PLAYLEARNING

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PLAYLEARNING
Preparing the 21st century child for a global
world
Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek - Temple
University Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology

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FACT

• Preschoolers in the U.S. are being expelled at 3
  times the rate of children in K-12.
• Dr. Walter S. Gilliam, the principal investigator
  of the Yale Child Study
• In the 4 billion dollar tutoring business (still
  growing), 20 of the children being tutored are
  2-6 years old (Junior Kumon and Kaplan)
• National Public Radio June 6, 2005

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And more..

• Educational toys have become a billion dollar
  industry, much of it promoting one-right-answer
  learning and little creativity
• Assessment has become a huge industry in the
  U.S.as accountability becomes the norm and
  learning is defined through a narrow lens

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These issues and more prompted a report from the
American Academy of Pediatricians in October 2006
entitled The Importance of Play in Promoting
Healthy Child Development and Maintaining
Strong Parent-Child Bonds
They wrote
These guidelines are written in response to the
multiple forces challenging play. The overriding
premise is that play (or some available free time
in the case of older children and adolescents)
is essential to the cognitive, physical, social,
and emotional well-being of children and youth.
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In fact a large body of research suggests that.

• High quality preschool programs are
  characterized by playful environments in which
  children have strong relationships with their
  caregivers and are engaged in active learning.
• __ Galinsky 2005

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This holds for all children

• Rural and urban
• Rich and poor
• All children need high-quality early education
  and the opportunity to learn through play!

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But whatever happened to play?

• In 1981, a typical school-age child in the
  United States had 40 of her time open for play.
  By 1997, the time for play had shrunk to 25.
• What percentage is it down to now??

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• We are wearing out our youngest children by
• Engaging in drill-and-kill activities rather
  than playful and meaningful learning, even at the
  youngest ages!
• Testing for factoids rather than real learning

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We are confusing learning with memorization
and academic achievement with success
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Teachers are forced to choose between
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And parents are barraged with books that speak to
their newly created anxietiesabout whether their
children will succeed
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We have even forgotten how to play. Play is
under siege (Zigler, 2004)
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And its not just a feeling that we have.
We have data from a study with Fisher Price
suggesting that play really is under siege
Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek Golinkoff, in press
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Parent Expert Survey

• 1160 parents with at least one child less than 5
  yrs of age
• 99 early childcare professionals (m 16 yrs exp)
• Internet Survey (2 scales)
• Classification of play activities -26 activities
  rated on 7 pt scale
• (1 not play, 7 definitely play)
• Academic learning value - activities rated on 7
  pt scale (1 does not relate to academic
  learning, 7 sets foundation for academic
  learning)

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Defining Play?

• Free-unstructured play
• imaginative, creative, lacks clearly delineated
  rules or goals

• Structured play goal-oriented
• - Life skills activities foster academic and
  adult related skills
• - Electronic play activities interaction or
  visual fixation on e-devices

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Do Parents Views Differ from Experts?
YES!!
Expert vs. Parent Classifications of Play
Play
Not Play
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This means that there is a broadening definition
of play among our parents.
Parents think that flashcards, educational
television and reading console books are as
playful as is doing art, romping in the fall
leaves, and building forts.
Parents are fine with our playing in school if it
includes a lot of educational play and school
prep.
Parents have a different world view than we do
and they want their children to succeed!
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The consequence is a societal choice between
ROBOTS?
CREATIVE THINKERS?
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The 21st Century Child
Has facts at her fingertips. To be a lifelong
learner, and a productive citizen, she must
become a creative thinker who can use information
in innovative ways.
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It is critical to find some balance

• between the desire to enrich childrens lives
  the need to foster play as a foundation for
  academic and social learning.

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So, how did we move from defining play in
childhood as unstructured to a world in which
play is considered more skill oriented?
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We believe thatWell-intentioned parents and
teachers

• Have been misled by . . .
• Exaggerated science
• Societal forces
• Marketing ploys

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Exaggerated Science

• Remember the Mozart Effect?

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The REAL evidence

Professor Hetland (Harvard) examined 67 studies
on the Mozart Effect with 4,564 adults
the existence of a short-lived effect by which
music enhances . . . performance in adults does
not lead to the conclusion that exposing children
to classical music will raise their intelligence.
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Societal Forces

• Even comic strips reflect our insatiable appetite
  for products that will boost IQ and save our
  children from the fate of being gasp normal.

From Baby Blues
Reprinted with permission of King Features
Syndicate
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Marketing Ploys
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In this talk I will demonstrate . . .

• What 30 years of developmental science has taught
  us about how to create lifelong learners.

