................................... 41  

Boyd's educational program is based on the playfullness ............................ 42  

Problemsolving ..................................................................................... 43  

Competition in the the situation .............................................................. 43  

The integreted group ............................................................................. 44  

Systems of categories ........................................................................... 45  

Leadership ........................................................................................... 45  

Analysis ......................................................................................... 46  
The historical perspective .......................................................................... 46  

Neva Boyd's mark on history ..................................................................... 48  

Is Boyd remembered as a sociologist? ..................................................... 49  

Preserved old gamese ........................................................................... 51  

Boyd’s impact on Huizinga ..................................................................... 51  

Boyds inverkan på improvisationsteatern ................................................. 52  

Situation - Motivation and Environment ....................................................... 52  

Discussion ...................................................................................... 54  
Reflection over the scientific process ....................................................... 54  

New questions, further research ................................................................. 56  

References ..................................................................................... 57  

4
Foreword
I feel very grateful to have had a mentor who is so confident in himself that he does
not need to limit my excesses except for when I got lost.

Thanks Kent for accepting me as I am and for your inspirational sources that you
generously shared with me.

5
Introduction
I work as a drama teacher 50 % at Stockholm International School (SIS), Middle Year
Programme (MYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB) since 2007. Within the
curriculum for IB drama is regarded as an independent compulsory school subject.

I as a person is under constant transformation therefore my preferences vary by-

sighted model of drama pedagogy. For my drama class approach, I have been inspired
by both Keith Johnston (1933), Augusto Boal (1931-2009) and Konstantin
Stanislavsky (1863-1938). Viola Spolin (1906-1994) is my main source of inspiration
at the moment and has been so for a long time after Boal nowadays is ranked second.
If I go further back in time, I know that I did not understand the distance techniques
by Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and Stanislavski seemed to me, too complicated. I
ended up in clowning because of social circumstances and had to fight with its
physical expression. Melodrama amused me uncontrollably. Jerzy Grotowskis (1933-
1999) exercises did something with my body which composed. Likewise, Rudolf
Laban (1879-1958) techniques. I am trained in both theater and drama pedagogy and
sees no contradiction between them.

Background
Drama in Education is a method based on practical first hand experiences to thus
understand the theoretical concepts through the indivuals own experience.
There is a lack of a more nuanced debate of categorization in school today. School-
agents still seems more or less, placed in the theoretical or practical matters and
belong to a particular faculty of tradition. When drama is an interdisciplinary subject,
the question arises where to place it. Eva Österlinds research survey from 2009
"Drama Research in Sweden - two steps forward and one back" puts drama at the
intersection of education, literature, theater and cultural studies.
Drama in Education, a practical artform, is relatively little researched in Sweden
regarding its origin and early history. Two Swedish pioneers and their drama
activities, however, has been highlighted. It's Esther Bohman (1879-1947) who acted
on a girls' school and Elsa Olenius (1896-1984) who started Vår teater (our theater) a
predecessor to today's culture schools in Sweden. One of the early representatives
internationally in the drama field was Viola Spolin. She was a student of Neva Leona
Boyd (1876-1963) mentioned in the preface to Spolins Improvisation for the Theater,
where Spolin dedicated her book to Neva L. Boyd. The school where the two met was
Recreational Training School (RTS) in Chicago's Hull House. What was it that
inspired Spolin? since Spolin inspired so many in theater and drama.

6
Objective
• To place Neva Boyd in a historical perspective and highlight the potential
footprint Boyd internship created with a focus on play theory.

Reserach Questions
• Who was Neva Leona Boyd, and what was her attitude towards her
contemporaries?
• If Boyd proves to have a game theory, what is its purpose?

7
Theoretical Perspectives
Knowledge presupposes some kind of universality. These skills are present in our
daily lives. As metaphors captured in different explanatory models, which
epistemologists-/practitioners are dedicated to develop and describe.

The science from a historical perspective

The view on knowledge changes over time, I want to illustrate this by going back to
ancient Greece, and show a cross section of a historical view on knowledge and the
world around us.

When people with name and origin are mentioned ahead, it may seem inconsistent to
designate someone as 'British' or 'English', however it is then linked to when the
person was born and how the person was reproduced later in history. It is a way of
attending historical approach. Likewise, if people are called social workers instead of
sociologists, or as workers instead of eg healthcare professionals. What is reproduced
is what existed in the source without changing the choice of words to what might be a
more adequate characterization of today. References have been included in detail as
far as possible.

Heritage from ancient times

The following is from a poem by Sappho (about 620-570 BC) "... the tongue's power
is broken and under the skin at the fire immediately in fine flames; eye gaze becomes
obscured and the whizzing of a sudden my ears." This quote illustrates how Sappho
could describe the physical body, including cognition, the influence of sensory input
due to another human being, an early expression of introspection, a self-observation.

Protagoras (481-420 BCE), a contemporary of Socrates (ca. 469-399 BCE),

statement, "Man is the measure of all, the thing is that they are, and the things that are
not that they are not", will be the first piece in the historical perspective image of this
essay. This statement places the individual at the center of everything. Socrates and
Protagoras based their assumptions on their own experiences. Like those did also
Neva Boyd express that she was not fond of her contemporaries way of basing their
theoretical constructs only on theory. Experience gave her insight on how models
could be subscribed to theories. So if Spolin was the student who paid attention to
Boyd, so was Plato (427-347 BCE), the student who brought Socrates to the
historiography. Plato has reproduced several events where Socrates is seeking
answers in the other. His question is simple but requires commitment and
understanding of what it is you think you understand. The following is quotes from
Socrates, ”To do is to be” and ”Let anyone who wants to explore the world, first
explore himself”.

8
The next piece of the puzzle to create an image of a historical review of the
philosophy of science is Aristotle (384-322 BCE). He was a student of Plato at his
school, the Academy. 1 The following quote by Aristotle appeared on an Internet site
for teaching children entrepreneurship, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence,
then, is not an act, but a habit. The same Internet page also quoted Neva Boyd (see
under the section of results). Plato's interpretation of our existence was a world of
ideas to general concepts, and a material world for indvidual concepts.

Natural Science
Galileo Galilei, (1564-1642), the Italian scientist who historically usually referres to
as whom defined the knowledge of nature. He iquestioned what contemporaries took
for granted, with reference to Aristotle, which led up to, for the time, new knowledge
of nature.2

Empirism or rationalism
René Descarte (1594-1650) French mathematician, philosopher, priest and lawyer,
rejected at first all the knowledge we had gained through our senses as these were not
rational. He said that our senses deceive us. For this he used two arguments: the
illusion and dream argument. But Descarte continued to doubt and concluded that
logic and mathematics could deceive us as well. What was then left by knowing?
Nothing! In this process, he realizes, however, that because he thinks so he is. It will
be the first principle of Descartes in his philosophy.3

John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and political thinker whose work, An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, criticizes the rationalists. Locke represents
an experiencephilosophy, the empirist, he ment that our senses are there to teach us.
He did not think we were born with some perceptions since in that case there should
be conceptions in general to share. Such he could not find evidence for. Locke terms
the object that excite our senses 'ability' which can, according to him, be measured
through a primary and a secondary quality. Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749)
British playwrighter and philosopher, came to defend Locke against critics who
argued that one could not empirically explain the existence of God. Below Trotter is
cited by Anna-Karin Malmström-Ehrling:

The human race is a system of beings, who constantly need each other's help, without which
they could not survive long. It is therefore necessary to each according to his ability and
position contributes its part to the big picture can be composed and become better and avoid
everything that is harmful to it. For this purpose, people have the ability to develop social and
loving feelings (probably has germ of them implanted in their nature) and a moral sense or
4
conscience who likes good deeds and dislike the opposite.

1
Bengt Molander, Vetenskapsfilosofi. En bok om vetenskapen och den vetenskapande människan,
2
Lars-Göran Alm, Gula idéer sover lugnt, Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2000.
3
Ibid, s. 61.
4
Citerad av Anna-Karin Malmström-Ehrling, Kvinnliga filosofer från medeltid till upplysning, 1998.
Enligt wbbsida om kvinnliga filosofer, http://www.margaretabjorndahl.se/trotter.htm
9
Yet another piece of the puzzle to help to interpret the the picture of how we see our
reality is David Hume (1711-1776) Scottish philosopher, historian and economist.
Impressions, termed Hume our sensory inputs. At first it did not consider Hume that
our thinking was completely free. It is based entirely on our impressions, he said.
When we returned in our memory and tried to recall an impression has faded, and
then Hume called it for a (föreställning) performance. However, these different
conceptions were combined into a new item in our head as fantasy figures that we had
never seen. A common example is a mermaid which is a combination of a human
upper body and a fish tail. With his own reasoning Hume reassed his view on
thoughts and its limited opportunities. What Hume came to was that these
combinations of different ideas does not always arose from impressions. He therefore
examined the notion of our inner self, here he is cited by Lars-Göran Alm:

Vi upplever att jaget finns i vår kropp men inte är helt identiskt med den. Men i sin viktiga
bok A Treatise of Human Nature från 1739 skrev Hume: ’När jag för min del som allra
intimast går in i vad jag kallar mig själv, råkar jag alltid på en eller annan särskild
förnimmelse, av värme eller köld, ljus eller skugga, kärlek eller hat, olust eller lust. Jag kan
aldrig någonsin fatta mig själv utan en förnimmelse, och jag kan aldrig iaktta något utom
5
förnimmelsen.’

Hume's conception of our knowledge based on our senses was Immanuel Kant (1724-
1804) German philosopher, including, even if with a supplement, in which he claimed
the ‘reason’. Kant came to create a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism inspired
by Hume. Hume had been critical to the belief that there is always a relationship
between cause and effect. It was a statement that Kant devoted ten years of his life to
disprove. In 1781 he published the Critique of Pure Reason. Then in 1788 came the
Critique of Practical Reason. 6 Reason is needed to sort sensory impressions.
”Everything that happens has a cause” is a statement that can be proved true or false
according to Kant. He divided the claim in analytical and synthetic statements. To test
whether a sentence is analytic or not, one can put a negation in whereupon the
sentence will be incorrect. 'The square is squared' compared to 'The square is not
squared'. There is a clear contradiction to us, hence the analytical contention. A
synthetic sentence lacks a natural link between objects and properties. delade in
påstående i analytiska och syntetiska satser. To test whether a sentence is analytic or
not, you can put a negation whereupon kit sentence is incorrect. 'The square is square'
compared to 'The square is not square'. There is a clear contradiction to us, hence the
analytical contention. A synthetic kit lacks a natural link between objects and
properties.

What is needed is a synthesis between the object and the property on which such
statement is called synthetic. For example, 'The girl is red creates no natural
connection. Kant means that we need to develop this argument further and insert the
knowledge we are supposed to have, the concept 'a priori', Latin for: in advance, and

5
Alm, 2000, s. 68.
6
Immanuel Kant, Kritik av praktiska förnuftet, Lund: Bokförlaget Argos, 2001, s 82.
10
the knowledge that we are forced to acquire in order to determine the kit's veracity. If
the girl is red, we want to maybe see her and say that she is too sunburned. This
concept he called for 'a posteriori', Latin for: in retrospect.

Kant also came to the conclusion that space and time are not available, other than in
ourselves. They are an outlook shape. All of our experiences are subjective and then
we should add that in our statements about the environment. This bag is heavy (for
me). Kant says that it is a thought pattern we had from the beginning. Kant identified
twelve different thought patterns, which he called categories, these categories
structure our impressions systematically. One of these categories is kausalprincipen.
Kant expressed 'I feel therefore I am' as a parallelism to Descartes' earlier policy.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher.7 Hegel

came up with the hermeneutic spiral, according to dialectical laws. The experience of
knowledge-conquest will be included in the knowledge that persist. It means that we
also learn from the mistakes we make based on actual experience. We can form each
concept, but we can only understand fully using its opposite according to Hegel, the
concept of 'long' is meaningless without its opposite 'short'. Hegel paired these
concepts when both are needed: thesis and antithesis to synthesis. To understand ’the
being’ (varat) one must also consider that there are no being. A 'no' versus a present.
Hegel developed the negative by the terms 'suspend' and 'preserve' the synthesis of
which is that the situation is suspended to a higher level when it changed for the
better. Reason, says Hegel, is the conscious knowledge that the whole reality is
included. Furthermore, Hegel ment that what is real in the individual depends on his
participation in the reality as a whole.

Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison set out from two aspects when
they describe the foundation of today's science. 8 The first assumption is that of
determinism. That is to say that what happens has a cause that is determined by other
factors. The science tries to discover and visualize these relationships. When
explaining these relationships makes use of the terms earlier researchers defined. The
second assumption is based on empirical evidence. That reliable knowledge can only
come from experience. Cohen et. Al argue then that in practice this means
scientifically that the durability of a theory or hypothesis depends on the empirical
evidence.

Sociological symbolic interactionism

The historical theory perspective has now arrived to Neva Boyd's contemporaries. In
retrospect, the new movement that arises where Boyd and others were working , some
have called ’sociological symbolic interactionism’. The definitonen came from
Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) in 1969. 9 Blumer had been Meads student and had

7
Internet Psychology Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014. http://www.iep.utm.edu/hegelsoc/
8
Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion & Keith Mossison, Research Method in Education, London:
Routledge, 2003.
9
http://www.psykologiguiden.se/www/pages/?Lookup=symbolisk%20interaktionism
11
access to his unpublished materials he left after his death. According to Moira von
Wright, Professor of Education in Sweden, so is Meads concepts surrounding the
takeover of other people's attitudes and role, the key to understand the theory. This
perspective-taking of the individual allows a community of people to participate in a
world of shared objects and experiences, in parallel with the individual's own inner
world according to von Wright. Mead argued that a completed action, integrated
actions, thinking and feelings and he began to shape a social care treatment theory
which was based on ”the Act”.10

Jan Trost, researcher in sociology and social psychology, and Irene Levin researcher
in social work and social psychology says that the fundamental cornerstones of
sociological symbolic interactionism is the definition of the situation, that all
interactions are social, we interact with the help of symbols, that mankind are active
and that we act, behave, and that we are in the present.

