Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Dr Christine Stephen

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• play has the greatest value for the young child
  when it is really free and his own.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• I love my classroom because it has a lovely
  house and I really like making models, stuff for
  Mum and Dad.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• They should try to find out what the children
  like and try to form a lesson around that. . . If
  you get to be part of what you are learning you
  will understand more

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Children learn by their fingers . . .without
  their actual sensory experience of things, what
  other people tell them means hardly anything at
  all. . . Even some professional educators do not
  yet recognise how easy it is to mistake words for
  knowledge, and how much more vivid and usable is
  the understanding which children get from
  immediate experience of doing things, and finding
  out for themselves, than from being told about
  them.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Joe said that he had gone off design and
  technology since they started to make things you
  would not want - like a box that is too small to
  hold anything.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Our descriptions and explanations are useful . .
  . to supplement childrens own experience but
  they are useless as a substitute for it. We may
  like explaining, but it is not the most useful
  thing for our children.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• How do you learn to add up?
• You need to get some cubes and when you are doing
  your number work you see what it adds up to.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Active learning . . . engages and challenges
  childrens thinking using real-life and imaginary
  situations.

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning
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Tracking Childrens Progress
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Play, work, learning

• The boy writing is learning because he is
  thinking in his head.
• Playing is not learning we know how to play
  already.
• At the computer they are not learning, just
  playing games
• On no desk day today feels like playing!
• The children are learning because they are all
  facing the front and looking at the teacher
• You sit nicely on the carpet so that you can get
  a turn on the smartboard. The smartboard is
  activity and work.

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Play, work, playfulness

• Play
• Work
• Playfulness an approach to education and
  learning, rather than a prescription for some
  tangible, and primarily cognitive, outcome.
  (Rogers Evans, 2008)

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Play and Pedagogy

• Educational settings constrain play, children and
  practitioners
• playing properly
• containing play
• play as reward
• directed play
• outcomes from play

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• No good research evidence about the benefits of
  play
• Play engages, motivates, is fun, does not need a
  product
• Contrasting discourses about play
• Play with purpose and cognitive challenge
• intense interest in the world about them,
  powers of concentration on what ever occupies
  their attention

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Problematising Active Learning
• Defining active what activities are active?
• Is listening to/watching another active learning?
• Does action support learning or give
  opportunities to practise skills? Learning about
  or learning how to?
• Power, choice, autonomy, responsibility, teacher
  as authority or facilitator
• Does active learning foster engagement or a
  positive disposition?
• Active learning a developing pedagogy, evolving
  activity bank, classroom management technique?
• How does active learning relate to learning
  theories?

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Problem solving
• Finding out
• Counting, classifying, matching
• Communicating
• Experimenting

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Playing, Doing, Thinking, Learning

• Piaget
• changing mental structures
• Vygotsky
• acquiring tools of society
• Rogoff
• changing participation in the community
• The majority of educational theories relating to
  learning . . .are grounded in the belief that
  humans learn best when they are engaged and
  actively constructing meaning. (Yelland et al,
  2008)

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Conditions for learning playing, doing, thinking

• Learning environments that are affording,
  inviting or potentiating provide the conditions
  for robust learning. (Carr Claxton, 2004)
• Inviting play, action, authenticity, meaningful,
  satisfaction
• Potentiating open, experimental, collaborative,
  acquiring tools and skills
• Affording scaffolding, leading, suggesting,

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Mediating Learning

• Learning is mediated through playing, doing,
  thinking
• Actions, objects, peers and adults mediate
  learning
• Actions internal and external, physical,
  cognitive, communicative, social and emotional
• Objects/Resources support hinder, shape
  scaffold
• Practitioners critical mediating role of
  interactions, distal and proximal guided
  interaction, bridging meaning and mutual
  structuring of opportunities