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The accumulated evidence suggests
A talk in three parts

• 1. Early education is important but . . .
• - How you learn is as important as what you
  learn.
• 2. E.Q. is as important as I.Q.
• Each of you has a role to play in helping
  children become life-long learners.
• - You are the village

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Part 1

• Whats the evidence that early education is
  important ?
• 2. E.Q. is as important as I.Q.
• Each of you has a role to play in helping
  children become life-long learners.
• - You are the village

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Two kinds of studies illustrate my point
Early Language Studies
The Head Start Evaluations
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Early Language Learning

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Their goal? To understand the achievement gap
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The findings

• In an average year, children hear
• 11 million words - Professional homes
• 6 million words - Working class homes
• 3 million words - Welfare homes
• By age 3 these children had HUGE differences in
  vocabulary and in IQ scores

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Early learning matters!

• We see this in the Head Start data too

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The Head Start Evaluations

Early Head Start(2002) 17 programs,
3001 families, random assignment study
Head Start Impact Study (2005) 84 programs,
5000 children, random assignment study
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• The Positive Results

Early Head Start(2002)
The programs Center based, Home-based, Mixed
approach The findings Higher Mental Age
scores Higher language scores
attention parent involvement, e.g., reading
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Positive Results Cont.
Head Start Impact Study (2005)
The programs Head Start program vs. Head
Start-eligible community The findings
Head Start children had pre-reading
scores pre-writing scores
vocabulary 42

• The positive effect that Head Start attendance
  has on pre-reading skills is comparable to, or
  larger than, the effect that homework has on
  school achievement, the effect that lead
  poisoning has on diminished IQ scores, and the
  effect that asbestos exposure has on cancer
  occurrence (Phillips McCartney, 2005).

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The bottom line?

• Early experience matters
• BUT.

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• Just because interventions work for at risk
  children, it does not mean that we need
  interventions with non-at risk children who come
  from already enriched environments.
• As a colleague once suggested giving one Tylenol
  might relieve your headache, but you need not
  give 10 pills to someone who has no headache.

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Further, how you learn is as important as what
you learn

• Preschool children in highly academic, drill and
  kill learning environments are
• More aggressive
• More anxious
• More perfectionistic
• Than those who learn in playful environments
  where learning is meaningful.

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• Comparisons between developmentally
  appropriate preschools (DAP) and more traditional
  academic direct instruction (DI) schools tell
  the same story.

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• DAP schools
• Have active learners
• More playful learning (guided play)
• Whole child approach
• Integrated curricula
• Discoverer/Explorer metaphor
• DI
• More passive learners
• Learning is more compartmentalized
• Empty vessel metaphor

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DAP schools offer advantages in

• Social emotional development
• Emotional regulation
• Burts, Hart, Charlesworth, Fleege, Mosley
  Thomasson, 1992
• Marcon, 1994
• Motivation for school
• Hirsh-Pasek, 1991 Stipek et al., 1998
• Academically
• reading and math scores
• Stipek, Feiler, Byler, Ryan, Milburn, and
  Salmon (1998)
• These advantages lasted into the primary grades

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One recent study

• Celebrated a Montessori education over the more
  traditional education. Montessori classrooms are
  more developmentally appropriate. They embrace a
  metaphor of learning that is more more playful
  where children are actively and less passively
  involved in learning.
• --Lillard Else-Quest, 2006

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The results suggested that

• Children in Montessori classrooms at age 5 yrs.
  did
• Better in academic tasks like reading and math
• Better in social tasks that required positive
  peer play
• Better in tasks that required attention to
  another persons beliefs
• At age 12 years these children
• Liked school more
• Were more creative in their writing
• Did better in reading and math

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• WHY???
• Because the children were more actively engaged
  and learned through play

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And yet another recent classic study(Diamond,
Barnett, Thomas Munro, Science, 2007)

• Found that playful learning through the Tools of
  the Mind Program helped children develop
  executive function skills (EF) like inhibitory
  control, working memory and cognitive
  flexibility.
• These skills are highly correlated with fluid
  intelligence and outcomes in math and reading.
• When teachers promote these skills through
  playful -- planful learning throughout the day,
  childrens outcomes on standardized tests
  increase -- even for poor children.

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The Tools for the Mind curricula

• Shows us that we can change the way children
  process information and control their own
  behavior if we concentrate on playful, planful
  and guided learning throughout the school day!