The concept of 'definition of the situation' means if we as individuals perceive our

situation as real it is real in its consequences. ‘Situation The definition’ has been
around as a concept for example from William James (1842-1910). James was an
American philosopher and psychologist and whom the after-world, defined as
pragmatists ”What we say about reality thus depends upon the perspective into which
we throw it.” 11 So if an individual experiences the situation as real as the real to the
individual, then it will influence his or her actions to come. James reflected upon
introspection when he asked how our inner identity is related to the ambient image of
ourselves. James felt like Mead that it is the interaction with each other which is the
basis for our understanding and development of ourselves and the situation. In this
interaction, we adapt and become different personalities depending on the case, which
is in line with what Mead formulated.

10
Moria von Wright, ”Tema: George Herbert Mead och intersubjektivitetens utmaningar” s. 3-10,
Utbildning & Demokrati (10) 3, 2001.
11
Jan Trost & Irene Levin, Att förstå vardagen, med ett symbolisk interaktionistiskt perspektiv,
Studentlitteratur: Lund 2005, s. 14.
12
Method
Historical research is intended to provide access to, and facilitate insights related to
three areas of knowledge on human and social events according to Louis Cohen,
Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison.12

A historical research method

The first area of knowledge in this research method is the past. Second, the change
processes and business continuity of the period. What is included in this area is also
how these processes have been challenged and negotiated regarding social, political,
economic and other forms of contexts in which they take place. The third area relates
to the origins of the contemporary that explains the current structures, relationships,
and behaviors.

Furthermore, says Cohen, et. al that education has a significant position in each of
these broad areas of knowledge.13 School systems with subject-specific curriculums
and age-related teaching groups is a relatively young phenomenon that goes back 200
years in time. These have been developed to meet specific needs according to them. A
historical research into the subject can examine the past and the knowledge of the
processes that made it come up with what one have today can understand his
contemporaries. 14 In historical research, there are primary and secondary data.
Primary is the primary sources from the object you study while secondary can consist
of, for example, interviews transformed into historical quantitative data in the context
studied

Case studies
Case studies provide a unique example of a real person or group, which help to
capture interest. According to Cohen, et. al. a case study can help the reader to
understand how ideas and abstract principles can fit together. A case study takes into
account a variety of sources to build a holistic picture of the object. For this reason
means Cohen et. al. that its approach typically requires more than a tool for data
collection, and many sources of evidence. A case study can mix quantitative and
qualitative data, and it is a mixed research method that can explain, describe,
illuminate and enlighten. The case studies strength is that it can establish cause and
effect when studying effects in real contexts is a powerful factor in both the cause and
action. Cohen et. al. points out that an in-depth understanding needed to do justice to
the case. 15

12
Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion & Keith Mossison, Research Method in Education, Routledge,
London, 2003.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., s. 158.
15
Cohen et. al., 2003, s. 184.
13
Five steps of the process
Cohen el at refer to Mouly, 1978 who identified five stages in the process of historical
research:16

1. Experience - the starting point of scientific endeavor.

2. Classification - formal systematization of otherwise incomprehensible
data.
3. Quantification - adequate analysis of phenomena with mathematical
methods.
4. The discovery of relationships - the identification and classification of
functional relationships between phenomena.
5. Approximation to the truth - science proceeds by gradual approximation to
the truth.

A Creative search on various databases

The first method section consists of a creative search based on previously defined
searchcriteria for educational drama ”articles about drama pedagogy in school
contexts” and ”educational form of drama as a method” but with a focus on Neva
Boyd and Chicago.17 Boyd appeared in the educational reform movement, why
databases providing educational science, sociology, anthropology, psychology,
expressive arts and aesthetic expressions, has been used.

Keywords were defined when an overview of the school subject drama in education
was conducted 2012-2013 were the word-combinations were useful for the
classification of inclusion rather then and/or which brings too many results. I have
cultivated a log from the very beginning, where I wrote down how the search was
done, how many hits each keyword had and how the final selection of the articles
come through.

The creative process experience captured a large material of sidings, which ended up
in a chaotic manner in relation to the format of an academically coherent text as in
this current context, why the revision of the method became necessary. See Appendix
1. My brain map of a creative flow that creates paths. Min hjärnkarta över ett kreativt
flöde som skapar sökvägar.

The scheme of search is summarized in a table, see Appendix 2, ”Search-way”.18

Through alternative forms such as brain maps, timelines, and other graphical

16
Ibid.
17
Marie Umerkajeff, ”Drama för alla oavsett förmåga – vi måste bara våga”, C-uppsats, Stockholms
Universitet, Specialpedagogiska institutionen, 2014 s. 16. http://su.diva-
portal.org/smash/get/diva2:790818/FULLTEXT01.pdf
18
Christina Forsberg & Yvonnne Wengström, Att göra systematiska litteraturöversikter, 2003, s. 83.
14
characters I have tried to create a clear picture as a conceptual collage of my initial
findings. This collage also includes image sources for the period around the century
before last century. The search is in the first part done through Google search (both
video, web, and maps) and then I have anchored these findings in other entrusted
sources.

Focused search on databases

With the help of truncation,19 a form of rounding up to get relevant hits, I searched on
the Internet via Google’s searchengine and through databases tied to Stockholm
University, sources containing 'Neva' and 'Boyd'.

Examples of classification, social workers or sociologists?

In the American researcher Mary Joo's studies on women in the sociological context,
she refers to Dirk Käsler who studied the early German sociologists and who designed
the criteria for determining whether someone is considered to be a sociologist. Kasler
says that to begin with, the person holds an office in sociology or teaching a subject.
Furthermore, he or she has a membership of a national society. It also means taking
adjuster to sociological articles or textbooks. Finally, define themselves and are
defined by others, as a sociologist:
• occupy a chair of sociology or teach it
• membership in the German Sociological Society (changed in this case to the
American Sociological Society)
• co-authorship in sociological articles or textbooks
• self-definition as a "sociologists"
20
• definition by others as a sociologists.
I will then in the analysis test Käslers definition against the individuals who worked in
the sociology of the time that Neva Boyd was active. In this way, a test will be done
to see whether these five classifications serve as a useful tool for simplifying and
reproduction of real conditions.

Selection and implementation

After that I have identified relevant references from the enormous material that I have
collected through the creative search of Neva Boyd online, strictly make a division of
inclusion and exclusion in order to get to a more manageable amount of material
whose selection criteria could be replicated.

19
Torsten Thur & Göran Lethén, Källkritik för internet, Styrelsen för psykologiskt försvar, 2007, s. 71.
20
Mary Jo Deegan, (citerar Käsler) Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School, 1892-1918. New
Brunswick, N.J. Transaction, 1988, s. 9.
15
Inclusion critera
1. Articles are written by Neva Boyd or occupy people that were active at the same
time as Boyd in Chicago.21
2. Articles are first-hand sources.
3. The articles are in English Swedish German or Spanish.

Exclusion criteria
4. Articles are repetitions of previously published texts by Boyd.
5. Articles are in languages other than English, Swedish, German or Spanish.

The search for the object 'Neva Boyd' has varied from one hour at any single occasion
to depth soundings up to 10 hours non-stop search on various online forums.

Cohen et. al discloses that the limitation of the material can be a problem in historic
research studies.22 But in Swedish, I only found, through Google search engine,
autumn 2013, one B-thesis at Örebro University's theater teacher training from spring
semester 2012, 7.5 points written by Charlotte Kransmo and Peter Joelsson. They
mention Neva Boyd but have not specified a tracked source. They mention her in their
essay nine times:

Jenna Gabriel refers to the play theorist Neva Boyd. We could not find Boyd's book in
Sweden but refers to the description that Gabriel gave in the interview. Boyd states that
children develop the skills they need to be fully functioning adults through play. By
introducing the children to play again so they can learn the skills they have missed out on, for
23
example, the ability to compromise and to follow impulses.

In English, there are far more relevant hits. Approximately 4,830 results for the words
'Neva Boyd'. By searching on Google with the search filter 'books' and the following
word order, inauthor: "Neva Leona Boyd" I got out most of Boyd's published writings
according to Boyd archive.

The main source - Neva Boyds archive MSBoyd68

Neva Boyd had originally two archives in Illinois that in recent years have been
merged into one. Since my first visit in 2009 to the Internet Archive, it has changed
appearance from a text-based archive that looked like typed text to have an attractive
and modern interface created in a computer environment. This occurred during the
year 2010. 24 Ruth Austin (1884-1990) (who also was a teacher in the reform

21
Med ett undantag för Paul Simon som redigerat flera av Boyds texter.
22
Cohen et al. 2003.
23
Charlotte Kransmo & Peter Joelsson. ”Autistiska barn som spelar roll möjligheter och metoder för
karaktärsarbete med barn som har autismspektrumdiagnos”, 2012, s. 9-18. http://oru.diva-
portal.org/smash/get/diva2:532246/FULLTEXT01.pdf
24
University of Illinois, MSBoyd68, webbsida, 2013.
16
movement and among other things initiated an experimental school for children with
learning difficulties at Hull-House from 1946 to 1949) stands as a donor for the Boyd
archive. Austin has sent the material to Richard J. Daley Library Special Collections
and University Archives, Neva Leona Boyd papers, ID; MSBoyd68 (1922-1958).
Boyd's archives contain; personal scope, content and administrative information,
including a list of the collection: Series I: Theory and Exposition of the social group
exercises and Games, Series II: Case Studies, Series III: Papers, reports, and
published material, Series IV: Personal notes and Supplement 1. Scientific papers
have been sought on the basis of the list of the Neva Boyd's archives that referred to
various organizations in psychology, education, sociology, but above all
"recreational" as a concept. The present articles I have found partly with the help of
the Stockholm University Library databases.

Databases on internet

Wiley is a publisher on international scientific, technical, and medical databases,

linked to major academic fields. The database provides an integrate access to over 4
million articles from 1500 journals, over 14,000 online books, and hundreds of
reference works, protocols and laboratory databases.25 This database had the most hits
on Boyd.
Libris is a national search service with information on titles held by Swedish
university and research libraries, as well as about twenty public libraries.
LibraryThing is a search service with over 700 libraries around the world, where one
can select the source and customize the search preferences, which have been very
helpful. Accordingto LibraryThing 2013-10-05 users selects OverCat (their own
internal database of books) as the main source. OverCat refer to Maryland University,
who has 70 results on Neva Boyd.26

At Stockholm University Library through EBSCO searchaid, I searched for 'Neva

Boyd' and got 31 hits, after duplicates were removed, there were 19 results remaining.
One of the hits, which was a scientific article by Boyd published in 1934, was
recovered at Taylor & Francis internet platform: Tandfonline.com. It is an article
written by Boyd which Spolin refers to but which Stockholm University not had full
access to, so I could just copy the first page.27 On one of the databases, Archive.org
Boyd occurs as a reference in a scanned book of The Play movement 28 from 1922 by
Rainwater. He describe Hull-House Workers empirical work, the desire to create an
alternative movement for workers whose meager wages used by commercial forces on
the evening when they are vacant ”As urbanization and immigration Continued,

http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/specialcoll/services/rjd/findingaids/NBoydf.html
25
www.wil ey.com
26
http://umaryland.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABoyd%2C+Neva+Leona.&qt=hot_author
27
http://www.tandfonline.com.ezp.sub.su.se/toc/uced20/10/8#.UlBK9Bap2hM
28
Rainwater, 1921.
17
Attempts to make adjustments to other social situational gave rise to additional
movements”.29 One of these was the play movement. On the database Archive.org I
found two additional books by Boyd, scanned with full access and the ability to
download in PDF format.

The only book in Sweden

Via the search service of Libris, I found a single copy of a book in Sweden. It was a
collection of articles written by Boyd compiled by Paul Simon (born 1941). .30 The
book could be found on Stockholm University Library. The book were brought to me
from an archive of the library. The book was borrowed and copied.31

Ethical guidelines and validity

According to Robert Mertons so-called CUDOS standards, good research is
characterized by universalism and critical thinking towards ones researc.32 Frequently
used key concepts for professional practice in research is to serve humanity and to
have respect for human life.

Ethical guidelines and laws regarding research are gathered by the Science Council on
their webbpage CODEX.33 There are collections of links and together-including texts
about the laws and ethical guidelines with focus on Swedish research but one can also
find an English-language version of CODEX. Although research as an act has several
directives and regulations the expression is that the ultimate responsibility for the
good research is on the researcher him-/her-self.

Reliability och validity

The texts of Boyd who has been the basis for this study and the references have come
up through the consistent inclusion and exclusion rules for the search in databases and
on internet. The texts have been read several times and the English language has not
been an impediment since in my everyday teaching practice is in English. The study
has rested on a theoretical basis and with a theoretical method to create reliability in
the reproduction and thus the validity regarding the representation of a case study
Neva Boyd could recognize themselves in.

29
Rainwater, 1915, s. 326.
30
Simon, (red.) 1971.
31
Kopierades inom ramen för upphovslagen.
32
Robert Merton, "The Normative Structure of Science", The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and
Empirical Investigations, 1973.
33
http://codex.vr.se/forskarensetik.shtml

18
Result
First, follow the facts I found about Chicago for the time when Neva Boyd appeared.
Then Boyd’s chronological activity followed by the editor of Boyd’s book Simon’s
reflections and other outcomes that have existed in the historical research.

The new movement

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was an active advocater of women's suffrage and for a time
she was the leader of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Addams came after a trip to London to build a community center, 1889 in a poor
neighborhood in Chicago along with Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940).34 The house was
both a residence for social workers and a center for education, shelter, soup kitchen,
and cultural activities.

Hull-House
Addams house is referred to, as Hull-House and it was to play an important role not
only for the pedagogy of drama development but also for the pragmatic movement
that is often referred to as the Chicago-School. Boyd was one of the sociologists at
Hull-House who in 1909 started a school for contemporary recreation, Recreational
Training School (RTS).

