Extracurricular course experience “Pedagogy of Play”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17872307Keywords:
Educational practices, learning methodologies, play, playful learning;Abstract
Play is central to children's learning: how they form and explore friendships, how they formulate and test hypotheses, and how they make sense of their world. Much is known about how play supports learning, but little empirical research has explored what it might mean to place play at the center of formal schooling. In 2015, the Pedagogy of Play (PoP) research project began investigating the nature of playful learning in schools. Funded by the LEGO Foundation, the project focused on three fundamental questions that we have continued to explore in our university context through the extracurricular course: students understanding the value of play in learning, beyond playfulness, highlighting its role as a driver of child development; promoting an understanding of cultural diversity in forms of play; training future teachers in playful methodologies, and introducing social justice issues through play; inviting students to explore how play can be a vehicle for social change; advocating for play as the axis of holistic development; and implementing Playful Participatory Research (PPR), as a tool to investigate and improve educational practices.
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