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Play Learning

• WHY???
• Because

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And a perfect school day includes both

• Free play,
• And playful learning

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In reading

• Telling stories
• Word play
• (what rhymes with hat?)
• Singing songs
• Dialogical reading
• Reading product labels
• Engaging conversations

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Childrens Museum of Manhattan CMOM
And even more playful literacy
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READING IS NOT

• Phonics without fun
• Simply memorizing the alphabet or vocabulary
  words
• These do NOT build great readers

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An example from our own research

• On e-books and t-books

Research supported in part by Fisher-Price Toys
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• E-books are now in 95 of the homes of parents we
  surveyed
• Yet, when parents read t-books with preschool
  aged children
• Parent-child reading experiences are predictive
  of later literacy
• A dialogic reading style has been shown to
  effectively improve reading outcomes

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Adult-child dialogic interactions during book
reading

• Contribute to the development of language and
  literacy skills
• Predict later school outcomes

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• Do e-book consoles like the ones sold by LeapFrog
  promote the kind of dialogic parent-child
  interactions that predict later literacy?

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No!
When 80, 3-and 5-year olds were randomly assigned
to read matched e-or t-books with their children,
we found that
When reading t-books Parents talk MORE about
the story Parents talk LESS about
behavior Parents say MORE that goes beyond the
story
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In a follow-up study we also found

• That children reading t-books were better able
  to
• Tell us the plot line
• Remember the sequences of events in the story

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Why?

• Learning works best in meaningful contexts!

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In math and spatial skills

• Finding patterns
• Dividing candy
• Sorting trail mix
• I spy
• Noticing more and less
• (She got more ice cream)
• Lemonade stands
• Playing cards
• Playing with blocks
• Playing with trains

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MATH for PreschoolersIS NOT

• Memorizing equations
• 1 1 2
• Flashcards of numbers
• Computer software for toddlers
• Or toys that only promote one right answer

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An example from our own research

• Spatial learning with blocks

Research supported in part by Mega Bloks
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When parents engaged in guided play with children

• They use richer spatial vocabulary and build a
  foundation for later math and spatial skills!
• The Pediatricians were right, we should emphasize
  the benefits of true toys, such as blocks and
  dolls, in which children use their imagination
  fully, over passive toys that require limited
  imagination

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Even in physics?
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There are lessons learned

• When you throw a ball?
• Or push it to the front of the room?
• Or make it fly.

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As Einstein once said

• "The only thing that interferes with my learning
  is my education."

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How you learn is as important as what you learn

• PLAY LEARNING

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Part 2

• 1. How you learn is as important as what you
  learn.
• 2. E.Q. is as important as I.Q.
• 3. Each of us has a role to play in helping
  children become intelligent and happy.

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A tale of two Spocks

• Dr. Benjamin Spock got it all along social and
  emotional skills matter -- a lot
• Mr. Spock did not get it He is all intelligence
  and no social skills

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From the last two decades of research, it is
unequivocally clear that childrens emotional and
behavioral adjustment is important for their
chances of early school success.
Scientific evidence also points to the power of
social skills for emotional health and
intellectual growth!
Raver, 2003
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For example

• Parental talk about emotions creates children who
  are more sensitive to others emotions.

How would you feel if she took your bear?
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Identifying emotion is important for
understanding yourself and others.
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EQ (emotional intelligence) is important for

• Building moral character in children who learn
  right from wrong
• An understanding of who we are, and
• An understanding of others
• AND
• Believe it or not.it is critical for
• SUCCESS IN SCHOOL AND IN THE WORK FORCE

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EQ does not develop on its own

• Children learn it from adults
• Children learn it from other children
• Children learn it through PLAY Free and guided

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Part 3

• 1. Early education is important but . . .
• - How you learn is more important than what you
  learn.
• 2. E.Q. is as important as I.Q.
• 3. Each of us has a role to play in helping
  children become happy and intelligent.

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It takes a village to raise a child

• Ancient African Proverb

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Learning is the heartbeat of a strong society.
Andrea Camp
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A Huge GAP
What we know in science
What we do
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It is time to bridge the GAP!
What we know
What we do
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The science seems to

• Fly in the face of a global world that thinks
• Faster is better
• Every moment must count
• Yet there is virtual consensus in our field of
  child psychology that children do not thrive when
  they are hurried with no time to explore!

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Thus, in Einstein Never Used Flash Cards

• We,
• Bridge the gap between science and practice
• Show how children really learn
• Give real life examples that can be used in the
  school room and in the living room (as well as in
  the library, museum and media)

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And we published
To lay forth the evidence about how play
encourages social and academic development
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Finally, just this year we published
So that parents and teachers could better
understand the learning evident even in the early
swooshes and swipes of scribbled art.
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Our point? To reach her full potential as a
lifelong learner. . .
The 21st century child must do more than just
learn the facts she needs to integrate them
into a creative framework that meets the demands
of our global society.
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To reach her potential as a productive citizen
she needs to have a high-quality early education
that will prepare her for the workplace of
2038. We know what that workplace will look like
and we know what it takes to raise intelligent,
well-adjusted, successful children. It is
incumbent upon us to put science into practice!