The American Hull-House-workers attended the University of Chicago's Graduate

School. The dynamics between Hull-House and the University of Chicago was the
basis for success for what the Chicago School have come to represent according to
Patrica Lengermann and Jill Niebrugge-Brantley:

The dynamic between Hull-House and The University of Chicago proved to be a success.
From it, the women involved in the project were able to incorporate social theory learned at
the University, while gaining practical experience outside in urban Chicago, and its
surrounding counties. In fact, women like Florence Kelley were able to take their experiences
at Hull-House and the University of Chicago, and apply them in New York City at the Henry
35
Street Ward settlement house.

1895 Hull-House Maps and Papers: Halstead Center was published after after
solding the rights to Thomas Y Crowell & Co. This work is considered as one of the
first contributions in the new discipline that was about to be formed, sociology. 36
American Journal of Sociology, the first US scholarly journal in its field founded the
same year.

34
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, New York: Macmillan 1910.
35
Patrica Lengermann & Jill Niebrugge-Brantley, The women founders: sociology and social theory,
The McGraw Hill Companies 1998, s. 237.
36
Ibid.
19
The Chicago School
The US settlement movement was an influential part of the social reforms when the
United States became an urban and industrialized country. Ideals can be seen reflected
in practice. The philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) expressed ”Learning by doing”
and ”Education is not preparation for life; it is life” is commonly used to reproduce
the spirit of the reformative movement. Dewey also clearly articulated the benefits
and dangers of assessing students and whether these assessments at all is something to
rely on, he expressed that their eyes, ears and hands must be instruments that are
ready to be used. Likewise, the child's judgment and organizational skills to work for
the child. To develop these skills in the child so that they hold themselves, said
Dewey, was to prepare the child for the future.37 Dewey dedicated his lectures on art,
which are contained in Art as Experience, to James, who has been mentioned under
the theoretical perspective of this essay.38

Addams who describes the empirical work at Hull House mean, according to
Rainwater, that movement is something temporary and will eventually shape into an
institution on the adaptation of the expressions established.39 Or will the movement
disintegrate in line with what created the needs and fade away or disappear.
According Addams so did the alternative movement variey in both efficacy and
ethics. Addams meant that some social movements are negative and want to break
down the institutionalization. Others are positive in their desire to make new
adjustments to the organization of social activities.40 These movements, continues
Addams, are necessary in certain phases of social evolution, as when the movement
will force a group's destructive approach in an existing social situation and affect the
group constructively through adjustments within the system. Movements in certain
forms such as trends in fashion results in only a temporary shift of public attention
according to Addams who is here cited by Rainwater:

… a series of events involving adjustments to a social situation; connected by a cause and

effect relation; possessing an extension in time and space; and disclosing stages, transitions,
tendencies, that are correlative with a changing concept of its function and indicative of its
41
evolution.

Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She expressed the following
about the workingwomen in Hull-House: “It is good for a social worker to be an artist
too”.42 The network of women who worked mainly between 1890-1920 was called
'The Chicago Women's School of Sociology' (CWSS) according to Lengermann and
Niebrugge-Brantley.43 These women seemed to provide an interdisciplinary forum by
linking sociology, social theory, sociology, and social reforms. Oscar Andersson,
37
John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938. http://www.icels-educators-for-
learning.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=68
38
John Dewey, Art as experience, 1934, Penguin 2005.
39
Clemens E. Rainwater, The Meaning of Play, University of Chicago Press, 1915, s. 181.
40
Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, New York: Macmillan 1909.
41
Rainwater, The Play Movement in the United States, A study of community, recreation, Diss., 1921 s.
326.
42
Addams, 1910, s 4.
43
Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, s. 237.
20
Ph.D. in social anthropology and lecturer at Malmö University says in his study that
the Chicago School researchers was the first in an academic framework that
systematically and ethnographicly put group and people at the center of a modern
urban context.44 For example, the term 'thomasteoremet' coined by William Isaac
Thomas (1863-1947) who expressed that if people define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences.45

Andersson admits that there had been others who have written about industrialism,
modernism, urbanity and the poor people in the slums, but argues that there has not
been an equally systematic and pervasive way that the Chicago School requires.
According to Andersson, did Chicago School develop between 1915 and 1935.
Andersson points out that when anthropology from the start in 1892 was part of the
Department of Sociology it created unique connections between them, and have left
their mark on these continued work even after the organizational went separate ways
in 1929. Andersson does not mention the Hull House in his work. Maybe because of
the distinguishment between sociology and social work that has come to delevop
during time.
Trost and Levin devotes an entire chapter to Hull-House and another to Jane Addams
in the book, Att förstå vardagen.46

Reform educators in Sweden

Equivalent to the community centers as Hull-House in Sweden is Hembygsgårdar
(Homestead Farms) also called hemgårdar. The first all-community center in Sweden
was started in 1912 by Nathanael Beskow (1865-1953) and Ebba Pauli (1873-1941).47
In addition to missionary activities were also cultural and other public education
offered. The ‘Hemgårdarna’ were the first with playgroups and was also among the
first who had day care centers and recreation centers in Sweden.48 These organized
leisure activities came through after the reform pedagogues instituted schools with a
holistic view of education.49

År 1878, Anna Whitlock (1852-1930) founded) a girls' school in Stockholm among

others in collaboration with Ellen Key (1849-1926) who had great influence on the
development of pedagogy:

Already at that time when I at five years old, a large sewing lump formed as a winding child,
who by its weight gave it beatifying reality impression of maternal effort, I began to ponder
my future child's upbringing! Then as now, meant my ideal of upbringing that the children

44
Oscar Andersson, Chicagoskolan: institutionaliseringen, idétraditionen och vetenskapen,
Sociologiska institutionen, Lunds universitet, Diss., 2003.
45
Psykologiguiden, http://www.psykologiguiden.se/www/pages/?Lookup=Chicagoskolan
46
Trost & Levin, 2005.
47
Riksarkivet, Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, webbsida, 2013.
48
Kulturdirekts webbsida, 2013. http://kulturdirekt.se/
49
Kent Hägglund, 2001.
21
 will have fun and not have to be afraid. Fear is the childhood accident and the child's suffering
is doubled by the half-conscious contrast between the child boundless possibilities of
50
happiness and reality treatment of these opportunities.

According to the official website of Ellen Key, her book, Barnets århundrade (The
century of the child) come to spread Keys approach to raising a child far beyond
Sweden's borders. Key seems to refer in part to the same sources that Boyd refers to,
such as William James. 51 International covenants is also mentioned that may well
have brought together Boyd with Key.

In Sweden, Ellen Key was a frequent lecturer. During the 1890s she gathered 10,000
listeners per academic year. 52 Key was against corporal punishment, and she
described the importance of teachers to mainly look at the child's own needs. At the
Whitlockska school in Stockholm and other schools one practiced these new teaching
methods. Among the contents were including student government with autonomy,
parental leave, concentration, reading, free substance-choice and variety between
practical and theoretical work that went into each other. Drama in Education as a
concept was not yet but its method was practiced at the reform educational schools.53

Ellen Fries (1855-1900) became Sweden's first female doctor of philosophy in 1883.
Women did not receive services at the university, but Fries worked as a history
teacher at the Wallinska school in Stockholm 1884-1886.54 1890 organized Fries the
school's newly-started secondary curriculum and became director of that. She was the
initiator of the Fredrika Bremer Association, and initiated the founding of the Swedish
women's national league, in 1896, after her visit to the World Exhibition in Chicago
in 1893, where the ”International Council of Women” was constituted.55

Ellen Moberg (1874-1955) and Maria Moberg (1877-1949) two sisters who were
inspired by Fröbel started activities for children in their own garden in 1899 in which
children's own willingness developed partly through free play and drama. 56

Esther Hermansson describes how radical teachers gathered around the 1919
curriculum and how she later along with a colleague on her own initiative went to
North America to study the reform movement there.57

50
Ellen Key, Barnets århundrade, Borgholm: Bildningsförlaget (1900) 1995, s. 47.
51
Hägglund, 2001, s. 127.
52
Birgitta Mral (citerar Hamilton, 1904) Talande kvinnor. Kvinnliga retoriker från Aspasia till Ellen
Key: Retorikförlaget, 1999, s. 86.
53
Hägglund, 2001.
54
Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek, webbsida 2014.
http://www.ub.gu.se/kvinn/portaler/kunskap/biografier/fries.xml
55
Encyclopedia Britannica, http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/290845/International-
Council-of-Women-ICW
56
Magnus Fock, ”Den lärarinna är den lyckligaste”, Lärarförbundets förlag 2008,
www.lararnashistoria.se 2010.
57
Ester Hermansson Upplevelser och påverkan: jämförelsematerial för pedagogiskt intresserade.1974.
22
Ellen Fries (1855-1900) blev Sveriges första kvinnliga filosofie doktor 1883. Kvinnor
fick inte tjänster på universitetet, utan Fries arbetade som historielärarinna på
Wallinska skolan i Stockholm 1884-1886.58

Ellen Moberg (1874-1955) och Maria Moberg (1877-1949) två systrar som var
inspirerade av Fröbel startade barnverksamhet i sin egen trädgård 1899 där barnens
egen vilja utvecklades genom bland annat fri lek och drama. 59

Ester Hermansson beskriver hur radikala lärare samlades runt 1919 års kursplaner och
hur hon senare tillsammans med en kollega på eget initiativ åkte till Nordamerika för
att studera.

Esther Boman (1879-1947) as Kent Hägglund's thesis cover, ran the school Tyringe
full board which can be connected to the drama pedagogy.60 Boman's conviction was
that people are different and that everyone has the right to learn in the way that works
best for the individual.

Neva L. Boyd (1876-1963)

The following is the facts I've found concerning Neva Boyd based on the criteria for
the historical search (inclusion and exclusion criteria), I followed. The disposition is
chronological for Neva’s life.

Figure 1. Portrait photo of Neva Leona Boyd.

This photograph is one of only two photographs that I found on Neva Leona Boyd.
This is taken from the book of Boyd, Simon edited and published.61

58
Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek, webbsida 2014.
http://www.ub.gu.se/kvinn/portaler/kunskap/biografier/fries.xml
59
Magnus Fock, ”Den lärarinna är den lyckligaste”, Lärarförbundets förlag 2008,
www.lararnashistoria.se 2010.
60
Hägglund, 2001.
61
Simon, (red.), 1971
23
Neva Leona Boyd was born in Sanborn, Iowa, February 25, 1876. Her father was of
Scottish-Irish descent and had immigrated in 1853.62 Neva was the oldest in a sibling
group of six children.63 Her father, Richard M. Boyd was a soldier belonging to the
Fourteenth Infantry in Iowa from the time he was 17 years old till the time he was
injured in 1864.64 I have no indication how old he was. Richard married Elizabeth J.
Swecker 1866.65 One of the brothers of Neva, Melville, tried his luck in Alaska as a
gold digger. Neva's father did not come from a minor family but still managed to
support the family through small farm agriculture. The father’s creative ways to solve
problems came accordingly to affect the children. Neva moved to Chicago after high
school. One of Neva siblings name may have been Ina Seldon.66 Another sister may
have been called Mary A as an obituary from 1906 was found in Boyd’s archive.67

First move to Chicago

Neva Boyd moved to Chicago to study at the Chicago Kindergarten Institute, which
later became the National University Louise. Chicago Kindergarten institute was run
by Elizabeth Harrison (1849-1927) between 1880-1920. Harrison was born in
Kentucky and raised in Iowa.68

Boyd's professional career began in 1900

Boyd started working in Dallas for a ’Kindergarten’ in 1900.69 In the United States at
this time one had chose the German word from Fröbel of the definititon of children's
activities (kindergarten) without translating it. 1904 Boyd taught educators at the
Buffalo Kindergarten Association and supervised programs for educators in children's
activities at the Welcome Hall Settlement in Buffalo, New York.70

The Playground Association of America (PAA) was formed 1906. The first
organizational meeting was held at the YMCA in Washington, DC, in April. “The
delegates were eighteen men and women from playground associations, public school
and municipal recreation departments, settlements, teachers’colleges, the kindergarten
movement, and charity organizations” and one of them was Boyd. 71 1907 was the
PAA’s first annual conference National Recreation Association Records, and from the

62
Rune for Richard M. Boyd, Sanborn Pioneer, 11 August 1926.
63
Simon, (red.), 1971, s. 8.
64
Ibid.
65
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CLANBOYD/2003-09/1064339690
66
http://www.myheritage.se/research/collection
67
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/specialcoll/services/rjd/findingaids/NBoydf.html#ref309
68
National Louis University, http://www.nl.edu/about/history/nluandkindergartenmovement/
69
Simon, (red.), 1971, s. 9.
70
Ibid., s. 10.
71
Linnea M., Anderson, ‘“The playground of today is the republic of tomorrow”: Social reform and
organized recreation in the USA, 1890-1930’s’ the encyclopaedia of informal education, 2006.
http://infed.org/mobi/social-reform-and-organized-recreation-in-the-usa/.
24
”Program of The First Annual Play Congress, June 20-22, 1907” reproduced here
from Linnea M. Anderson:

The program clearly illustrated important themes of democracy, citizenship and morality that
continued to guide recreation through the mid 20th century. Speeches included “Relation of
Play to Juvenile Delinquency,” “Play as Training in Citizenship” and the “Social Value of
Playgrounds in Crowded Districts.” Jane Addams spoke on “Public Recreation and Social
Morality.” The convention concluded with a massive “play festival” in Ogden Park, attended
by 4000 spectators. The program included: marching, singing and circle games by 300
kindergarteners; eighty girls in gymnastic games and eighty boys on gym apparatus; 100 girls
playing volley ball; relay races of 100 boys and girls, respectively; Swedish, Hungarian,
Lithuanian, and Bulgarian national dances in costume; and 100 boys demonstrating six
athletic events “suitable for use in large or small playgrounds.” () At PAA conferences, even
the delegates were encouraged to play games in order to experience the “play spirit.” 72

1908 was Boyd a student at the University of Chicago. I have not found the facts on
what exactly she studied. The Chicago Park Commission hired her as a social worker
in the same year for organizing various clubs such as dance, play and drama. Together
with Mari Ruef Hofer (1858-1929) Boyd started the Chicago School for playgroud
Workers in 1909.73 Ruef Hofer who represented the music part of the games meant
that the subject of music had been lost in the syllabus for the compulsory school
system, when focused on the theoretical bits instead of the sensory and emotional
components of the subject music.74 The following ad is taken from the magazine The
Playground from 1909.75

Figure 2.

Between 1909 and 1911, Boyd employed responsible director of Ekhart Park.
According to the magazine The Playground the Chicago Woman's Aid Society asks
for pedestrian routes for 1200 children who was playing in the streets of the city.
From 1914 to 1920, the Recreational Training School (RTS) was a part of the
Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (CSCP), which was established in 1908
by settlement houses which merged in 1914 after the operations have grown too large
for their premises.76 The following ad is from 1913.

72
Ibid.,
73
Richard J. Daley Library Special Collections and University Archives, Chicago, 2006,
74
Teachers College Record, 1904 Vol. 5 Nr 1, s. 57-102. http://www.tcrecord.org/library
ID Number: 9789, Date Accessed: 9/14/2014 9:15:01 A
75
https://archive.org/stream/playground03playrich#page/132/mode/2up
76
Clay Drinko, Theatrical Improvisation, Consciousness, and Cognition, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013, s. 15.
25
 Figure 3. This kind of ad have given information on time place and content.

Chicago Commons went under the name ”The Institute of Social Science and Arts”,
which was started by the sociologist Graham Taylor in 1903.77 The principle at the
school was Edith Abbott who both lived and worked at Hull-House. Faculty and
students at the school dealt with issues as juvenile delinquency, truancy, training and
housing needs. Most classes of RTS taught at Hull-House where Addams sat on the
board. When CSCP was incorporated into the University of Chicago, in 1920, became
Boyd’s RTS became independent and was popularly known as the Hull-House
School. Here another ad for the school that occured in the magazine The Playground.

Figure 4. An ad foran educational catalog on one year, two year or summer courses at RTS/Hull-House.

77
The University of Chicago’s Library, 2014
26
Systematization of folk games
Boyd's first published collection of Danish and Swedish folk games came out in
1907.78 For the second edition of the Folkgames of Denmark and Sweden for school,
1914 does Boyd publish Folk Games and Gymnastic Play for Kindergarten, Primary
and Playground together with Dagny Pedersen.

Figure 5. The front of the first publication. Figure 6. The front of the second publication.

Boyd fortsatte att samla in, kodifiera, och publicera material om spel, lekar och
folkdanser som blev grundläggande för hur man via lekens uttryck utvecklade socialt
lärandeNågot exakt årtal kan jag inte finna annat än första upplagan av den just
nämnda boken från 1907. I förordet till Folkgames of Denmark and Sweden for
school, playground and social center, berömmer J Christian Bay Boyds och
Pedersens systematiska arbete med att göra de nationella sånglekarna i Danmark och
Sverige tillgängliga för pedagoger. Bay delar Boyds och Pedersens inställning att
dessa lekar skall noggrant beskrivas så som de är och så som de används då de
överförts genom århundranden av omedvetna behov som försökt tillgodosetts genom
en målmedveten ledning av lämpliga lekar för att möta dessa behov. Här uttrycker
Bay lekens djupa rötter i folklivet:

Boyd continued to collect, consolidate, and publish content for games and folk dances
that became fundamental to how through the expression of play, social learning
developed.79 I can not find an exact year other than the first edition of the just
mentioned book from 1907. In the preface to the Folkgames of Denmark and Sweden
for school, playground and social center, praises J. Christian Bay, Boyd and
Pedersen's systematic efforts to make the national songs of the games in Denmark and

78
Dramatic Bibliography, s. 145. Finns tillgänglig inscannad av Google books:
https://books.google.se/books?id=4iL0a2rQzsgC&lpg=PP1&hl=sv&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false
79
Dagny Pedersen & Neva Boyd, Folkgames of Denmark and Sweden for school, playground and
social center, 1915.
Pedersen & Neva Boyd, Folkgames and Gymnasic Play for Kindergarten Primary and Playground,
1915.
Florence Warren Brown & Neva Boyd, (1915) Old English and American Games for School and
Playground, 1915.
Tressie M. Dunlavy & Neva Boyd, Old Square Dances of America,
Neva Boyd, Country Dance Tunes For Old Square Dances of America, 1915.
27
Sweden, available to educators. Bay share Boyd and Pedersen's approach that these
games shall be mentioned as they are and as they are used when they are transferred
through the centuries of unconscious needs that attempted to through determined
leadership of appropriate games to meet these needs. Bay expresses the deep roots in
folk life and the outcome through games:

In entering into the true spirit, which is mainly a historical one, of the games and their
attending songs, neither children nor those who direct the play of children, can fail to realize
the ideals of a historically developed, deeply rooted folk life. Every trait in the daily life,
diversion and festive display of the people has grown out of centuries of usage.

Further Bay expresses the importance of expressions as clearly and briefly as possible
in these ’verbose’ times:
Brevity is a virtue in these verbose times. I feel sure that Miss Boyd's intelligent, painstaking
work will bear good fruit. She is not 'introducing any foreign idea by teaching these song
games ”West of the Atlantic Ocean;” for on this continent there is a similar faithfulness
toward the ideals of the great past; and the faith of the people rests well with the children of
the people. 80

Boyd directs a grateful tribute to Viggo Bovbjerg for his valuable help in translating
and interpreting those games which he played as a child. No information has been
possible to find conserning this man. The images in the booklet were obtained by
Stefan’s youth Church in Denmark and the Swedish National Association in Chicago.
In Boyd's notes in the book, the teacher should make use of the games, she conveys
thoroughness but without losing spontaneity. Boyd writes that it is because of the
need to preserve this traditional form which have made the descriptions so carefully
written down.

Furthermore, Boyd writes that the teacher should keep clearly in memory that the
accuracy of teaching does not need to kill the spontaneity and joy, which really is the
soul of a dance game. In addition, Boyd says, that one may well vary roles for boys
and girls.

Alternative treatment throug playing

1918, Boyd initiated with her students an alternative treatment at the Chicago State
Hospital for the mentally ill through group play.81 This is one of the earliest known
efforts to utilize social group treatment in institutional environments. The use of play
and play theory as a base, were successful procedures in the work of dysfunctional
individuals through group therapies.

According to Boyd, the experimental recreational movement started of by a man

trained in gymnastics in Denmark. 82 The recreation staff consists of besides a
gymnastics instructor two women and another man. These decided the kind of

80
J. Christian Bay i förordet till Pedersen & Boyd, Folkgames of Denmark and Sweden, 1915.
81
Albert, S. Alissi, Perspectives on Social Group Work Practice, 2008.
82
Boyd, ”Group work experiments in state institutions in Illinois” Proceedings of the National
Conference on Social Work. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1935.
28
activities after consultation with the hospital doctor. From hospital wards attended by
about 900 people with varied psychiatric disorders. The staff found that gymnastics
was helpful to work with both heated and apathetic patients. The patients participated
in gymnastic activities that was improvised, in groups of about sixty participants
during 45-minute sessions, to move to the piano music and perform simple exercises.

When the patients were able to manage this kind of activity, they advanced to more
complex activities such as games and group dancing. Those patients with special
skills were asked to help the group of workers. .83 For example, patients who could
play the piano was invited to play, while the more stable patients were used as models
for leading patterns and formations of the participants who tended to wander out of
the patter formation. It was believed that when the most seriously ill patients saw the
workers as well as the more stable patients, they would be affected to participate. It
was reported that no patients ever forced to take part, but all encouraged to
participate.84

In the newsletter of The Red Cross of 1919 they informs you of a new resource to
assist workers in their planning: Hospital and Bedside Games of Neva L. Boyd.85 In
the preface to the booklet, Boyd says that she compiled the activities at the request of
workers in both civilian and military hospitals. Boyd writes that the work they have
done has convinced them that these games have a healing value. Boyd cites a hospital
official who reported on the chronic wounds that would not heal despite several
months of treatment, and now they showed remarkable improvement.86 This was due
to increased circulation through the pleasurable exercise, and related to everyday
things in life. Boyd supported further these efforts by quoting the Swiss scientist Karl
Groos, whose experiments show that the joy is accompanied by enhanced muscle
activity, faster heart rate and breathing, increased peripheral circulation and an
increased excitation of the sensory and motor center of the brain. In the same book
Boyd highlights the importance of the role that recreation worker has by realizing that
the classification of the games depends on the purpose and the situation where it will
be used. This must be done together with the person responsible for the process of the
current case. 87

Boyd is still considered as an early proponent of team work in health care and
referrals still occurs to her as a source. Following quote is from 2008:

Groupwork began to be seen as a dimension of social work in north America (perhaps best
symbolized by it being accepted as a section at the 1935 National Conference of Social
Work). It’s potential as a therapeutic process was also starting to be recognized (Boyd
88
1935)”.

83
Ibid., Boyd använder ”worker” och inte pedagog socialarbetare eller vårdpersonal.
84
Ibid.
85
”Manual of Red Cross Camp Service”, Washington, DC: American Red Cross. 1919, s. 3.
86
Boyd, Hospital and Bedside Games, Chicago: Chicago School of Civics and Philantropy, 1919.
87
Boyd, Hospital and Bedside Games, Chicago: Chicago School of Civics and Philantropy, 1919.
88
Mark, K., Smith, ‘Groupwork’, the encyclopaedia of informal education. 2008.
29
Boyd declined the merge with the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago was founded in 1892. At the university was among other
Dewey and George H. Mead (1863-1939) active.89 The latter's thoughts about ’self’
and the self in interaction with the environment is partly the basis for symbolic
interactionism as an extension of what James in 1890 resonated around, regarding the
’I’ who experiences the world and ’me’ is something that ’I’ experience.90

According to The University of Chicago’s Library and Deegan’s research findings so

had Dewey’s and Mead’s institutions extensive cooperation with Hull-House which
had been established three years earlier 1889.91

The Recreation Training School (RTS) with Boyd in the management declined a
fusion with the University of Chicago in 1918. In 1920, the Chicago School of Civics
and Philanthropy (CSCP) merged together with the University of Chicago and the
philanthropic part became the School of Social Service Administration.92

Mary Joo Deegan, American sociology researchers, who conducted research on

female sociologists, mentions in her recent book from 2014 Boyd.93

Boyd’s cooperation with Charlotee Chorpenning

1921 was the children's theater playwrighter Charlotte Barrows Chorpenning (1872-
1955) invited by Boyd for a workshop in the ”Community Theater” to RTS and
thereafter Chorpenning continued as a teacher at the school. 94 In a dissertation from
2012, one can read the following about their continuing cooperation:

In addition, Chorpenning and Boyd collaborated on developing their progressive drama

techniques in application to social work and community building. From these experiences,
Chorpenning began her journey of applying these methods to children and children’s theatre.95

Together they organized and led summer courses. I dound an ad in the magazine Play
Ground when I searched for Chicago.96

89
George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.
90
Wiliiam James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890
91
The University of Chicago’s Library, 2014: Deegan, 1988.
92
Deegan, 1988.
93
Ibid., Annie Marion MacLean and the Chicago Schools of Sociology, 1894-1934, 2014, s. 68.
94
Charlotte Barrows Chorpenning Collection, MSS-287, Arizona State University Libraries: Child
Drama Collection.
95
Kristin Ann Leahey The Youth Respondent Method: An Exploration of Reception Studies with Youth
in New Work Development for Theatre for Young Audiences Committee, Diss., 2012, s. 43.
96
https://archive.org/stream/playground19playrich#page/238/mode/2up/search/Chicago
30
Figure 7. Ad for summer courses.

Boyd in France
In a research report from 1922 that were digitized in 2013 by Digital Archive one can
read that Boyd was hired for courses in Paris, France. ”Teaching Play in France”. This
took place on the initiative of Marie-Jeanne Bassot (1878-1935) a French social
worker who had visited the United States in 1919, to reorganize the French National
Federation of Settlements. Boyd came to give courses in play and games as group
activities. Ruth Austin at Gads Hill Center in Chicago, was also involved in lectures
as well as Eloise Wilsey, a teacher of recreation at the Lake School of Milwaukee
who taught folk dancing.

Outdoor Schools with certain recreational programs organized and carried out by
French teacher at Boyd's instructions. Red Cross training for playground-workers
started from Boyd's game shows. According to Bassot was the value of play
incorporated into the French children who imposed an education system with almost
no opportunity for healthy exercises and recreation. Following text comes from The
Survey från 1922:

ACTING upon the suggestion of Mlle. Marie-Jeanne Bassot, a prominent French social
worker who visited America in 1919, that this country more than any other could be of service
to French settlements in organizing their program of recreation, the National Federation of
Settlements, through its representative in France, last summer invited Neva Boyd, an associate
at Hull House and director of the Chicago School of Recreation, to give courses of play for
groups of teachers and social workers in Paris…
Through the American instructor conducting the Red Cross training classes for playground
workers Miss Boyd was also given a class of twentyfive men and women to whom she taught
folk dancing. Much interest was shown by other groups of teachers and workers, and the
federation feels that an encouraging start has been made in awakening these groups to the
value of play for the French child who, under the "forcing" system of education, is given
97
almost no opportunity for wholesome exercise and recreation.

Chicago's social growth out of different cultures

1922-23 publishes Boyd the ”Report of the Director of Recreation for White Girls in a
State Training School for Delinquent Girls”. The following text where Boyd is cited
are frozen memory images that Google has in its search archive (cached):

Throughout her career Neva Boyd was in demand for her lectures on play and leadership. She
lectured in many colleges and universities throughout the country. At the request of one of her

97
The Survey (47), Survey Associates, 1922, s. 784-785.
31
 students and of some of her sponsors, she joined a Chautauqua circuit in the early 1920s,
touring nearly 80 towns in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin on one-day stops.
...
The following year the Boston Social Union invited Miss Boyd to conduct a six-week summer
session in that city.

Many honors were given to Neva Boyd, including the naming of a building for her at East
98
Moline State Hospital in 1959.

The fact that Boyd documented Swedish folk dances is not surprising considering the
large immigration of Swedes that came to Chicago at the time.

Boyd’s student, Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin was a student of Neva Boyd from 1924 until 1927 according to Spolin
herself.99 Then she became a squad leader within the organization that Boyd worked
out. Spolin writes in one of her prefaces that she was working on "Creative
Dramatics".

Focus, side-coaching and evaluation are the three aspects we must cultivate to use
dramagame in educational contexts according to Spolin. First, make sure everyone is
focused, not as a goal by itself but for the drama to occur. Then keep focus and guide
the participants through the side coaching. Spolin emphasizes that the educator must
be careful not to assume anything, only evaluate what you have just seen.

Viola Spolin questioned the interpretations of Stanislavsky’s "Who? What? Where?"

by reversing the order of them by starting with the environment and who was there to
then assume that something happens.

Boyd’s RTS, merges with the Northwestern University

In a letter dated April 1927, Boyd writes to her friends and former students, of the
plans that are well advanced and will involve Northwestern University which will
include the RTS, in the the Sociology Department of the Professor Arthur J. Todd as
the person responsible. Boyd expresses considerable confidence in Todd. ”Plans now
indicate that what we have built up over the long period of years will not be lost since
Prof. Todd is sensitive to real values and is earnestly trying to preserve what we have
proved”. Moreover, she points out that the instructor in the Sociology Department at
Northwestern Univeristy is a former colleague of them from RTS. Further, she writes,
”Just what the courses will offer is not yet decided, but it is likely that there will be a
one-year graduate and probably a four year course”. Boyd writes, and comforts her
friends that they will probably lack the freedom and informality that was at Hull-
House:

98
www.spolin.com, webbsida 2006-05-08 [cached].
99
Spolin,1963.
32
 … as we gathered round the table in the cooking room or dusted the floor in the gym with our
clean middies but let us dry our tears with the comforting picture of a monthly check we
haven’t had to scramble to provide, with the fact that the whole office routine is fading out of
my program and that there is no summer term for me….I hope you all realize that my latch
string will still respond to your gentle pull for always and always, Neva L. Boyd.100

In American Journal of Sociology the fusion is mentioned:

Northwestern University has amalgamated the Chicago Recreation Training School, operated
for many years at Hull-House, and formerly a department of the Chicago School of Civics and
Philanthopy. Miss Neva L. Boyd, its director, becomes assistant professor in the department of
101
sociology.

In American Journal of Sociology one can also read about summer courses that Boyd
will hold 1928:
Northwestern University. Miss Neva Boyd, who conducts the courses in recreation and group
leadership in the university will give during the summerschool one course on social aspects of
102
play, and another on groupleadership and organization.

At Northwestern University was already Winifred Ward (1884-1975) working at an

institution other than that Boyd and Chorpenning came to belong. It is not clear from
Ward's archives which instituion it was.103 Ward came to consult Chorpenning for
including a production of The Wizard of Oz, 1928. 1932 is Chorpenning offered to
lead the Goodman Theatre, children's theater section at the Chicago Art Institute. She
remained there until 1952 and during that time Chorpenning wrote and directed most
productions for children.

The play and its requirements formulated by others than Boyd

Contemporary with Boyd was Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) a Dutch philologist and
cultural historian, who wrote Homo Ludens, 1938, which was published in the
original language, Dutch in 1939. 104 The Swedish translation Den lekande
människan (The playing man) were released in the 1940s as well as the English and
German edition. Huizinga’s definition of play is broad and inclusive, and is often
quoted in Sweden. 105 The most important contemporary play theoreticer is Huizinga
referred to be, in a newspaper of Science and Idea by a historian at the University of
Uppsala, since Huizinga saw the game as the driving force of civilization
development. ”The game can read a society's basic values.”106

100
Simon, (red.), 1971, s.15.
101
American Journal of Sociology, ” News and Notes”, 1928 Vol. 33 Nr. 4, s. 634, 635.
102
American Journal of Sociology, ” News and Notes”, 1928 Vol. 33 Nr. 6, s. 985. Hämtad JSTOR,
2013 12 05.
103
http://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/catalog/inu-ead-nua-archon-1144
104
Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens, Versuch einer Bestimmung des Spielelements der Kultur, 1939.
105
204.000 sökträffat på Google med sökord: Huizinga + lek, (endast svenskt resultat), 2013-10-10.
106
Torbjörn Gustafsson Chorell, ”I leken når människan sin fulländning”, Svenska Dagbladet,
2004-09-25.
33
In his thesis on game theory Huizinga reflects on the mood of the time. How labor
and production becomes the yardstick and the whole of Europe, assumed the new
ideal:
These tendencies were exacerbated by the Industrial Revolution and its conquests in the field
of technology. Work and production became the ideal, and then the idol, of the age. All
Europe donned the boiler-suit. Henceforth the dominants of civilization were to be social
consciousness, educational aspirations, and scientific judgement. 107

Huizinga said that after the industrial revolution was social awareness, educational
aspirations and scientific assessment dominate civilization. What followed was the
development of the sport, a pastime and important activity in the spirit of new forms
of structure and value. Huizinga writes:

Contests in skill, strength and perseverance have, as we haveshown, always occupied an

important place in every culture either in connection with ritual or simply for fun and
festivity.108

Ever since the last quarter of the 1800s, the game, in the guise of sports, had been
taken more and more seriously. The regulations had become increasingly stringent
and elaborate. Creating a record is established more and more with the increasing
systematization and rectification of sports and a pure play quality is lost meant
Huizinga. He expresses that the new spirit is no longer true play, it lack spontaneity
and carelessness.

Several years earlier, in 1934 Boyd wrote “Play as a Unique Discipline”.109 Boyd then
define a game as ”an artificial situation set up imaginatively and defined by rules
which together with the prescribed rules, is accepted by the players”. "The Social
Education of Youth Through Recreation" will Boyd write the same year.

1935 was ”Group work Experiments in state institution. In the Proceedings of the
National Conference on Social Work” published. Simon, Boyd’s editor argue that the
texts said that this occasion was the earliest expression to use the group method for
therapeutic purposes. More over, Simon explains:

The second paper emphasized the importance of play. Neva Boyd, in a paper on the use of
groups in the treatment of the mentally ill, delinquent girls, and the retarded, described the
goals of these experiments. They centered on helping children and adults experience the
opportunity of planning their own leisure time; encouraging initiative rather than
superimposing ideas; minimizing rivalry and competition between groups and group
members; and selecting “[a]ctivities which hold the greatest possibilities for growth and
directing them in such a way that the potentialities of the individual, however limited, are
called into action [so that] a fuller utilization of the individual’s powers may be accomplished,
110
and a more harmonious, constructive social life achieved.”

107
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1949, s. 192.
108
Ibid, s. 197.
109
Childhood Education, ”Neva L. Boyd Assistant Professor of Sociology”, 1934 Vol. 10 Nr 8, s. 414-
416.
110
Simon, (red.), 1971 s. 54.
34
The same year Boyd wrote ”Relationship of Planned and Private Recreation to Forms
of Government” Then follows ”The Social Value of Games” and ”The Significance of
Education in group action in the Cooperative Movement” 1936. Carl R. Hutchinson
refers to Boyd 1937 at ”The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 1937 191: 149 ” with such early source as 1924.111

From a local recreational programs to a national

Boyd co-founded the National Cooperative Recreation School (NCRC) in 1936 with
Ruth and Jimmy Norris, Carl Hutchinson, Darwin Bryan and Charlotte
Chorpenning.112 With Chorpenning Boyd had four years earlier started a national
recreational program which now went up in the NCRC. Boyd was active at the school
as late as 1947 when it agreed to the Mission House College, Wisconsin, and is
referred to as a professor at Northwestern University. 113 National Cooperative
Recreation School became The Eastern Cooperative Recreation School (ECRs), who
still works according to the organization's website.114

A seven-year experiment in social group work are discussed

Social Group Work: A Definition with a Methodological Note is listed as undated in
Boyd’s archive and thus also in Simon's book, but are scanned by Google at
Hathitrust.115 There it appears that it was published in 1937 when Boyd was 61
years.116 In this work Boyd expresses the importance of the search for definition of
concepts.

Boyd describes a seven-year experiment with a few thousand patients in Lincoln

(Illinois) State School and Colony a school for the feebleminded, whose results
showed increased capacity for all types of patients.117 This relationship between the
individual and the environment can not logically be refered only to the influence of
the environment on the individual. Rather, the environment was designed in the light
of the principles laid down herein, which indicates a functional unit of the
environment and organisms that constitute a process of change that includes both.
This material was never published but is available online.118

With reference to the seven-year experiment, Boyd expresses that the former school
system will have to undergo fundamental changes. She said that education must be

111
DOI: 10.1177/000271623719100121
112
Ruth Norris, Chorpenning som ogift, var Charlotte Chorpennings dotter.
113
Transkription av ett band med Eddie Moyer gjorts för ECRs styrelse, som en förberedelse för
stämman 1986. http://www.ecrs.org/ofplayandplayfulness/past_present_future.html
114
http://www.ecrs.org/ofplayandplayfulness/games.html
115
HathiTrust http://www.hathitrust.org är ett partnerskap mellan stora forskningsinstitutioner och
bibliotek som arbetar för att se till att kulturella texter bevaras.
116
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009540743 vars fysiska ex. finns vid University of California.
117
Mildred Richards. ”Unofficial Report on the Educational Program of Lincoln (Illinois) State School
and Colony”, 1936.
118
Ibid.
35
based on, but not be completely limited to, first-hand experience. Evaluations, she
continues, varies between physiological feelings of comfort or discomfort and social
assessments that largely comes from cultural patterns, customs, institutions, etc. This
type of evaluation, says Boyd is not divorced from the emotional situation, but is an
inevitable aspect of the entire range of evaluation seen from the coarsest sensations to
the most refined intuitions and convictions, including what we call conscience. 119

Play as a method in school

Boyd describes the importance of the emotional content of education which is
crucial.120 To highlight its importance in academic training, she describes the process
of how a teacher practice language learning by including the child's immediate
experience in the lesson in a playful way. One morning when it rains the teacher asks
the children about the feelings they had when they went to school. Based on these
words that the children mention will the teacher weave in umbrella, rain, and other
associated words with the words just expressed. All contribute something individually
to a common story that you can later refer to and everybody can remember together.
When the children made a statement, ”This is a rainy day” this was made with the
introduction of the feeling of wetness, cold, splashes, etc., then the abstraction of
experience was verbalized and was strengthened by the feeling of the same. The
similarities in their mutual experiences left them still free to take their individual
differences in emotional content. This method used the learning of the whole body in
a first-hand experience in a situation shared by all. Under the system of Educational
Measurement of Chicago's public school system, class was ranked first in reading
literacy vocabulary and spelling. Boyd also pointed out that the children were not
exposed to be drilled but were happy during the learning process

Eddie Moyer, active within The Eastern Cooperative Recreation School (ECRs), is
referring to an experimental work of Boyd and Bertha Schlotter in a school for the
mentally retarded, 1929 with the help of materials come from the folk traditions of
dance games and other activities. Furthermore expresses Moyer that Boyd was a
pioneer in her field. Her ideas on the theory of play and team work are expressions of
her practical way of doing things. These were transferred to the ECRs in practice over
the years and remains at least during the 1980s.121

In 1938 ”The Contribution of Social Group Work to Education and Social Theory” is
published, written by Boyd. 1941 a reception in honor of her were held. According to
Boyd’s archive did it take place on 8 February.

119
Boyd, ”Group work experiments in state institutions in Illinois” Proceedings of the National
Conference on Social Work. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1935.
120
Boyd, Social Group Work: A Definition with a Methodological Note, 1937.
121
Moyer, 1986.
36
Boyd - an active retiree
Boyd wrote ”National School Lectures on Recreation” 1942 and the ”Report on the
Advisory Councils of the Ohio Farm Bureau” came the following year, 1943. Boyd
lectured at various colleges and universities during her retirement, such as;
Minnesota, California, Western Reserve, and at Harvard.

Handbook of Traditional Games, Boyd gave out when she was a retiree. 122 In 1950
she wrote ”Social Group Work in the Community: Group Experience As The Means
of Social Education”. In 1959, she is over 80 years and is elected to the American
Sociological Association. On November 21, 1963 dies Boyd in Chicago.123

The following articles are undated from Boyd's archive:“A Therapeutic Approach to
Hospital Activities”, “Community Responsibility for the Recreation of Youth”,
“General Outline of Plan for Leisure Time of Men in Military Camps and Naval
Bases”, “Group Work and Community Welfare Social Security”, “Play as a Means of
Social Adjustment”, “Principal Features of the Social Psychology of George Herbert
Mead” , “Recreation in the Reconstruction of Anti-Social Adult”,“Some Aspects of
the Relations of Intimate Group Experiences to Family Stability” “The Mechanism of
Socialization with Reference to Group Work”, “Views on Youth Organizational Work
of the United States”.

According to Janina Adamczyk, from the University of Toledo, who wrote an

obituary at Boyd's demise, so did Boyd its largest operation in cooperation with the
Illinois Department of Public Welfare during her retirement. Along with the Illinois
Department of Public Welfare Boyd designed a leisure programs for the mentally ill.
In recognition of her contribution to the treatment of the mentally ill, they named a
hall Neva L. Boyd Recreation Hall at the inauguration of East Moline State
Hospital.124

Of the 90 quotes that I found on the internet page that Aristotle was quoted, regarding
how to teach entrepreneurship to children, were the following taken from Boyd,
“’Play experience can prepare the student for purposefulness in non-play activities,
for true play creates the incentive to use one's best ability’. - Neva Boyd”.125

122
Boyd, Handbook of Traditional Games, 1945.
123
Boyds arkiv i Chicago.
124
”American Sociological Rewiev” 1964.
125
Brown, TeachingKidsBusiness.com
37
Neva Boyd’s source of inspiration
What were the educational literature when Boyd began her professional activity?
Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) known for the ”importance of free play for children's
development” and ”kindergartens” had recently been translated into English from
German.

Systematization of the play

Fröbel systematized children's games and turned to mothers and caregivers of children
with his material in the shape of booklets.126 Boyd mentions him in some of her
articles, therefore my search for facts on internet also cover some of Fröbel.

Schoolroom games and exercises by Elizabeth G. Bainbridge, 1886 may appear to

have a similar purpose as Boyd's later books, to provide educators with the game
approach. But the one and only thing that is consistent is the medium. 127 Bainbridge
points out that the games which she incidentally calls the exercises can not be
anything other than relaxation from a higher purpose and true knowledge.

Paul Simon’s analyse on Boyd

Simon was a professor of social work at Jane Addams School of Social Work from
1947 to his retirement in 1974. He was an active member of the American
Association of Social Workers Group (AASWG), the National Association of Social
Workers (NASW) and in the Council for social work education (CSWE). Simon knew
of the extensive material that Boyd's empirical work had generated. Boyd was
working with a manuscript which was never finished before she died. She had,
however, begun to systematize her material in different categories. These categories
have been retained in the archive of Boyd’s work.

Simon begins the book by describing Boyd's theory on play against the background
that Boyd appeared in. The new term for play coincides with the industrial revolution.
A resurgent interest in play and recreational/leisure activities were seen as a
counterweight to the social problems that showed up with the rapidly growing
urbanization. As long as one could remember play had been a natural place of human
activity as a central part of the cultural process according to Simon and Boyd. But
during the 1800 and 1900s play became subordinate other values.

Simon argues that Boyd pulled the key concepts in her theory from several sources
and integrated them into a coherent body of thought and practice. Simon mentions
Dewey and problem solving, as well as Korzybski and the principle of developing
meaningful concepts from everyday experiences. Follett is the basis for Boyd's
creativity concepts through interaction, and it was according to Simon, Canon who

126
Fröbel, Mother-play and nursery songs: illustrated by fifty engravings: with notes to mothers, 1878.
127
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006537230
38
helped Boyd with the principle to see the organism as a whole. However, I have not
found evidence for all of these references in Boyd’s own articles.

What I have been able to find is Charles Manning Child (1869-1954) which Boyd
refers to considering the organism as a whole. Furthermore, says Simon Cooley and
Mead enhanced understanding of small group-sociology. Simon points out, however,
that it is difficult to determine whether these sources should be seen as initial
knowledge or just support for Boyd's insight that she had developed intuitive and
pragmatic.

Other references which Simon refers to according to Boyd's influences as a basis for
the development of her play theory are; Margaret Lowenfeld, Fredrich Fröbel, Lorenz
Gras Berger, Charles Gross, Herbert Spencer and James Sully. These people besides
Fröbel was unknown to me. I did chose two of them which I examined further for
possible similarities with Boyd. Lowenfeld (1890-1973), British child psyciatric, 128
published Play in Childhood, 1935. She studied how is it that some children manage
to cope with traumatic situations and rather find strength from the experiences. She
advocated an empirical research in the same way as Boyd. 129 Sully (1842-1923)
British professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College in London
was the second person I searched further for traces of influences, and I think I can
find similarities with what Boyd expressed regarding respect for children despite their
young age. Here is a quote from Children’s Way: 130

One may, nevertheless, safely say that a large majority of the little people are, for a time at
least, fancy-bound. A child that did not want to play and cared nothing for the marvels of
storyland would surely be regarded as queer and not just what a child ought to be.

This transforming touch of the magic wand of young fancy has something of crude nature-
poetry in it. This is abundantly illustrated in what may be called childish metaphors, by which
they try to describe what is new and strange. For example, a little boy of nineteen months
looking at his mother's spectacles said: "Little windows".

Other people that Simon mentions (inconsistent regarding the first name and surname)
is Stanley Hall, von Heumann and O. Morgenstern, Theodore M. Mills and Murphy
regarding the realization of the importance of play that had been established in the
literature for Boyd's contemporaries. Here I have limited myself and not researched
further for these people, but I reproduce here their names as they were presented in
the book compiled by Simon..131

In the texts I read written by Boyd herself, she mentions among others the philosopher
Susanne Langer (1895-1985) who wrote about symbolic communication beyond
semantics. I have also encountered Mead, Dewey and Korzybski in Boyd’s articles.
These academic names evokes the later and up to the present has been referred to as
the Chicago School.

128
http://dev.ionut.me/oliver/index.php/archives-and-exhibits.html
129
Margaret Lowenfeld, Play in Childhood, 1967.
130
James Sully, Children’s Ways,.1897 s. 13-15.
131
Simon, (red.), 1971.
39
In the review of the book that Simon compiled in 1971 by Maleoney who writes that
Boyd appeared to distance herself to subject disciplinary faculties and lacks an
explanation or clarification from Simon how things were with Boyd's attitude to the
prevailing terminology of the relationship between research and practical
development. Likewise, in the preface till Hull-House maps and papers, Addams is
telling us the follwing:

The residents of Hull-House offer these maps and papers to the public, not as exhaustive
treatises, but as recorded observations, which may possibly be of value, because they are
immediate, and the result of long acquaintance. All the writers have been actual residents in
Hull-House, some of them for five years: their energies, however, have been chiefly directed,
132
not towards sociological investigation, but to constructive work.

Boyd's play theory adds a new dimension

The interest in studying the phenomenon on play had been expressed during the latter
part of the 1800s according to Simon (footnotes appearing in this section are
reproduced as Simon recounted them). Furthermore, writes Simon, Fröbel 133
considered the play to be a suitable approach to learning in school. Gras Berger wrote
about the ancient to the training in 1864,134 and Gross, 135 Spencer, 136 Sully, 137 and
Hall,138 were among the people who developed the opinions and theories of play for
children and animals, and the psychology of play. Simon writes that they saw the play
as the crux of the child's relationship to life and his world. Boyd's position however,
was that play alone, spontaneous and undirected, do not fulfill the realization of the
child's wishes and needs.

Simon argues that Boyd brought a dimension that had not previously been specified
or formulated by the new trends or by the authorities. Namely the selective use of the
game through play to achieve specific objectives, and therefore Boyd developed a
leadership program.

The difference that Boyd emphasized, according to Simon, was the adult being
present, and as the creator of the play situations psychological aspects and social
construction. This point of view allows the development of a systematic direction so
that the game can become a medium for social formation.

Children that others had found difficult to connect with because of their introverted
behavior and lack of creative ideas or empathy became available through Boyd’s

132
Addams, ’Prefatory Note’, Hull-House Maps and Papers: Halstead Center, 1895, s. Viii.
133
Frederich, Froebel, Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, övers. Josephine Jarvis, Appleton: London,
1895.
134
Lorenz Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht im klassichen, 1864.
135
Karl Gross, The Play of Animals, 1898.
136
Herbert Spencer, The Principle of Psychology, 1873.
137
Sully Studies of Childhood, 1896.
138
Stanley Hall, Aspects of Child Life and Education, 1907.
40
methods according to Simon. He goes on to mention Boyd’s case studies with
targeted games that not only gave the opportunity to the awakening of children by the
interest in play but also the possibility of an increased ability to form sentences and
the ability to participate in classroom exercises.139

Influences that reach Sweden

As I mentioned earlier, I have just found an essay that refers to Boyd in Sweden.140 In
Swedish drama pedagogy Boyd is almost unknown. On an American website that
analyzes the drama therapy roots both Boyd and Winifred Ward occurs as references.
Ward worked on Chicago's West Side. 141 Ward set up a series of what she called
”sectors” in the form of courses, lectures and experiential groups that would through
culture, education, and socialization alter the local community. The most popular
activities were the drama club which provided socialization, a creative outlet, and an
exciting group experience that led to a product that was shared with others. 142 The
young people involved aged seven and up. They found so much meaning in their
work together that they were to remain in play activities until they were around 30-40
years.

Winifred Ward was a student at Charlotte Chorpenning by Jane Addam's Hull House
in Chicago. Meanwhile Chorpenning was a student of Neva Boyd who in turn studied
with Edith de Nancrede, the artist who helped Addams in the establishment of a
theater at Hull House. 143 This is the only link I found between Boyd and Ward. I
have not found signs that these two, Boyd and Ward met to cooperate. However it
appears that Elsa Olenius as librarian and children's theater zealot is the person who
embraced Wards 'Creative Dramatics' and applied it in her work with Our Theatre
(Vår teater) in Stockholm from 1950 onwards.144 Our Theater is similar to Ward's
drama clubs for children and young people.

The group-play theory of Boyd

In a published source from 1938 Boyd develops the importance of group work as a
method for education. Boyd mentions initially two principles. 145 The biological

139
Boyd, “Social Education of Youth Through Recreation,” Proceeding the Thirty-Second Session of
the Minnesota State Conference, 1924.
140
Kransmo & Joelsson, 2012.
141
Shannon Patricia Jackson, Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity,
The Univeristy Michigan Press, 2001.
142
Ibid.
143
Neva Virginia Cramer, Literacy as a performing art, A phenomenological study of oral dramatic
reading, Louisiana State University, Diss. 2003.
144
Hägglund, 2001.
145
Boyd, ”The Contribution of Social Group Work to Education and Social Theory”, Journal of
Educational Sociology , 1938 Vol. 12 Nr. 4, American Sociological Association, s. 196-206.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2262207 Hämtad: 2013 10 10.
41
principle of the organism as a whole, and that abstraction is a fundamental process in
human behavior. As support for the biological principle Boyd refers to Professor CM
Child. ”Life, as we see it, especially in the highly developed animals and humans, is a
series of excitations”.146 The second principle is based on Korzybskis theory, that
abstraction is a fundamental process in human behavior which does not separate body
and mind. At the neurological level, nervous system abstracts by compiling, interact,
reduce and create concepts. Boyd is looking through its etymology that suggests that
abstraction means 'from nothing' for her statement to be true. According to Boyd
would environment be as an implication. Boyd explains further Korzybskis model
abstraction, through what he calls first-order abstractions or abstractions of a lower
order which he connects to the senses, or vague feelings and does not involve the
separation of body and soul. Similarly abstractions of higher order are linked to
mental processes which involve both bodie and senses. Korzybski describes the
"General Semantics" as the following:

The term 'neurological' is used here in a modern, and in a 1935 scientifically legitimate
dynamic sense,…older static 'fibre', 'substance', etc..., orientations, do not offer enough
possibilities to account for the endless individual or group variations of the manifestations of
life and psycho-logical reactions, but only obscure issues, and make modern scientific
orientations impossible….The problem is not in knowing all details which we admittedly do
not know, but to base our orientations on the dynamic process-character of all 'matter', which
147
modern physics has solidly established.

With reference to these two principles that looks at the biological and neurological
activity shared by body with senses, Boyd's own experience has shown that the degree
and type of stimulus in the form of different levels of abstraction gives results in
increased capacity within the individual through group work, which proved
unattainable for other current methods, of that time.

Boyd clarified that verbalization is just a form of communication, action is another,

and besides different types of activities affect the process and the personality. The fact
that people are denied the opportunity for stimulating experiences are a scourge that
impoverishes the personality and society, she said.

Boyd's educational program is based on the playfullness

Neva Boyd reflected on what properties were significant in play theory on the basis of
that play structure is an artificial situation using empathy and common rules accepted
by all participating and taken on roles in the play in unison. Boyd’s definition of
game: defin game:

My own definition is that to play is to transport oneself psychologically into an imaginatively

set up situation and to act consistently within it, simply for the intrinsic satisfaction one has in
playing. Experience reveals the difficulty many adults and even children have to get into play
psychologically and yet there is no genuine play without it. The essence of all play lies in its
spontaneous creation for the pleasure of the process affords the players in the fun of playing.

146
I fysik innebär excitation, av latin: excitare, egga, stimulera, att energi tillförs en atom så att en
elektron "hoppar upp" till ett skal som innehåller mer energi.
147
Alfred Korzybski, General Semantics, 1938.
42
 When this essence is lacking, only the semblance of the play activity may exist and this is not
play. Play is a universal form of behavior common to man. Play is a way of behaving and
therefore play behavior is a common form of human behavior. The play impulse finds
expression in many forms of behavior and is indulged in for the satisfaction it affords in itself.
The essential factor in play is the processes of playing. The value of play is in itself, not in
148
acclaim or evaluation, monetary or otherwise, of its outward form.

Boyd said that all games are set up in the form of a problem and playing the game is
identical with identifying and solving the problem. Furthermore, she argued that the
pattern of play is the precondition for solving the problem. Boyd put it in scientific
terms taken from physics and she believed that a game consists of constructed
elements of play behavior in the form of a pattern of behavior. The shape of the game
patterns are consistent for behavioral transformation of the participants in a behavioral
problem solving based process. A play is a social pattern, a copy of a social
organization still limited in space and time. The discipline to act consistently within a
frame of reference in a game identified with all one's problem-solving skills, said
Boyd.149

Problemsolving
Boyd argued that those who participate in the game represent various conflicts of
interest and must make decisions during the time of play. Such decisions, said Boyd,
will be taken in accordance with the strategy chosen in advance or by intuition. The
nature of these circumstances will depend on the strategies and decisions that are at
the opposite side of the participants in the game. As each side, choose its own
strategy, the range of choice of varied art, as the play is unfolding.

Furthermore, Boyd said that certain strategies can change during the play and will
include decisions which are relevant for the strategy of the opposite side and also to
those that will not occur. Therefore, rests the play outcomes on a number of variables,
and the solutions follow the procedure for intelligent problem solving according to
Boyd. The reward for the participants is inherent in the situation and its consequences.

Competition in the the situation

Boyd saw competition as something inevitable and inherent in the situation. But it
was her firm view point, according to Simon, special rewards or prizes tend to distort
the full meaning of the experience. External recognition restricts the aesthetic nuances
of the finals, meant Boyd. The game as fun and spontaneous, can by winning a prize
set up a corruption and cheating with rules. If this occurs, feelings of hatred and
jealousy arise. The gap between the winner and the loser increases and to give more
recognition to the winner and less to the loser creates injustice. The values in the

148
Boyd, ”The Theory of Play” odaterad, http://www.scribd.com/doc/102471756/The-Theory-of-Play-
Neva-L-Boyd#scribd
149
Boyd, ”Classroom notes in the Neva Leona Boyd Papers”, odaterad
43
process of play should not be sacrificed although a gain is important. Games which
move towards avoiding control by dishonest move is not really play but a kind of
competitor to try to dominate the other, claims Boyd.150

The integreted group

Boyd built her educational programs on social development through group experience
based on the use of the games and playfullness but with the proper functioning of the
group leader. 151

When reasoning and referring to Korbytzski, Boyd clarifies that what is abstracted
from something distingly the environment also plays a major role in the process.152
Group experience consists of a psychological confidentiality. Personal and social
development are found in a number of problem areas where every step is followed up
by meetings and a reassessment of the situation. This means that a joint project is a
stimulating experience. Boyd expressed, that if the creative power of an integrated
group is working, there is nothing that is as stimulating as people working together in
the same project. Boyd argues that they reach a level higher than what they could
have generated individually. This is because, according to Boyd, that opportunities are
released when working together. The group work carries with it the weaker members
and encourages them to do things the situation requires. Spontaneous creative
problem solving provides a vitality that makes external rewards superficial claims
Boyd. In fact, there must be something wrong if it is necessary to resort to prizes and
awards, she said.153

When people work in a unit together, with problems that are important to them,
concern arises for each other's well-being. Boyd argued that there was a logical error
to treat each group as if it were capable of this social care that characterizes an
integrated team. One must consider each group's unique composition. Boyd
formulated in a balanced group program there is need for a broad spectrum of social
experience from the most casual contacts where participations is highly individualized
to group inviting interactive behaviors where problems of social adjustment will be
intensified. The integrated group, according to Boyd, is characterized by a sense of
belonging, mutual exchanges, individual and collective responsibility and loyalty.
Problems related to the group as a whole can only be resolved by the group and not by
a few for them, felt Boyd.154

150
Boyd ”Classroom notes in the Neva Leona Boyd Papers”, odaterad
151
Boyd, “Social Education of Youth Through Recreation,” Proceedings the Thirty Second Session of
the Minnesota State Conference, Minnesota 1924.
152
Boyd, ”The Contribution of Social Group Work to Education and Social Theory”, Journal of
Educational Sociology, 1938 Vol. 12 Nr. 4.
153
Ibid.
154
Ibid.
44
Systems of categories
To make these principles more specific Boyd developed categories of group relations,
initially with collective forms of individualized activities that require little or no
cooperation. Then, looking at groups that require a high degree of cooperation,
interdependence and integration.

Boyd listed various activities that were illustrative for each category, and the types of
social relations that was characteristic of each one of them.155 The same method
approach was used by Spolin, like many other contemporary drama teachers of
today.156

Leadership
Boyd's understanding was that knowledge of group processes was necessary but that
the crucial ingredient was leadership why leadership training became the main task
direction in her training program. 157 Boyd said that leadership is a function and not
an attribute. In a group every member exercise leadership that contributes to the
current issue, she said. Anyone who acts as the leader does not prevent the best
contributions coming from members, but will guide the process which helps to
prevent too dominant or aggressive members that otherwise would be ruling in the
group, explained Boyd in her notes, from classroom observations.158

155
Se the rubrics in the ingress of Boyd’s archive.
156
Spolin, 1963.
157
Boyd, “Leadership With Groups, ” Hitherto, unpublished.
158
Ibid. ”Classroom notes in the Neva Leona Boyd Papers”, undated.
45
Analysis
Based on the steps in the process of empirical research described in the Methods
section, I have now come to the stage four (see the method section) identification of
functional relationships between phenomena.159

The historical perspective

From the puzzle of philosophy of science the following reflection can be made: The
outside world seems to be commemorated in our minds and our cognition falls into
place, or processes through both the conscious and unconscious activities. I interpret
that as a synthesis of thought processes and mental activity, are interactive
communication between people.

From the history of science perspective it can be noted that some representatives more
or less separates the body with all senses on the one hand and the thought and the
logic on the other. In the description of the theoretical perspective I took the help of a
metaphor in the form of a puzzle. When analyzing the data, I have tried to search for a
dichotomous metaphor why a twin-pan balance may serve as this. 160

Figure 8. A twin-pan balance.

The left bowl is the biological body with the senses and the practical, the right is
abstract thinking and all that which accompanies such as motivation and values,
theoretical.

Tabell 2. Dualistic balance

Body with senses – unconsios, practical Thoughts – consious, theoretic

Protagoras Sapfo
Socrates Plato
Aristotle Galilei
Locke - Cockburn Descartes
Hume Kant

Plato valued thought and according to him it is more likely that a person who has been

159
Cohen et. al, 2003.
160
http://www.skolbilder.com/Malarbild-raettvisa-vagskal-i13285.html
46
trained to think clearly (logical and mathematical) can escape the ignorance cave and
behold the truth using their thinking. But the vision of truth would in any case be a
kind of vision. It is clear from the following section of the dialog:

Now if this is true, I said, you have our position on these issues be that upbringing is such that
some people promises and claims that it is. They say they can stop into the knowledge of a
soul where no knowledge exists - as stopping sight in blind eyes. Yes, he said. But our
reasoning shows, I said, This ability, which already exist in every human soul, this tool with
which everyone learns things - it's like an eye which can not turn from darkness to light if not
whole body turned: in the same way must this tool turned away along with the whole soul of
that which becomes until the soul can bear to consider it as is, and the brightest part of what
is; and it says we're the good. I know right? Yes. For precisely this may be a turning art, I said;
an art that comes the easiest and most effective way to get the soul to be reversed. The art is
not about imparting the vision - the soul has already eyesight, but vision is misaligned and do
not look in the direction it should, and it is this rotation as it applies to achieve. (tranlated from
the Swedish by me)161

Aristotle created weights to put in the cups, metaphorically expressed by

systematising, starting with his teacher Plato's dualistic structure, built on a world of
ideas to the general concepts and habits of mind of the individual concepts. 162
Aristotle created weights to both the bowls on the scale. This duality persists when the
science developed by Galileo and Descartes and others choose to focus on the
tangible, which does not include sensations. Descartes first principle is based on the
thinking and seems to regard thinking as a separate activity in a passive body.
Descartes ports in the right cup. Locke and Hume ends up in the left cup because they
believe that thinking is influenced by impressions and not vice versa. Kant can also be
placed in a dualistic weighing pan with the practical or theoretical reason. When
Hegel appears in a dialectical perspective, I abandon the scales in favor of a
dynamometer after I searched for the scales based on three units instead of two. I
found none on the internet which may indicate that it becomes exponentially
complicated to go from two to three variables. The third variable is the dialectical
perspective, then my dichotomous division lost its value.

Figure 9. A dynamometer.

EA dynamometer as metaphor is consistent with my analysis of theoretical

perspectives. To relate to the two-tier, environment can create a model that is

161
Platon, citerad av Phillips. Dennis, C., & Soltis, Jonas F., Perspective on Learning, New York:
Teacher College Press 2003, s. 28.

47
simplified, and that can be understood. The question is whether it reflects what it is
and if the model serve in a useful way.

When Fröbel and Addams and the other operating in Chicago will enter the history of
last, last century, I see a desire to integrate the two scales, then one sees that the
interaction between people affected by each other in an ongoing dynamic in relation
to each other and the current situation.

If I analyze the historical theoretical perspective and try to link it to educational

drama, I find the following links to Boyd's concepts.

Tabell 2. Teoretical consepts related to Boyd

Theoreticer Concepts Boyd mfl.

X163
Sapfo love / consciousness love/abstraction ”self-reference”
Sokrates norm critical norm critical kritisk
Protagoras human as benchmark participant centered
Platon ideal values beyond obvious beneficial
Aristoteles categorizations game categories
Locke ability through senses first hand experience
Trotter Cockburn social emotions significance of the group
Hume sensation intuiton
Kant causality situational
Kant a priori/a posteriori what we se / not what we think we see
Hegel deduction/induction implicit rules of the play
Hegel Dialectical laws failure is part of success

Neva Boyd's mark on history

Boyd and Addams share the same destiny as many other reforming women not
written into history as sociologists, with some exceptions. This occurs despite the fact
that they seem to have played an important role in the development of sociology as a
discipline, and that they are often cited. Addams has a special status as a Nobel Prize
winner but also Boyd appeared frequently as a source reference to the end of the
1940s. Below is Boyd's work as a play theorist qouted.164 This occurred at an annual
conference in the United States, 1937:
Neva L. Boyd defines a game as an artificial situation set up imaginatively and defined by
rules which together with the prescribed rules, is accepted by the players. In thus accepting his

163
A column for you who read to mark if you find proof for my interperetation of connections and if so
on which page it occure.
164
Boyd, Play; A Unique Discipline, Childhood Education, 1924 s 44. (förmodligen 1934)
48
 role in the game, the child coöperates in playing his part in the new situation. He accepts the
rules and for the time becomes an active member of a new society. As such, he willingly
accepts the discipline of the group. Games tend to unify a group through shared experience
and frequent social response. This contributes to the development of the social being. In play,
the members often achieve a direct social experience, which is stimulating, releasing, and
organizing. Thus the tendency to cooperate and create definite habits of action in terms of
others is built up through the child’s play life. Miss Boyd has observed that one educational
value of play arises from the fact that in the play situation a person experiences both cause and
effect of conduct in quick succession, which enables him to abstract a richer meaning from
play experience than from ordinary life. Because of the psychological intimacy which
characterizes play, the individual reveals his motives and personality traits in spontaneous
165
action with others, and at the same time develops insight into his own tendencies.
9
One might think that the above text is misspelled concerning ‘coöperates’ but this
spelling was common at the beginning of last century. Hutchinson refers to Boyd and
Childhood Education as early as 1924. This has not been confirmed. After contact
with those responsible for the archives of Childhood Education today, only two
publications of the article has been confirmed which was from 1934 (see reference
list).

Clay Drinko a contemporary American scholars refer to the article “Play; A Unique
Discipline” and he believe that Spolin had been taught according to Boyd's theory
during her time as a practising student at Recreation Training School (RTS). This
assumption Drinko base on the notes he studied in Spolin’s archive that come from
the time when Spolin was a student at Boyd, which was between 1924-1927.166

With quotes by Huizinga, Simon wants to give attention to whose voices and
formulations we today have access to, which describes the time when Boyd appeared.
It is particularly Dewey and Mead that is referred to and in some contexts Addams.
Mead has similarities to Boyd since he himself has not published any extensive
material of hos own work in a collected form.

Is Boyd remembered as a sociologist?

Why are there so few female sociologists from the time when the science was
conceived? One interpretation could be that these women's work was seen as so
obvious, or that one in Sociology rarely referenced colleagues according to
Lengerman and Niebugge-Brantley. 167 Social work as a unique professional
institution was developed in the early twentieth century, while the formal introduction
in the academic world did not come until during the thirties. “1930's become criteria
of male professionalized sociology”. 168 The result of these methods according to
Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley was “The Chicago Women's School of

165
Carl R. Hutchinson, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 1937,
Coöperative Recreation, 1937, s. 149.
166
Clay Drinko, Theatrical Improvisation, Consciousness, and Cognition, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013, s. 15.
167
Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998.
168
Ibid., s. 253.
49
Sociology created many of the methodological and data-gathering strategies”169 why
they should be regarded as social scientists and sociologists.
Boyd was as early as 1932 nominated Professor at the Department of Sociology at
Northwestern University. 170 Below a quotation from Springhouse Magazine:

Professor of Sociology Neva Boyd, Northwestern, recognized as a national authority on

recreation, spent three days at the College in September 1935. She admired Penny Cent’s
painting of J.F. Humm’s mill at Eichorn, stopped at the mill to watch its operation, and went
171
back to Chicago with two bags of what Fosfore called corn flour.

Both Addams and Boyd by far meets the criteria to be called sociologists if following
Käslers criteria (see Table 3, next page). The collective work of social reform of these
women at The Chicago Women's School of Sociology (CWSS) came to influence the
political direction of the United States at the beginning of the last century. During the
first years when CWSS were active, the first psychology laboratories were to be built
up, around the United States. University of Chicago established their first laboratory
in 1893. ”If one considers these conditions, the significance of the CWSS's
contributions to social theory and reform are impressive, even if the individuals who
contributed to its body are virtually unknown.”172 These laboratories were to be
operated by men.

I have tried to apply Käslers five criteria (see Table 3) on some active during the same
time with Boyd, the period around the century before last, to see whether they are to
be regarded as sociologists, or not.

Table 3.
Käslers critera for Sociolog applied on Boyd and others
Member Co-author
Board or Identification as
national article/
Name Living teaching Sociolog
ass. books
assignm. own others
Neva Boyd 1876-1963 x x x - x
Jane Addams 1860-1935 x x x - x
George Mead 1863-1939 x x x - x
John Dewey 1859-1952 x x x - x
Ellen Key 1849-1926 x x x - x

169
Ibid., s.254.
170
Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors (18) 4, 1932, s. 308-314.
171
Mildred B. McCormick, College In The Hills, Springhouse Magazine, 1989 Vol. 6 Nr. 2.
172
Elinor Stebner, The Women of Hull House: A Study in Spirituality, Vocation, and Friendship, 1997,
s. 144.
50
I have come to the conclusion that the criteria are useless since these people were in a
paradigm shift and appeared in a time that later became defined by others than
themselves.
I have not found evidence that any of them actively were called for sociologists,
which is the missing part of the five criteria. Is the conclusion then that they are not
sociologists? As regards for Neva Boyd, she seems to have been vigilant to not end up
in a situation where academic affiliation dictates the terms instead of the individual
and the act that creates the situation. She strove to solve social problems and thus
steered the focus of activities.

Preserved old gamese

In one of Boyd's booklet is a game a called Fire is loose which made me think of a
game that I learned during a course ’Drama, music and movement’. The game was
said to be several hundred years old and had the same name. In the second edition in
1932 by Danish and Swedish folk games Boyd simplifies the instructions referring to
Thyregod and Hellgren. This change shows how thorough Boyd seems to have been
when she took on something. That was what made me stay within Boyd’s texts. She
seemed to be analyzing on so many levels, in addition tried and predicted most parts
in a process, before she decided on a final projection of anything at all.

Boyd’s impact on Huizinga

A few years after Boyd had shaped her experiences, Huizinga repeat Boyd’s basic
formulations. 173 When choosing the title, Homo Ludens, the playful human, he
claims that civilization arises and develops through a game in a playful way.
Therefore Huizinga reiterates, which is also supported by Simon, the theme that play
is a special form of activity, an important function, and a cultural factor in life. The
proterties for a playfull gaming (tried to translate from Swedish which has a a word
’lek’ 174) is freedom and joy in the special context and the everyday life situation.

According to Simon, Huizinga reflects what Boyd several years earlier had found and
formulated:175 That the play is a universal form of behavior that one engage in, in
order to accommodate what the play itself gives, not for praise or rewards. To play is
a universal form of behavior to engage in order to accommodate what the game gives
itself, not for acclaims or rewards. The games intrinsic spontaneity and joyfullness
links the fun of play from the transformative transmission to a supposed real situation.
Who of these two who did the first definition is perhaps unimportant, however, one
can conclude that Boyd do not occur to the same extent as Huinzinga, when others are
referring to game/play theorists today.

173
Simon, (red.), 1971.
174
Lek is still a word in English but is only used in the context of courtship for animals ’lekking’
175
Simon, (red.), 1971.
51
Boyds inverkan på improvisationsteatern
Improvisation theater in the United States are linked to the Second City which was
established in 1959 in Chicago by Spolins son, Paul Sills (1927-2008). 176 Second
City led to among other things, Saturday Night Live, which today still is worldwide
TV-broadcasting show. Sills started with student theater in Chicago in the early 1950s
along with David Shepherd (born 1924). The theater came to be known as The
Compass. In the movie, David Shepherd: A Lifetime of Improvisational Theatre one
can follow improvisational theater performance in the US from Shepherd's
perspective. 177 Boyd as a reference is out of the picture, he refers only to Spolin’s
structured games. Sills went to Britain in the mid-50s and had then with him Spolin’s
games, based on Boyd's game descriptions and used them as he worked and studied at
the University of Bristol.

In the USA, improvisational theater with Shepherd was named Improv Olympic.
Later Shepherd developed forms of improvisational theater to be called Community
Theater similar to Boal's Forum Theater to the form. They interacted with the
audience who could come up with proposals, and instead of actors that would play the
role, the person in the audience were to do it.178 In Canada, the games were to be
simplified to a concept that was transferable to groups that could compete on the
subject with a functioning credit system. These games have been affected from
several directions. Keith Johnstone was a guest teacher in Canada in the early 60s and
may have partially affected the outcome, as well as the proximity to Chicago and its
approach to improvisational theater with its origins in Viola Spolin’s improvisational
book. 179 It in turn is based on th game/play tradition as Boyd passed on to Spolin
during her years as a student at Hull-House.180

Situation - Motivation and Environment

As to Plato's allegory of the cave of ignorance (that many people take the glow of the
reality of the true existence) where Soltis and Philips sees education as a process of
liberation, could I turn the argument around and see the cave as a teaching
environment. 181 It is the school that keeps learners as prisoners from reality and not
the individual's own captivity. One aspect cannot be ignored in the play situation and
that is that if the students are not motivated he or she can hardly play.

Boyd often come back to the environmental aspect, in the classroom as well as to the
students' problem-solving in the situation. Environment and situation, connect to
them, the students themselves. The internal environment means that students need to
feel good, have fun (but in a serious way) for the lesson to work. The external

176
Robert Loerzel, 2012 http://www.robertloerzel.com/articles/stage/spolin/spolin.htm
177
Mike Fly & Michael Golding.
178
Ibid.
179
Spolin, 1964.
180
www.library.northwestern.edu/spec Viola Spolins arkiv.
181
Philips & Soltis, 2003.
52
environment need to activate all the senses, through which we observe, measure and
judge our environment in our universe - the inside as the outside. So as one illustrate
the interaction between the individual introspection and individual interaction in
social contexts according to a symbolic interactionist perspective.182

Boyd formulated the playful dimension of education for it to be understood and

valued. A realization that the situation must be defined to the same extent as the
action occurs even among theorists. Here follows a table of some of the individuals or
theories that exist in the study, which mentions the importance of the situation in their
reasoning.

Table 4.

Definitions on the situation in theretical contexts

Name The concept Situation Page
Kant Situation categories 11
Hegel Den upphöjda situation 11
James Den subjektiva situation 11
Addams The social situation 20
Chicago school ’thomastheorem’ 21
Boyd The artificial situation 33
Boyd The emotional situation 35

Boyd expressed that the game is always a fictional situation, but that work is however
always a geniun situation. She expressed that the child accept the overall situation of
the game, including the child's own role in the game. The child is acting in the play as
if it were real, but stops immediately with this as soon as the game is over. The skills
you learn in the fictional situation could be of use in future real situation.183

182
Trost & Levin, 2005.
183
Boyd, “Play - A Unique Discipline”, Childhood Education, 1934.

53
Discussion
This work has faced many restriction problems. In the first creative searchprocess that
not initially started from any scientific method, made me realise that it was extremely
important to find a method that could limit my choice.

Reflection over the scientific process

Hopefully, received the historical method, with reference to Cohen et. al., a
maintained logical representation, of a case study of a historical nature. That is, with
an approximation to the truth which is the fifth process in a historical approach in
research collection.

Why some people's life's work is printed with ink and others in pencil is difficult to
give a simple answer to.

Previously, I have created a timeline for Drama as a subject in school. 184 When I
wove a web around my item 'Neva' I found several links with Sweden, which
surprised me.

On Neva Boyd as a person not much is written online. However, during the three
years that I have sought actively on internet I have found that the amount of items
have increased. The dedication that Spolin gave her former teacher in 1963 shortly
after Boyd's death gives ripples. 185 But it is often the same quotations that recur and
there is only one picture of Neva Boyd that I found and twhich recur on internet
pages.

Boyd had no need to expose her own person, it is quite clear. The enormous material I
collected on map images, photographs, anecdotes and other things could form a
puzzle of Chicago when the settlement movement was most active. The women who
worked there came to end up in the periphery regarding academic discipline when
they were sorted for social workers while the men ended up in sociology. I did not do
this work to a gender study since I chose a historical case study. This decision has
kept me back from several fairly obvious conclusions given the definition Sociologist/
Social worker. In time, Simon’s narration started to disturb me, why I chose to reduce
the references to the book I was in the beginning so happy about and instead search
for original texts of Neva Boyd.

184
https://www.facebook.com/Dramapedagogik
185
Boyds arkiv i Chicago.
54
When I tried the theorists I have gathered in my puzzle for the historical theory of
formation of the scales which then could no longer be used and had to be replaced
with a dynamo, the feeling reinforced me that the clasification of the scattered
references make sense to get a clear picture of the different settings on how human
beings can be described.

When I, in September 2014, went through my references and were looking at Neva
Boyd only on Swedish side I could see, to my surprise, that my active search of Neva
Boyd and center footprint, for example, Wikipedia has rolled on. One side on
recreation had chosen to name Neva Boyd and took my text straight from
Wikipedia.186

Most important is that I have confirmed what I already knew, that the game/play
allows participants to be more knowledgeable about her/himself. With the essential
difference that I now can refer to a group play theory designed by Neva Boyd, where
she points out the play situation as a starting point for problem solving. By group
work imagination and intuition develops in interaction with others. It will be easier to
expose oneself to unfamiliar situations if they have been practiced before. And by
being exposed to ones own creativity and artistic opportunities, participants will, by
necessity, learn to concentrate their forces, to convey what they know. Games effect
on personality and development of the individual competences, goes beyond the
theatrical or aesthetic aspect, it's about nurturing skills and attitudes that are useful in
every aspect of learning and life. 187 To safely join this process requires a well-
functioning group leader.

During my search for Neva Boyd, I once again read Spolin’s book Improvisation for
the Theater and found that she defined improvisation as ”Energy fortified with
intuitive knowledge”. Moreover, Boyd, is the only reference used in Spolins book
with dozens of footnotes in the end of the book where Spolin define terms of weight.
A strong argument to link the roots of drama pedagogy and theories to Boyd. Inside
the book Spolin writes, ” ’Inspiration’ is often a vague term. We know, however, that
behind it something exist… ’reaching beyond one’s self’ or deeper ’into one’s
self’.”188 Further Spolin expresses the following:

Outside of play there are few places where children can contribute to the world in which they
find themselves. Their world, controlled by adults who tell them what to do and then to do it,
offers them little opportunity to act or to accept community responsability. The theatergame
workshop is designed to offer students the opportunity for equal freedom, respect, and
189
responsibility within the community of the schoolroom.

186
http://sv.sciencegraph.net/wiki/Fritidspedagog
187
Se bilaga 3, över en daglig reflektion från mitt arbete med drama som ett ämne i skolan.
188
Spolin, 1963, s. 331.
189
Spolin, 1986, s. 4.
55
New questions, further research
By imitation, we learn together with others, by seeing and understanding the
consequences that a given action leads to in the game. From different approaches can
an overall picture of a possible problem be complemented. A young person who does
not have full confidence in the mimicry object may not mimic those without
developing defense mechanisms that are destructive to a positive progress with
development of the individual. It's one of the reason why the group leader as a role
model in the play situation is so important.

In the future I would love to try Boyd's group play theory, with the group as a
dyanamic affiliation with common goals for individuals and by observing the various
games to find evidence of the thoughts development through and in the doing. If all
forms of thinking is based on the use of mental representations, these should consist
of concepts incorporated from external impulses. There is a selection and an
interpretation of those based on previous experiences on which the unconscious
consolidates itself, then the norms eventually perceived as natural laws to all of us. I
would like to make these standards visible through behavioral observations through
games. Hopefully, these can then be questioned by the participants in relation to
themselves and lead to critical thinking. To make visible the obvious and protecting
the good of the inclusion mechanism rather than exclusive in games and play, I think
Boyd and others with her, has done a rearkable job. Many after Kant refers to his
work without the insight that critically examine oneself first as he claims is a must:

Assuming that pure reason can contain a practical basis itself, ie one that is sufficient to
determine the desire, there are practical laws; otherwise all practical principles that constitute
only maxims. In a pathologically the affected will of a rational being can maxims conflict with
the practical laws that it itself acknowledged. (tranlated from the Swedish version by me).190

A future goal of mine is to visit Boyd's archives in Chicago and read her unpublished
notes. If I get there, I would also try to meet with Gary Schwartz a former student of
Spolin who actively keeps improvisational theater started with workshops and
blogging. Spolin has spread the knowledge she had to take part of, when she was a
student at Neva Boyd, and if one is interested to immerse themselves in this type of
games and group play theory, I recommend further reading of Spolin’s books. In an
interview with Boyd by Helen Baker Cody in connection with a ’survey’, 1935, which
Maloney mention in his review of Simon's book in 1971, Cody describes her
impression of Boyd, ”Leading a discussion, she seat quietly, but her eyes get a darker
shade when she disagrees. Spend an hour with her and at the end you may be uplifted,
irritated, inspired or exasperated. One thing you will not be: indifferent.” 191 Maloney
expresses a similar impression of just reading Boyd's texts, “Time spent with her
writings is likely to produce the same reactions: one cannot be and should not be
indifferent to her ideas.” 192

190
Kant, (1788) 2001, s. 25.
191
Maloney, Social Service Review, 1972 Vol. 46 Nr. 4, The University of Chicago Press, s. 619-621.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30020743
192
E. Maloney, “School of Social Work”, University of Southern California. 1971.
56
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60
Bilagor:
1 Mindmap over the creatice search process (see below)
2 “Search path” Matrix over the words and hits (se attached pdf).
3 Daily reflection as a drama pedagog (see below)

Bilaga 1

Appendix 3

Why Drama should be a school subject - to make the new thinking

Students will burst, their eyes shining like stars, they're excited. They attend MYP I. They
shall have Drama for the first time. We make some name games and then we jump into a
few simple improvisations. It laughes a lot. We have fun, but we have fun in a serious
way. They learn so much that they do not have a clue at the time of what it is. However,
there are clear links to the curriculum.

In the afternoon, students in the MYP V (I work in IB) lingering into the room. They are
evasive gaze, their body language is introverted. They look scared. They are sluggish at
start. We are playing a ball-game. It has opposed rules than those students are
accustomed with. Namely, if someone does not catch a lyre so will the person not be
excluded or punished. The person who threw the ball goes out. These opposing rules
gets the participants started. They become engaged and start a discussion on what is fair
or not. Their norms while thinking becomes visible. We can move forward with a similar
discussion at a later time.

61
Concepts are embodied in Drama. Such as concentration. If I ask a student what it really
is, I get the answer: to focus. Yes, it makes sense, I say then, but can you explain a little
easier? Then the student goes back to the ’yes, but to concentrate’ They do not move on
from the definition we started at. They have learned by heart without really to be
understood. Then I suggest that it is about to shut out different impulses and impressions
and think only of one thing right now. Then I have broken down the concept and given
them a little strategy on how they can become concentrated. Prior to that, we have
probably also tried a 'power nap'. An exercise in the presence work outs where I will
guide students through a relaxation exercise that results in peace and relaxation. I ask
them to observe themselves to I see them again (next time), whether the exercise
affected themselves or not.

The older students I have to take it more gently with. They are in an age when they are
like volcanoes, they are transformed during an intense time, from children to adults.
During that particular time, I have the privilege to meet them and inspire them forever. It
is a task to take very seriously. One can have great fun, seriously.

Without their motivation, I can not accomplish anything of importance. Therefore, I have
no choice but to start from their own will. It is the fuel for them through their High School,
to future challenges. In Drama, you are the book, something hindsight is not. However,
there is one truth and it contains your honest effort and courage to dare to fail.

In Drama things that have been taken for granted will be upside down and will thus made
visible in order to be reviewed and reassessed. In Sweden Schools they do not have
drama as a separate subject. I feel extremely privileged to be working on 'Lifeskills' then I
know that what the students themselves are learning in Drama immediately strengthens
them to become citizens, which we need to develop the democracy in the world.

"Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I will understand."
Chinese proverb we all can relate to.

62